CHAPTER VII.
The Story of Morocco.
Condemnation of European political action in Africa is often attributed to the prevalence in the critics of two erroneous conceptions which are held to vitiate their judgment. One of them is the belief, which the critics are supposed to entertain, that native government is without serious blemish, and that the general condition of the population under native government is one of beatitude. The other is the alleged incapacity of the critics to appreciate the automatic and irresistible driving force of modern political and commercial progression, which, it is argued, makes the extension of European political control over these countries simply unavoidable. Now, people are, no doubt, to be met with who do think that it is possible in these days to build a Chinese wall round a certain area of the earth's surface. But those who stress the fallacies of uninformed commentators know perfectly well that they are avoiding the real issue. This is not European political action in itself, but the hypocrisy and injustice which so often distinguish it, the murderous cruelty which so often stains its methods, and the abominable selfishness which usually characterises its objects.
It is sheer cant to apologise for these things on the ground of the expansive commercialism of modern Europe, and it is worse than cant to do so on the ground of native misgovernment. The misgovernment of modern European statesmen has brought Europe to a state of misery and wretchedness unequalled in the history of the world. The social system of Europe is responsible for more permanent unhappiness, affecting a larger aggregate of humanity, than that which any native tyrant has ever succeeded in inflicting.
The story of the French absorption of Morocco has given rise to much of this cant-talk. A disturbed Morocco on the frontiers of French Algeria was an
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