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to send us a new Chamber that would be obedient to their will.

It is not our institutions that are bad; it is our manners, our hereditary habits. Our difficulties are primarily due to the fact that we honestly want to have a republic although we individually are not yet republicans. The first quality of a republican is respect for the law an instinctive, unvarying, and, so to speak, superstitious respect for the law. That is what constitutes the unquestionable political superiority of the English. A Frenchman laughs at the law. He thinks it smart to evade it, and prides himself on deceiving the agents entrusted to enforce it. In France police regulations quickly become dead letters. Laws are enforced intermittently under the pressure of influences that all the world knows and at which no one takes offense. The iron law of Great Britain that compels a prince of the blood or the admiral commanding the Grand Fleet to pay a fine because he has violated one of its provisions; that inflexible law which is enforced against every citizen, rich or poor, powerful or helpless, is something unknown in France.

Although he refuses to recognize the authority of a sovereign, every Frenchman is an absolutist in himself. He is willing to abide by the will of the majority only when that will chances to be his own.

The English constantly use in everyday life the expression 'to play the game.' It originally referred to the obligation of honor that every British sportsman feels to obey the rules of any game or competition in which he may be engaged. This standard of conduct has been extended to every sphere of life. I think many an Englishman's first impression of the French is that they do not 'play the game.' A Party defeated at the elections in Great Britain never questions for that reason

the authority of Parliament or tries to embarrass its work. Instead it goes into legal opposition and plans, if possible, to win the next campaign. In France a defeated Party cries to the heavens the next morning that the results at the ballot box 'scandalize the public conscience.'

How does it happen, then, that we Frenchmen, who are equal to any other nation in art, science, or war, are so inferior in the art of government? It is because for generations we were not free. Until 1789 we were the most meticulously governed people on earth. No other country was subjected to a more minute and searching tyranny. Royalty trained Frenchmen to believe that the State was a sort of all-providing divine Providence. We no longer have a king, but we still have a State, which we regard much as our ancestors did. . . . To-day the French people are almost to a man republicans. They have been able, under their republican government, to repel the German invader and to make themselves a nation of soldiers. But they have still to make themselves a nation of citizens.

That is our problem. Can a people reform itself of its own motion? Perhaps that is impossible. When Peter the Great wished to turn his subjects away from their Asiatic habits, he forbade them to wear flowing Oriental garb and commanded them to cut off their long beards. He could do this by arbitrary decree; but the muzhiki would never have done it of their own free will. To-day Kemal Pasha, realizing, as the Japanese did sixty years. ago, that Westerners will look down upon any Easterners, no matter how progressive, as barbarians as long as they wear a distinctive costume, has commanded the Turks to give up the fez; and the will of a single man has put into effect almost overnight a reform

that the Turks would never have followed disaster the conviction of the adopted voluntarily.

The gravest charge that can be brought against democracy is that it cannot cure even its more fatal vices as long as they gratify the popular taste and line somebody's pockets. Alcoholism brutalized Russia. When war was declared, Tsar Nicholas by a single ukase shut up the liquor shops. They reappeared under Kerenskii's democratic government. Then came another dictator, Lenin, who again ordered them closed. I saw his order carried out in Petrograd. An Imperial dictatorship in 1917 and a Communist dictatorship in 1917 were equally able to enforce a measure most beneficial to the health and morals of the people that a democracy would certainly have rejected; because the drunkard is never willing to give up his poison.

We admit, then, that the masses are powerless to carry out great moral betterments. On the other hand, we are too old a nation, we are too wise in the lessons of history, to commit ourselves, hands tied, to a presumptuous and self-appointed master.

I can testify from personal knowledge that from 1914 to 1917 everybody in Russia was a democrat at heartnot only the people, but the intellectuals, the army officers, the generals, and even the high nobility. As disaster

nation became unanimous that Russia could be saved only by a parliament and a responsible ministry — that autocracy had failed.

To-day, however, we often hear intelligent people in France, many of them well educated and blessed with hereditary wealth, declare that the sole solution of our difficulties is to disperse Parliament, imprison the Cabinet, and put everything in the hands of a dictator, who they assume will by some miracle prove to be the wisest and most far-seeing man among the forty millions of Frenchmen. This faith in miracles is a besetting fallacy of the human mind. A dictator might prevent evils coming to public knowledge, but he could not suppress the evils themselves. To be sure, this enforced ignorance might do some good; for political discontent is like love: many people would never fall in love if they did not read novels, and many other people would never become political malcontents if they did not read Party newspapers.

