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functionaries and played havoc with State documents. "They were seen lighting their pipes with the State papers that littered the ground." The results of such disorder may well be imagined.

The situation soon became critical, and when it was thought desirable to correct initial mistakes, a vast effort was seen to be needed. Plans were submitted to the Government of Louis Philippe, who was not yet quite sure of his own footing. These projects were excellent. General Clauzel, who had elaborated them, proved himself possessed of extraordinary keenness of vision. He had seen all the advantages to be drawn from gaining the support of the native races, who, satisfied with the security offered them and their consequent prosperity, would develop into loyal auxiliaries and would oblige the nomad tribes and the partisans of disorder to respect French authority. The general had entered into communication with persons of high rank favouring such views at Oran and even at Fez; he had drafted a treaty to be made with the Bey of Tunis, and his project was to place the whole of Barbary under the suzerainty of France; in fact to establish a Protectorate which, to his idea, would offer all the advantages, and would avoid the most perilous risks of a conquest.

Unfortunately, in Louis Philippe's ministers, General Clauzel had to deal with men of less intelligence and perspicacity than the statesmen of the Third Republic who welcomed General Lyautey's similar projects for Morocco. England has her "Little Englanders," and the France of 1830 had an Opposition which used the difficulties arising in Algeria as weapons against the Government. A perusal of the parliamentary debates of this epoch very soon shows that the Opposition had really no other aim but to upset Cabinets. It put that interpretation on the acts of the Government that suited its party interest; accused ministers at one moment of weakness, at another of tyranny; called out for measures and then abused them; criticised everything that was done, but suggested no remedy for evils that were generally imaginary, and proposed no definite project of organization. Besides, the speeches in the Chamber prove that the champions of conquest as well as its adversaries were extraordinarily ignorant about the subject of their disputes. The opposing parties were in equal degrees badly informed on Algerian questions. They had only vague ideas as to the

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geography of the country, its history, the races that populated it, the resources it contained, and even as to the position of affairs at that moment.

In spite of the efforts made to remedy it, the disorder that had begun immediately after the occupation of Algiers not only continued, but passed into the whole government system. The civil authorities, who had followed on the heels of the troops, speedily came to loggerheads with the military. The one idea of the civil authorities was to establish without delay in the new provinces submitted to their rule the administrative system of France with its promotion by clockwork, its complicated machinery, its deliberate movement, totally inappropriate to an unknown country and a population so different from the French in race and religion. The civil services moreover claimed an autonomy which would render them independent of the army. But the soldiers, brushing aside the maxim cedant arma togae, revolted against the encroachments of the civil functionaries and resisted all measures that appeared to menace their prerogatives It was they who had conquered the country; it was on them therefore that the duty devolved of organizing it and of exercising authority.

These disputes between civil servants and soldiers had their echo in Paris. In accordance with the interests of their respective services, certain civilians and military men, priding themselves more on their astuteness than they could rightly do on their sense of honour, furnished the Government and its opponents by turns with secret information, sometimes slanderous, in order to throw blame on their rivals.

The result of all this was a great scandal. Public opinion grew weary and the occupation of Algiers itself was attacked. As early as 1833 there was a demand that the occupation should be brought to an end. It survived only by a miracle, but with the same hesitations, misunderstandings and dissensions. These were hardly calculated to inspire the natives with respect. In France hostility to the Algerian adventure gained ground; and one may say that this feeling was the seed of that "anti-colonialism" which has survived to our day, and has been inherited by every Opposition to every Government. The parties who have succeeded each other on the extreme left of the two Chambers have always stood forth as uncompromising opponents of all

colonial expansion. Forty years ago, when radicalism represented the extremist element in French politics, M. Clemenceau, the head of the party, led an assault on Jules Ferry, then Prime Minister, a true statesman, who endowed France with her colonial empire. The "Tiger" dealt blow after blow at the far-seeing patriot who never swerved from his determination to give his country magnificent colonial openings.

