says for my sake be will forgive you," not out of any personal kindness, let it be understood, but as a sign of the respect due from one descendant of Muley idris to another. Two or three days later we entered the caff e which my shereef frequented, the usual bare, carpeted room, with the tiny stove in one corner. Between this and the door giving on to the street stood a small table filling the whole wall (for the room lay parallel to the street), and on this table was the place of honor. it could hold three men at a pinch, and it held them now. One was a friend of ours, the captain of a lighter in the harbor, a shereef, and more than that, a hadji, one who had made the journey to Mecca. But my friend Hadj Abdssalam had made another journey,—to London, no less, and had stayed there three months while his ship was discharging cargo and reloading; he had acquired a few phrases of English and much London experience, and it delighted him to air both. A pleasanter. honester countenance than that of this Moorish sailor i have never seen. Ruddy rather than swarthy, he might have passed readily for a Blscayan, and cheerful good-humor beamed from every line of his bearded face. With him, as with so many Moors, the beard, never shaved, grew fine and silky, its short growth following and not concealing the lines from ear to chin. His clear blue eyes nnd tanned face spoke of the prime of condition: he had indeed the name of one of Laraiche's best seamen; but there was nothing hard or bony about his healthy vigor.
Very different was the man who sat on his right in the place of honor next the stove. Hadj Abdssalam was curled up. snug as a dormouse; his neighbor sat erect and stiff, even in the loose folds of his white burnous. His complexion dark and bilious, his beard black and stiff, his eyes unsmiling, his
eyebrows raised and peaked, his cheekbones accentuated, all spoke the religious enthusiast; and this was indeed the holy man. My shereef greeted him, but when the greeting was received in silence, continued his conversation with yet another shereef, a common sailor, but receiving respect and precedence like the others. i leaned with my elbow on the table, chatting with much friendship but much difficulty to Hadj Abdssalam, when suddenly the saint, without moving, began to speak in a loud, harsh, resonant voice; then, still continuing to declaim, he stretched out a bony hand and pointed it at me like a pistol.
People laughed through the room, Hadj Abdssalam chuckled quietly, and i asked my shereef what the saint was saying. "He says you belong to the fellowship of devils," was the version i got; but it must have been a scanty rendering, for the enthusiast spoke on, louder and louder, with brief pauses. His spittle ran on to his beard, his outstretched hand quivered as if in epilepsy; then suddenly he brought out from beside him a big ashen staff, and propping his two hands upon it repeated twice a word which i knew the meaning of, "bardka, bardka (enough, it is enough)." Evidently he did not mean that his discourse sufficed, for he went off again at score, and the shereef told me in undertones that he was heaping reproaches on the Sultan for leaning so much on Europeans. i asked my interpreter to say that the Sultan was young and would learn better, but i was told that it "was not good to talk politics." To talk politics in public you must be privileged, and the privileges of a holy man in this matter are unlimited. For a good quarter of an hour he declaimed fiercely, always with his finger like a pistol-barrel at my head, against the new ways that had come into Morocco, against the Sultnn, and against the Shereef of Wazzan, who lu his judgment had begun all the mischief. For this shereef, the richest and most influential in Morocco, married an Englishwoman, and then procured protection as a French subject.
it was as curious a display of fanatic oratory as one could see, and my interest in it was heightened by the ashen staff so near my head. But the assemblage, though they listened, changed nothing of their friendly aspect, and to my surprise, punctuated the discourse with laughter. Often when i asked for a translation my shereef would answer: "it is difficult to understand; he speaks what comes to his mouth." He declaimed, in fact, the riddling language of prophecy.
i found afterwards that without an audience he was less declamatory and less fierce. We came in one morning when he had the café to himself, and after some reluctance he was drawn into conversation, and interested himself in my movements so much that when my shereef took the cup of tea which he had ordered, the holy man stopped him. "Drink coffee," he said, "so the bar will become good for you." We substituted coffee at his bidding: i may add that the tea was not wasted, for the holy man drank it, in addition to the cup which we had already provided. On no occasion did he show any unwillingness to smoke the unbeliever's cigarettes. But on this day he became positively friendly, invited me to become a dweller in Laraiche, and upon explanation that my most urgent desire was to get out of it, he undertook to go down and "shout" to the bar for me.