In final analysis, the most durable reform is that which occurs in the heart of man. That is why I say that our real problem is to teach Frenchmen how to be citizens. That is the Republic's most urgent task. My only fear is that we may not have time to do so.

VOL. 329-NO. 4265

ANNEXING A PROPHET'S CAPITAL1

BY GINO BERRI AND MARIO BASSI

WITH the first gray of dawn a brisk wind from the sea chases the last wisps of fog from above our camp at Porto Bardia. Our native troops - ascarirush hither and thither in excited preparations for departure. A rumbling roar from the huge motor park tells us that engines are being warmed up preparatory to moving forward. At exactly six o'clock the first company of ascari takes the trail, the men picking their way easily up the side of the wadi, and in a few moments the whole hillside is covered with moving dots the white-and-red uniforms of the Ninth Battalion and the white-andblue of the Tenth.

As soon as the ascari reach the summit of the cliff, whence a flat plateau stretches southward toward Amseat, the end of the first day's march, the column is formed. One battalion is de ployed over a wide front as an advance guard with two companies on either flank, followed at a considerable interval by a long procession of motor-cars. Armored cars are thrown out on the left which is the direction from which an attack is to be expected, since it affords the enemy an easy retreat across the border into Egypt. A tank section and a battery of light guns mounted on motors accompany the advance guard. Another battery is stationed in the centre of the column.

Our advance, however, is by no means in close formation. We do not

1 From Corriere della Sera (Milan Liberal daily), February 9, 10, 12, and La Stampa (Turin Independent daily), February 17

move forward like an army in picture books. The automobiles, for example, keep about seven kilometres behind the infantry, a distance they can cover in ten minutes - or the normal period of a halt. When the infantry resume their march, the auto column waits an hour and a half until the ascari are again seven kilometres in advance and have halted a second time. So our column moves forward like an army worm, now extended to more than seven kilometres, when stretched out to its full length, and greatly shortened when the motor-cars are just overtaking the halted infantry.

It is late in the afternoon when we reach Amseat. The difficult road on our first day's march of thirty-six kilometres was the first few hundred yards after leaving Porto Bardia. Here the highway ascends a steep, winding grade to reach the plateau a thousand feet above the sea. From that point the land lies as level as a table. Motor-cars could cross it without obstruction in almost any direction. We have traveled through steppe country, following the truck road that skirts the boundary between Italy and Egypt.

When we reach Amseat our troops have already settled themselves for the night in a great square filled with trucks, tanks, provisions, water, and fighting men. All our automotive apparatus, including the artillery, is parked along one side of the square headed in the direction of the march. Tanks are stationed at each corner, and between them are placed machine

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guns behind heaps of stones and pebbles.

In their tents native soldiers are carefully arranging things for the night, while outside their comrades crouch in front of the fires patiently waiting for the water to boil for tea. Chauffeurs and machinists are busy with their cars and engines as long as there is light enough to see. Gasoline tanks are replenished, and everything is ready to proceed at dawn.

Little by little the noise of the camp dies down, the fires burn lower, the last terse words of command echo through the deepening darkness, and the silence of the desert settles over the sleeping troops.

I awaken, after a night of utter unconsciousness of the world, to a clear, chill, windless dawn. Our tents disappear as if by magic, the ascari fall in, and promptly at 6 A.M. march on to the melancholy music of their native flutes. As they push forward with quick, elastic steps, they extend their order until they cover a wide front, which they maintain throughout the day, so that nothing suspicious in the terrain ahead may escape attention. The desert bush, which, although withered and scanty, has hitherto given a little variety to the landscape, grows sparser. At length only a few isolated scrubby plants are visible, and they eventually disappear completely. This country extends to the southward for hundreds of kilometres, forming the serir, a gravelly plain strewn with tiny black and dark-red pebbles, wind-worn until they glitter like jewels in the sun. It stretches east and west and south as far as the horizon, except where its monotony is broken by distant, almost imperceptible, undulations or by occasional heaps of pebbles designed to guide the wayfarer.

The only real interruptions to this lifeless desolation are occasional tombs.

