or
any strategic works to be erected on that part of the Moorish
coast between Melilla and the heights which dominate the right
bank of the Sebu exclusively."

France has secured all that she wanted, or rather that her aggressive
colonial party wanted, for opinions on that point are by no means
identical, even in France, and the Agreement at once called forth the
condemnation of the more moderate party. What appears to be permissive
means much more. Now that Great Britain has drawn back--the Power to
which the late Sir John Drummond Hay taught the Moors to look with an
implicit confidence to champion them against all foes, as it did in
the case of the wars with France and Spain, vetoing the retention of
a foot of Moorish soil--Morocco lies at the feet of France. France,
indeed, has become responsible for carrying out a task its eager
spirits have been boiling over for a chance of undertaking. Morocco
has been made the ward of the hand that gripped it, which but recently
filched two outlying provinces, Figig and Tuat.

Englishmen who know and care little about Morocco are quite incapable
of understanding the hold that France already had upon this land.
Separated from it only by an unprotected boundary, much better defined
on paper than in fact, over which there is always a "rectification"
dispute in pickle, her province of Algeria affords a prospective
base already furnished with lines of rail from her ports of Oran and
Algiers. From Oojda, an insignificant town across the border from
Lalla Maghnia (Marnia), there runs a valley route which lays Fez in
her power, with Taza by the way to fortify and keep the mountaineers
in check. At any time the frontier forays in which the tribes on both
sides indulge may be fomented or exaggerated, as in the case of Tunis,
to afford a like excuse for a similar occupation, which beyond a doubt
would be a good thing for Morocco. Fez captured, and the seaports kept
in awe or bombarded by the navy, Mequinez would fall, and an army
landed in Mazagan would seize Marrakesh.

All this could be accomplished with a minimum of loss, for only the
lowlands would have to be crossed, and the mountaineers have no army.
But their "pacification" would be the lingering task in which lives,
time, and money would be lost beyond all recompense. Against a
European army that of the Sultan need not be feared; only a few
battalions drilled by European officers might give trouble, but they
would