Two days later, near Oujda, we overtook the _régiment étranger_ on its way to the fighting in the Riff—a dusty column of iron-hard, sun-bronzed men, loaded like beasts of burden, their long overcoats buttoned back from their knees, their forage-caps pulled low over their eyes against the blinding sun-glare. As we passed they were roaring out the marching-song which the Legion sings only when it is bound for battle. I wondered if my young compatriot, of whom Azan had spoken, was among these adopted sons of Madame de la République. Soldats de la Légion, De la Légion Etrangère, N’ayant pas de nation, La France est votre mère. CHAPTER XIX THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN “THE FARTHEST WEST” Those who are bored by history might do well to skip this chapter, for, though I shall do my best to brush away the accumulated dust of ages, so that the glittering romance of Morocco’s story may be seen, it is nevertheless a chronicle of past events rather than an account of present-day happenings and conditions. But a meal, to have any nutritive value, cannot consist wholly of sweetmeats; one must take a certain amount of meat and potato in addition to the dessert. And precisely the same holds true in the case of Morocco, for without the background of Moorish achievement, glory, and misrule, and of the French occupation, it is utterly impossible to understand the anomalous situation which exists in Maghreb-el-Aska, the Farthest West, as the Moroccans themselves call their country, where the descendant of five-and-thirty emperors still sits in state beneath the Shereefian umbrella, surrounded by visitors and eunuchs and concubines and all the pomp and luxury of an Arabian Nights court, while a quiet Frenchman, in a modest residency not a stone’s throw from the imperial palace, speaks with the voice of a ventriloquist and pulls the strings. In order that you may have a clear understanding of the highly involved Moroccan situation, it would be well, it seems to me, were I to begin by clearing up several popular misapprehensions. First of all, then, be it understood that the vast majority of the people of Morocco are not Moors at all, as most foreigners carelessly assume, nor are they Arabs. The very name “Moor” is a European invention, unknown in Morocco, whose inhabitants should properly be called Maghribin—that is, the people of Maghreb-el-Aska. The name that we apply to the country is but a corruption of that of the southern capital, Marrákesh, through the Spanish version, Marueccos.