unravelled by the abdication of Abd-al-aziz and the recognition of Mulai Hafid by France and the other signatory powers of the Algeciras conference. But in 1909 the temporary peace in Morocco was again rudely broken by Spanish activity round Melilla—the building of a railway to secure a new post, La Mar Chica, and to reach and work mineral deposits. The Riff tribes attacked the Spaniards with results already described in Chapter V. The ferment among the Moors against European intervention next took the shape of attacking the Sultan Mulai Hafid at Fez (1910). To save the Sultan and the Sultan’s Government (the “Makhzen”) and the European residents from possible destruction, the French Government sent an expeditionary force from the Shawia coast region to reach and relieve Fez. This was accomplished after some difficulty in the spring of 1911, and a small army or government guard was organized for the Sultan under French officers. This and other actions once more aroused German resentment and intervention on the grounds that France was creating a virtual protectorate over Morocco without Germany’s consent, and without compensation to Germany for the possible loss of a profitable field of commercial development. So the German war vessel, the _Panther_, was sent to Agadir in the Bay of Sūs to “protect German interests”; these interests being the mineralogical researches and acquisition of concessions of the firm of Mannesmann. If we brush aside diplomatic fictions, the kernel of the matter was this. Germany had long fixed her desires on the Bay of Sūs or Agadir, that semi-circular bight of the Moroccan coast south of the Atlas range and opposite the River and Country of Sūs which is the nearest approach on the whole Atlantic coast of Morocco to a large and good harbour protected from the north wind. It was believed in Germany that Great Britain was too much involved in domestic agitation to be prepared to go to war over Morocco; and that France would be willing to stave off trouble with Germany and obtain her consent to the acquisition of nearly all Morocco by agreeing to a German protectorate over the Sūs country and Anti-Atlas, thus admitting Germany as a territorial power in North Africa. Spain gave Germany some encouragement in this intervention, having already found the French very grudging in their allotment of Spanish spheres of influence in the north of Morocco and opposite the Canary Islands. But had Germany succeeded in her demand for the Sūs country Spain would have been the first to suffer. The Cape-Jubi-Bojador region and the Canary Islands might ere long have become German also.