The bar is the governing future of the life of laraiche. With a good bar steamers lie off, and the big lighters, with their fifteen oars a-slde, ply busily; the wharf is a scene of bustle, with sweating porters carrying bales and loading them on to mules, while placid
officials sit statuesque in their draperies, ticking off items in an incongruously European note-book. With a bad bar the sea is vacant for days (for the coast is harborless) except where there is some hope that the surf may abate; then perhaps steamers come down and wait forlornly, anxious to discharge their wares; but the captain of the port forbids any to attempt going out. and the Moorish boatmen acquiesce in great contentment. i was kept a prisoner long enough to realize how the conditions fell in with Moorish fatalism. No one could judge securely of the bar; only Allah knew; for indeed its motions depended on the weather in the North Atlantic and showed often only the recoil after unfelt storms. But since Allah knew, no one cared to grumble except the two or three Europeans whose movements were thus obscurely impeded. And we sat and cursed at the roaring surf and resented the existence of a Government which would not dredge a channel to keep the port open.
The Moor, however, is free from all this itch of impatience. He desires no changes. Just as he has devised a costume which suits him and remains constant to it through the centuries, exempt from fashion, so he has the kind of country that he desires, and leaves it as it is. if he is not content with the administration of justice, he steers clear of it so far as he can, and makes a proverb: "Beware of fire, water, and the Government." if he finds travel difficult, he does not seek to build roads, he makes a proverb: "if wealth is to come, why go to seek it?"—since in any case Allah decides whether you shall be rich or poor. The one thing that will rouse him to activity is the fear of radical change,—that is. the fear of the European. When i was at Laraiche, two bronze lions stood on the wharf, consigned from England to the Sultan, and they were a source of constant and bitter comment; for the law of the Prophet forbids graven images. Moors did not declaim against them, for "the mouth which is shut, no flies enter"; but they listened to the licensed speech of the holy man. if the Pretender wishes to rouse an audience he does not tell them of the exactions of the pashas; he shows them a picture of the Sultan riding a bicycle. Corrupt governors are part of the recognized evils, but a Sultan who rides a bicycle and plays cricket is a threat to the established order, a man who may give to Europe the keys of the holy fort . And when word went round to the tribes that all men were to bring their rifles and the Sultan would pay for them, suspicion grew into certainty. The Sultan who issued such an order was preparing to give his country over tied and bound to the European. "We will give up our wives rather," answered the mountaineers of Anjera.
They may probably before long have to fight unavailingly to maintain the
Macmlllan's Magazine.
freedom which they cherish,—the right to shape their lives in their own way. Yet if the order which they represent is barbarism, i do not know that civilization will replace it for the better. in my ten days' stay at Laralche i saw no man drunk, heard no brawling, met with no discourtesy,—for i cannot blame a fanatic preacher for seeing in me a symbol of what he detested, and he answered courtesy with courtesy. And on the morning of my departure, when i stood at dawn on the deck of the little steamer in the river and heard the muezzin's cry come vibrating through the clear air,—the chant which at that moment ran through all the Eastern world—i could not but feel a sympathy for that religion which is at least believed in as scarcely any other by all its votaries. A friend of mine explained to his Moorish servant that the Japanese had no God. The boy laughed contemptuously: "Why," he said, "does their cor n not grow?" it was as if you had asked him to believe that there was no sun in their sky. Stephen Chwynn.
THE RiGHTS OF SUBJECT RACES.
For the last hundred years the clashing demands of empire and nationality have been the leading problem of Europe—the leading problem outside the other great problems of the food, shelter, and development of the workpeople, it was at the root of the Napoleonic wars, and since the collapse of Napoleon's empire it has dominated European diplomacy. it is still the chief danger to European peace. Sometimes the ideal of empire has appeared to advance, sometimes the cause of nationality. The British, French, and Russian empires have largely increased their territory and their command over subject races. Germany has croated
a new empire, holding sway over other races in Europe and Africa, and to a small extent in Asia. in the other hemisphere we have seen the United States taking a first step in imperialism. Among ourselves the ideal of empire has been greatly extended, and for some years it governed our politics, though ostensibly upheld for the advantage of our commerce and the good of the subject races themselves, while the old conceptions of the glories of conquest and lust for territory seemed to be slowly dying out .