Once built, they seem to remain unchanged forever. On our left at a place called Ghirba, where there is no sign of human habitation or anything else to distinguish the flat, pebbly plain from the remainder of the desert, stands the tomb of an unknown Mussulman. About eight kilometres farther on is a second tomb, that of Sidi Azaza, placed between two little mounds, and a little farther to the west still another, without a name. These mark the final resting-places of travelers who have ended here their last journey, no one knows precisely when or how.

At length we reach the tomb of the Marabout Sidi Omar. Beside it is a cemetery, and just beyond are two cisterns. It is a relief to find some evidence of human life and occupation, even if it be only of the dead. The Marabout's tomb is on a little mound twelve or fifteen feet high, and is surrounded by a low wall crowned with white and yellow banners - humble ex voto offerings to the saint placed there by desert travelers. Scattered about in the vicinity are pieces of cloth, remnants of saddle bags, Tuareg saddle-bows, and the pages of a commentary on the Koran.

After leaving the tomb of Sidi Omar we continue four kilometres farther to the south, where, after crossing a wellknown caravan-trail, 'The Road of the Slave,' we halt to the eastward of a little mound called "The Shadow of Sidi Omar,' because at sunset its shadow points directly toward the latter's tomb. Here we encamp again in a great square without confusion and almost without commands. Each motorcar and tank and machine-gun takes its assigned position automatically.

Our aviators, who have descended to two hundred metres and even one hundred metres when reconnoitring Jarabub, report the city apparently deserted. But this information is ac

cepted with some distrust. That night two hours after sunset a volley of ten shots is fired from one of our advance posts stationed on a neighboring elevation. The reports break the deep silence of the desert with startling effect. The ascari saw, or imagined they saw, something moving in the darkness ahead of them.

Yesterday morning we left the Shadow of Sidi Omar at dawn with an advance guard of armored automobiles and reached Esc Scegga, sixty-one kilometres to the southward, three hours later; and last night the main column camped twenty-three kilometres to our rear. Esc Scegga is a fortified advance post where some of the supplies for our expedition have already been deposited in advance. Our march continues across the serir, whose arid desolation is emphasized by the merciless glare of the unclouded sun. I never realized before what a weariness for the eye it is to gaze for interminable distances in all directions without resting on a single outstanding object to break the line of vision. It gives one a disagreeable sensation of being suspended in boundless space. Even the slightest irregularity in the landscape acquires marvelous importance. A tiny elevation not over twelve feet high at the utmost has been our outstanding landmark all day long. It is called Bir Sceferzen, and a cistern has been constructed at its base to collect the scanty rain-water. Near by is another cemetery.

A dozen kilometres farther on is a second tomb situated between a couple of little mounds, and a short distance away stands a third, two hundred yards beyond the Egyptian boundary. A darker spot in the distance suggests a marsh, but it proves to be merely a little swale containing some dried rushes. Seldom is there enough rain

fall here to cause even a temporary accumulation of moisture in the desert hollows. From Sceferzen we advance along an excellent highway built by the English in the nineties during their campaign against the Senussi Mahdi.

Last night at sunset when our tanks, automobiles, and motor-mounted guns rumbled into their nightly formation, Sidi Hilal, one of our two loyal Senussi chiefs, said to me with a smile: "The Arabs in Jarabub, with their ears to the ground, already know that the Italians are only eighteen kilometres away.' A little later news spread through the camp that the Head of the Zavia of Jarabub, Hussein Ben Ali-esSusi, a cousin of Sherif el Gariani, who also accompanied us, had appeared at our camp with the two messengers whom we had sent in advance to invite his submission. Ben Ali's meeting with his cousin Gariani was an affecting one. He said that the latter's letters had produced a deep impression upon him and his followers and had convinced them that it was wise to receive the Italians as their friends.

Colonel Ronchetti, our commander, who had given the order to test our machine-guns just at the time Hussein Ben Ali entered the camp, ordered the firing to cease and received the Head of the Zavia at the entrance of his tent. The Senussi chieftain made a deep bow, then shook the hand of the commander, and said in a voice vibrant with emotion that Jarabub awaited with pleasure the arrival of his expedition. The Colonel answered briefly that the Italian Government would keep its word to respect the Holy Places and the persons and property of the inhabitants; and that it would appoint Sherif el Gariani the custodian of the tomb of the Senussi saint and of the other sacred edifices. The old chieftain then expressed hope that the

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