(A curious circumstance, is it not, that republican France, whose motto is _Liberté, égalité, fraternité_, should have become the most imperialistic of European nations? In a space of little more than ninety years she has extinguished the independence, and in some cases exiled the rulers, of Algeria, Cambodia, Tunisia, Annam, Dahomey, Madagascar, and Morocco. In every case, it is true, French rule has brought material benefits to the natives, but as an English statesman—I think it was Campbell-Bannerman—pithily remarked, “Most peoples prefer to be self-governed rather than well governed.”) The ink on the Treaty of Fez was scarcely dry when the besieging tribesmen burst into the city and precipitated a massacre which cost three hundred lives, the murdered including more than three score Europeans. The fighting was fiercest in the narrow streets of the old city, where the French military mission and a company of Senegalese _tirailleurs_ were beleaguered for some days by the tribesmen. After a desperate resistance—which is commemorated by a marble plaque set in the wall of the building—and after half of the _tirailleurs_ were dead, the survivors were relieved by a force under Colonel Gouraud, now a general of division and military governor of Paris, who commanded the advance-guard of General Lyautey’s column. While Fez was being subdued another French force under General Alix crossed the Mulwiya and prepared to attack Taza, the stronghold commanding the pass which forms the gateway to eastern Morocco. By this time the authority of Mulai Hafid had reached the vanishing-point, for his acceptance of the French protectorate had convinced his subjects that he had sold his country to the foreigners. The only course open to him was abdication, and he took it, being consoled for the loss of his throne with a lump sum of four hundred thousand francs and an annual pension of nearly as much more. In August, 1912, he stepped from the pages of Moorish history to disappear into the limbo to which so many other native rulers who had flouted the power of France had succeeded him, being succeeded by his brother, Mulai Yusef, the present sultan, an amiable and indolent gentleman of middle age who takes care to conduct himself as a well trained puppet should. From his mouth issue the suave words put into it by the resident-general of France, and he makes the proper gestures of friendship when the latter pulls the strings; but what he is thinking deep down in his Moorish heart is quite another question. [Illustration: THE RIFF A grim land, a savage land, with no means of communication save narrow mountain trails, its gorse-covered slopes and rocky defiles invite ambushes and sudden onfalls; small wonder that in such a country the embattled mountaineers of Abd-el-Krim were able to defy the military might of France and Spain so long]