In Morocco

A breakfast sausage, short and plump and slightly curled, not to mention a bit blistered at the side from too much frying--that is how the Riff must look to the man in the moon when he swings over Morocco. And if he had listened carefully last week he might have heard the sizzling sound of frying.

For last week saw plenty of fighting in Morocco. Along the northern concave side of the sausage which is Mediterranean Coast, the Spanish made a landing and bit out a little piece of enemy territory near Ajdir. The troops were embarked at Melilla to the east and cruised along the Riff coast for two days with convoying battleships, both French and Spanish, shelling enemy works. After two feints, one morning the battleship Paris steamed into Alhucemas Bay and began to shell the Riff positions at the main beach. For four hours the bombardment with 12 1/2-in. guns continued. The Riffs replied with their handful of 6-in. batteries, which of course did no serious damage to the heavily armored Paris. Meanwhile the Spanish troops, 16,000 strong, in steel "beetle boats," the same type as those used by the British at Gallipoli, effected a landing on the narrow beach below the high cliffs of the promontory at one side of the bay. The cliffs were scaled and taken with little loss, apparently, to either side, since there was very little fighting. No immediate offensive was begun from the new position. Ajdir, the capital of Abd-el-Krim, is probably the objective of the attack.

At the western tip of the sausage, the Riffs erupted in attacks against the Spanish around Tetuan. The Riffs made sporadic jabs that endangered the Spaniards' communications, and kept the defenders on pins and needles.

On the south, the long convex side of the sausage, the French went into action, and there the fat was hottest and the frying was fiercest. After a heavy artillery barrage, the advance was begun. The trouble from the French standpoint was that they were advancing squarely towards the mountain ridge that forms the backbone of the Riff sausage and had to fight separately for every little foothill. Nonetheless, the losses apparently were not heavy, and an advance was made several miles deep on a 40-mile front. Thirteen of the blockhouses (the French advance posts before the campaign began and the Riffs took them) were recaptured. For three days the French advanced, and then they rested and consolidated their positions. The French are not "out of the woods" yet--they are just getting into the mountains. They have small prospect of gaining a decision before winter .

Sheshuan (which one is at liberty to spell in almost any possible way. --Chechaouen, Chechouan, Shishawen, Sheshaun, Sheshuan, Chechaoen), which is the Riffian headquarters at the western end of their sausage, was bombed 17 times by the Sherifian Escadrille (volunteer American aviators) with the destruction of many buildings and the estimated killing of 100 Riffians.

An incident of the fighting reported from the French front: Major Chartrane, commanding a bat talion of colored troops, ordered an advance. Looking down his line, he saw an officer on horse back. Infuriated by such reckless bravado, he rushed down the line shouting to the officer to dismount. When he came close he discovered that the mounted man was Lieut. De Latour, who had often led his company into battle. A short time before he had been shot dead. Two black sergeants had placed his body on a horse and were holding it upright so that he might once more lead his men.

At Issoul, a blockhouse which was one of the French outposts at the edge of the fighting, the Riffs entrenched so close to the fort that the French artillery dared not fire for fear of hitting their own men. Nonetheless, the Riffs mounted and captured 75 in the open not far away, and one lone white-robed man proceeded to load and fire it pointblank at the blockhouse. He fired eight times and made eight hits. French guns replied and drove him to hitch several mules to his gun and haul it behind a hill.

The Paris, bombarding the coast of Sidi Driss, sent a salvo nine miles inland to Annoual. French aviators reported that one shell exploded in an Arab coffeehouse, sending Arabs and coffee high in air.