authority. The murder of a French subject at Tangier led to the dispatch of a Moorish mission to Paris. This mission resulted in the drawing up of a Protocol, in which arrangements were mutually arrived at with regard to policing the frontier. The Protocol was based upon "respect for the integrity of the Shereefian Empire."[1]
An agreement of the same kind was signed in April, 1902. While the French Government was thus assuring the Moorish Government of its disinterestedness, it was pressing Spain to hasten the partition negotiations. At this stage "high finance" appears on the scene. Abdul Aziz, the young, well-meaning, but extravagant Moorish ruler, contracted a loan of £380,000 with some French banking establishments (October, 1902). It was apparently just about this time that British diplomacy realised what had been going on at Paris and Madrid, Pressure was put upon Spain to break off the partition negotiations with France, and a British financial house was found willing to oblige (April, 1903) the Sultan with a sum equal to that which he had secured from the French bankers in the preceding October. Meantime the Moors were becoming, uneasy in their dull, ineffective way. The attitude of the French military authorities in Algeria was not calculated to reassure them. The Sultan felt the need of a more explicit recognition of Moorish independence. Learning that the President of the French Republic was to visit Algiers, he sent a special envoy to greet him, hoping to receive from the lips of the head of the French State a formal declaration in that respect. But in response to a speech from the Moorish envoy, framed with that intention, M. Loubet contented himself with a few polite generalisations. Thenceforth the suspicions of the Moors deepened until the events of 1904 converted suspicions into certainties. Those events may now be epitomised.
•••••••
The Anglo-French Convention of April, 1904, and the Franco-Spanish Convention of October, 1904, completed the diplomatic machinery for the disposal of North Africa, and "slammed the door in the face of the peace-
- ↑ "You should make the Sultan understand"—wrote M. Delcassé to the French Minister in Tangier—"that it will depend upon himself to find in us friends the surest, the most anxious for the integrity of his person, the most capable of preserving him in case of need from certain dangers. Our loyalty, as also our interests, are guarantees to him that we shall not encroach upon it."
