As the years passed considerable numbers of Spaniards, not of the best sort, settled themselves along this littoral, where they have drifted into a semi-Oriental habit of mind and body, living more like natives than like Europeans. Yet they claim Spanish protection, either as subjects or _protégés_, and it is the existence of this utterly worthless element on Moroccan soil, plus certain mining concessions which Spaniards have obtained from local chiefs, which have provided the government at Madrid with a pretext for intervening in Morocco. But, despite her alleged “interests,” despite the fact that she has held Melilla for upward of four centuries, Spain has never succeeded in pushing her effective rule more than a few miles in from the coast, for, looming like a purple storm-cloud above the narrow strip of littoral, rise the mighty mountains of the Riff. During the last century Spain made repeated attempts to conquer this savage region, and to impose her rule on its warlike and independence-loving inhabitants, but always without success. In 1922, however, the Spaniards made a real effort to occupy effectively the zone which had been allotted to them, an army of fifty thousand men being sent to Morocco for the purpose. To resist the invaders there now arose in the Riff a very remarkable man, a tribal chieftain by the name of Abd-el-Krim. Incensed by the cruelty, corruption, injustice, and glaring inefficiency which had characterized Spanish rule along the coast, he raised the standard of revolt and called upon the people of the Riff to drive the Spaniards out of the country altogether. Though Spain replied by pouring troops across the Straits by the tens of thousands, her military record in Morocco for the next three years was one of almost uninterrupted defeat, retreat, disaster, and shame. Not only did a mere handful of Riffi succeed in resisting all the forces that the government at Madrid could bring against them, but they steadily drove the invaders toward the sea, until, by the summer of 1925, the Spaniards occupied only a few of the coast towns and fortresses, clinging to these only with the aid of their fleet. That Abd-el-Krim was more than justified in his revolt no fair-minded person who is conversant with the facts can truthfully deny, for the Spaniards had been guilty in Morocco of exactly the same cruelties and excesses which had caused them to be driven out of South America at the beginning of the nineteenth century and out of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines at its close. Had Abd-el-Krim been content to confine his operations to the Spanish zone, Spain might be without a foot of Moroccan territory, and he might be sultan of the Riff to-day.