cers I sensed considerable inquietude in the face of coming events.
"We do not want war," they said, "but Abd el-Krim cannot be allowed to run off food from the territory of the sultan of Morocco for the maintenance of his army; and, as the war with the Spanish is bound to be protracted, he will be obliged, after the supplies in the Rif are exhausted, to make repeated raids upon the peaceful inhabitants of this country to revictual his army, and he may even force the tribesmen here into service against the Spaniards. If this happens, we shall be drawn into more formidable conflict with him."
Thus spoke the French officers, but I had other thoughts on the matter. Regardless of whether the operations of the rebel chief should prove successful or not, his invasion of the zone of French influence seemed to me to be inevitable. I had heard in Fez the confidences of the Kairween mullah and the words of the man in the black bournous; I had felt the unrest in the attitude of the crowd in the Medina; I knew the Bolshevik system, the system of these destroyers of the peace of the world, and I knew that Abd el-Krim would be exploited by them to the utmost. They would urge him to attack Fez el-Bali and help him to take this town of Idris; they would play at a Holy War and would make of this adventurer a new Mahdi. Only concerted action by the French, Spanish, Italian and English can paralyze this plan, the success of which would tend to ruin the whole of the civilizing work of the white race not only in North Africa but throughout other parts of the continent.
