Moroccan War

The hills about the Wergha Valley awoke. Abd-el-Krim, leader of the Riffian tribesmen, began his long-awaited offensive on Fez, the northern capital. Guns roared, shells screamed and cracked in vivid detonations, spluttering the ground with jagged, death-dealing steel. Bombs dropped from airplanes whinnied as they tore down to earth where they burst with staggering force. Grenades rasped their ugly barks and poked the earth with their deadly stings. Rifles snapped and bullets spat death. Men lived and men died. The Moroccan War (TIME, May 11 et seq.) entered its most serious phase.

Slowly the French were compelled to retire on Fez, fighting every inch of the way against impossible odds. At one point of the offensive, retreat was cut in the rear, and their position, desperate to say the least, was eased only by a glorious counteroffensive in which the hottest fighting of the war occurred. Two days' fighting drove the Riffians back into the hills and once again relieved Fez from imminent danger.

At Paris, the French Government surprised everybody by sending Marshal Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Petain to Morocco "to assure in the best possible condition utilization of the reinforcements sent to Morocco and confer with Marshal Lyautey on all eventualities and on measures to be taken in order to insure success."

The Marshal, 69 years of age, a lean and comparatively young looking man, immediately left for Morocco, crossing the water by airplane.*

Marshal Petain is the third senior Marshal of France and as such outranks Marshal Lyautey, the French Resident General in Morocco, who will continue to be the supreme French civil authority in the Protectorate. "My duty," said Marshal Petain, "is to coordinate the reinforcements which are being sent to Morocco continuously. Those going from France will land at the Casablanca and those from Algeria will proceed directly to Taza. The question is to "use them actively in the area."

The Government announced that 80,000 reinforcements were on their way to the front and darkly hinted that another 300,000 men might be mobilized.

General Naulin, recently appointed director of military operations, also arrived in Morocco. He will take orders from Marshal Petain.

*Marshal Petain, commissioned from St. Cyr (French West Point) in 1878, specialized in staff work at the Ecole de Guerre. At the beginning of the War he was only a colonel, but his great military genius, first recognized by General Castelanu, rapidly won him merited recognition, promotion and honors. His greatest claim to fame rests upon the heroic defense of Verdun and his skillful handling of mutinous French troops in 1917. Possibly had there been no Petain, France would, be paying Germany an indemnity.