Contrasted with these growing demands of empire, the trinmphs of nationality have been equally remarkable. italy has shaken herself free from au alien empire, and from alien or Papal kings. The Turkish empire has been compelled to shed at least six different nationalities, live of which now enjoy liberty almost complete. Austria has conceded something very near to independence for the Magyars, and will probably do the same for the Czechs. Norway, though never a subject race, has established her right of nationality as a separate kingdom. Finland has re-asserted her liberties after Plehves attempt to absorb her into an indistinguishable Russian empire. The South American States have achieved their freedom from the empires of Spain uud Portugal. Finally, in our own empire, even Unionists are beginning to realize that it is impossible to govern ireland without considering her nationality, and as to our outlying provinces, with the large exceptions of india, Egypt, and some native African districts, they have developed into national States that are in reality free and independent. i am not pleading the advantage of belonging to small and free nationalities rather than to vast empires in which the attempt is made by some faroff central Government to reduce all its subjects to a dead level of language, thought, and custom. i only wish to show that, if empires have been extended, the ideal of nationality has grown with at least equal strength. History, in looking back upon the last century, already finds its favorite and most heroic figures in the men who have vindicated the rights of free nationality, rather than in those who have extended empires. The names of Byron, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, and Parnell are the names beloved, and there have been many more. But my object in recalling them is to surest that the kind of men whom history thus honors cannot be classed as reprobate outcasts beyond the protection of ordinary laws, or outside the usages
of average civilization. Yet, unless they are successful, that is how the supporters of a national cause are habitually classed and treated by the Governments of nearly all empires, and by their agents.
Unhappily, i can speak from a varied experience, both in times of nominal peace and in risings against oppression. i have seen how the Armenians under Turkish rule in Asia are being steadily exterminated or driven over the frontiers. i have seen something of the depopulation of the Congo, and the slavery in Portuguese Central Africa. i have seen the devastation and pillage and slaughter of Macedonia after the rising of 1903, and the similar devastation of the Georgian provinces at the foot of the Caucasus last year. 1 have seen the Nationalists among the Russian Poles and the Letts of the Baltic Provinces treated as no civilized Power would now venture to treat the troops or populations of any State but their own even in the most savage war. All this has happened within the last three and a-half years, and what one man can see represents a hardly perceptible fraction of what really occurs. i need not mention the Jews, whose sufferings are known to all the world. Nor do i try to shield our own empire by throwing blame on others. if i did, the dark rumors of Natal's methods in pacifying the Zulus would be brought up against me.
Such contradiction between the judgment of history and the common usage of most Governments is very remarkable. By Geneva Conventions and The Hague Conventions, the chief nations among mankind have agreed to regulate the methods of warfare in accordance with the "the usages established between civilized nations, the laws of humanity, and the requirements of the public conscience." (See The Hague Convention of 1899, for War on Land.) But subject races have no share in the advantage of these regulations.
The least that the civilized Powers can do is to agree to a convention with regard to subject races similar to The Hague Convention, from which i have quoted. Such a convention would not ensure good government or security from ordinary oppression, but it would gradually ensure a limit to the atrocities of punitive expeditions and the suppressions of risings. There would be no direct means of enforcing its opserva'nee; there are no direct means of enforcing the terms of The Hague Convention as it stands. it all rests upon international public opinion—upon "the laws of humanity, and the requirements of the public conscience." But no one doubts that the cause of humanity has gained enormously by the mere statement and definition of the Convention's principles, and by the knowledge of each Power that a flagrant breach of its provisions will lead to exclusion from the comity of the civilized world. Ultimately this exclusion may even involve a refusal of loans, or a diplomatic boycott such as we imposed upon Servia after the murder of her late King.
inevitably the cry of interference with internal affairs will be raised. it is the same cry as was raised when the right of slave-owners to "wallop their own niggers" was first questioned. Within fifty years that cry has completely died away, and the claim of
central Governments to torture, violate, slaughter in cold blood, and generally exterminate the members of a subject race will gradually be recognized as equally inhuman and absurd, even in times of rebellion. But, as a matter of history, the oppression of subject races has led to interference with internal affairs time after time. We, with other Powers, interfered on behalf of Greece eighty years ago, and on behalf of Crete ten years ago. France interfered on behalf of italy in 1859, and Russia on behalf of Bulgaria in 1877, and five Powers are interfering, however feebly, on behalf of Macedonia now. The claim of Governments and empires to do what they like with their own, to practise any extreme of atrocity upon their subjects, and to disregard all the usages of civilized warfare in dealing with the rebellions and risings of subject races, has been the occasion of terrible wars within the last century; and for that reason alone, if for no other, the subject demands the attention of The Hague Conference. Or if it is too late now to extend the programme of the official delegates at the meeting in June, a subordinate and unofficial conference should be held simultaneously among representatives of the many British, European, and American societies, which have no other object to serve than the extension of freedom and the protection of the oppressed.
Heary W. Xerinson.
PRESiDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE AMERiCAN PEOPLE.
The most hopeful symptom at present in the social politics of the United States is the attitude of the people towards President Roosevelt. That di
dently wished to intimate in his speech at the Jamestown tercentenary, is in a confused, and even dangerous, condition. Owing partly to that admixture
vision of politics, as Mr. Roosevelt evi- of blood which, as the President pointed