“Your Majesty will have the goodness to sign here?” said the soldier, half-questioningly, half-commandingly, as he indicated the place with his finger. The man at the table gravely inclined his head, reached for the pen, hesitated for a moment, then slowly began to trace, from right to left, the strange Arabic signature. “Inshallah! It is done!” he said, and throwing down the pen he sunk his face into his hands. “Vive la France!” said the general solemnly, and “Vive la France!” echoed the officers around him. Well might the one lament and the others rejoice, for, with the final flourish of the Sultan's pen, Morocco had ceased to exist as an independent nation and France had added an empire to her dominions. “The world is a peacock,” says a Moorish proverb, “and Morocco is the tail of it.” Now, however, it has become the tail of the Gallic cock, for when, on March the thirtieth, 1912, Sultan Mulai-abd-el-Hafid signed the treaty establishing a French protectorate over his country, Morocco entered upon a new phase of its existence. With that act there ended, let us hope for all time, a situation which on more than one occasion has threatened the peace of the world. Not since the English landed in Egypt a third of a century ago has an event occurred which so vitally concerns the future welfare of Africa; not since the Treaty of Tilsit has France won so decisive a diplomatic victory or added so materially to her territorial possessions. By the signing of that treaty France laid the final stone in the mighty colonial structure which she has built up in Africa, and opened to Christianity, civilisation, and commerce the door of a region which has hitherto been a synonym for mystery, cruelty, intolerance, and fanaticism.