"Sons of the Same Country"

Of all the delegates from French Africa to attend a conference in Paris last January, none were more lavishly treated than the four gentlemen from Mauritania--the ore-rich land that stretches, twice the size of France, from south of Morocco to black Senegal. Resplendent in blue turbans, the four Moors were feted and flattered for four days straight. They seemed to have no quarrel with Mauritania's status as a semi-autonomous political entity inside French West Africa. And since they included two council ministers, a tribal sheik and the powerful Mohammed Ould Fall Oumer, Emir of Trarza and absolute ruler of 50,000 warriors, France had every reason to believe that it had won strong support for its plans to set up a central executive over the loosely linked, Frenchsponsored West African Federation. When the Mauritanians left for the Riviera, their hosts saw them off with high hope and amity.

The four delegates flew to Nice--but the next thing France knew, they had flown via Switzerland to Egypt to confer with France's archenemy. President Nasser. Last week, having dropped out of sight for 2% months, they arrived in Morocco to swear allegiance to Mohammed V.

The "Wild Men." In a solemn ceremony "in the royal palace at Rabat, the proud Emir of Trarza symbolically placed his title "at the Sultan's feet." "Our ancestors," said the Mauritanians, "recognized the authority of the Great Sultan Moulay Ismail during the reign of the French King Louis XIV." Replied King Mohammed: "We are the sons of the same country, our beloved Morocco."

The Mauritanians' action was inspired not so much by hatred for France ("No one," the Emir assured the press, "can say that Mauritania has been exploited by France. On the contrary, it is for her a burden") as the Moors' fear of being part of a tighter West African Federation that might be dominated by Negroes. Mauritania's pro-French Premier Si Moktar Ould Daddah promptly branded them "traitors," begged France not to judge his country by the doings of a few "wild men." Nevertheless, as both Rabat and Paris realized, the four defecting delegates had given Mohammed's Greater Morocco campaign its biggest propaganda boost yet. Morocco, which gained its independence two years ago without ever having its southern borders officially defined, claims a sizable part of the western Sahara, the remaining North African possessions of Spain, and all of the land and unexploited resources of Mauritania (pop. 650,000).

Another Step. Nor was this King Mohammed's only success last week. After secret negotiations in Portugal, Spain and Morocco announced that Spain would turn over to Mohammed the Southern Spanish Protectorate, the tiny wedge of territory between Morocco and the Spanish Sahara. The sparsely populated territory is all but worthless, and Spain had decided to give it up all of two years ago, but to Moroccans it was another triumph.

Mohammed's expansion is accompanied by an increasing disenchantment with the French. The palace announced last week that at long last the King had become "reconciled" to Abd el Krim, the fanatically anti-French Moroccan rebel of the 1921-26 Rif wars, who until now has preferred to live in exile in Egypt rather than to bow to a King he insisted was nothing more than a French puppet. Abd el Krim, now a withered 76, will henceforth receive a pension from the Moroccan government for his past "inestimable services."

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