The fury of these radical attacks ended by bringing their victim to the ground. When Ferry undertook the Kroumirie expedition, which, in two months, was to establish the French protectorate over the whole of Tunisia, he was held up to popular execration under the nickname of "Le Kroumir." This in turn became "Le Tonkinois " when he decided on the occupation of Tonkin, which now embraces all Indo-China. It is difficult to imagine the bitter unpopularity which Jules Ferry experienced as the result of these nicknames with which his enemies branded him, while public opinion promptly attached to them the most insulting and slanderous meanings. But when to-day, at the distance of several decades, we contemplate the vicissitudes of French politics, we cannot but admit that Jules Ferry was clear-sighted and that his personality stands far above that of the men, too often insignificant, who assumed the reins of power after him. And events in their course have justified Jules Ferry. The men of the extreme left, pushed from behind by more extreme newcomers, gradually moved towards the centre and towards office. By degrees their anti-colonialism fell from them. In changing altars they burnt what they had worshipped, and worshipped what they had burnt.

In our modern days, when nations undertake colonial expeditions, they generally have at their disposal an armament that gives them a formidable superiority over their adversaries. But the taking of Algiers and the conquest of the interior were accomplished without any such advantage, and artillery played a much smaller rôle than cavalry. During the progress of the military operations undertaken to enlarge the boundaries of the occupied territories, and to repress frequent insurrections, pioneers in the shape of farmers and merchants, French, Spanish and Italian, set to work to develop the resources of the country. Their action was hampered by many obstacles. The unhealthiness of the land caused many deaths. Indeed fever and

epidemics played greater havoc with the troops than the volleys of the natives. The severity of the winters and the tropical heat of the summers appeared to render all prospect of colonization hopeless. In the opinion of many eminent soldiers who had conducted successful campaigns, the stretches of desert were a barrier to any attempt to cultivate the soil, and the hostility of the natives left Europeans no security. These arguments, when published, made all the more impression as their upholders were qualified by long experience. For more than fifty years the opinion held good that Algeria was a country without a future, where "nothing prospered but cemeteries," and that all efforts would be a dead loss to those who made them.

People who held these views were certainly justified by the spectacle which the administration of the colony long offered. Nevertheless the tenacity of the colonists and traders achieved no inconsiderable results. Their increasing numbers compelled the reluctant administration to resolve on a corresponding extension of its services. It effected this without largeness of view, with no allowance for future developments. It employed inadequate means and methods imported from Paris, and adapted itself only tentatively to the needs of the country and of its economic activities. In France, the Government, whether it was royal or imperial or republican, took but an intermittent interest in this colony, which brought the State nothing but worry. Public opinion was ill-informed and, when not deliberately hostile, fell back on prejudice. The conviction that France was not fitted to colonize established a footing and became a formula that people are ready to repeat even to-day. The ordinary Frenchman is persuaded that he possesses no colonizing faculty and he affirms this in any company and on any occasion.

It is not exactly true. But where is the nation that does not think it good form to decry its own merits? Like other countries, France has had her moments of hesitation; she has moved onwards, groping her way and committing countless blunders. The incapacity of Louis XV and his ministers led to the loss of his overseas dominions. The Revolution had other things to do than reconquering those possessions, even if the theories in vogue at that day would have countenanced such an undertaking. As for Napoleon, it was in Europe that he sought to build up a larger France, and the results of his policy of

expansion are well-known. In 1830 there remained to France only certain insignificant colonial possessions, too limited, certainly, to assure her an experienced colonial administrative body, and she had lost also all familiarity with administrative methods as applied to exotic countries and races. To quote Professor Gautier's quip, Algeria had been conquered inadvertently."

The taking of Algiers was a drop of oil, and it was only very slowly that the penetration of the country was effected. The troops advanced into the interior only to pursue and punish aggressors, to advance the limits within which Europeans could live in security, settling in the seaboard towns and on the slopes of Tell and Atlas. No administrative system had then been worked out, no study had been made of the conditions and circumstances which had shortly to be faced. And even when General Clauzel had caught a glimpse of the future that the country promised, and had expounded to Louis Philippe's government the policy that ought to be followed, a deaf ear was turned to his representations. His perspicacity alarmed the Cabinet of the day. He was reproached with building castles in the air and entertaining fantastic ambitions, and to make quite sure that he would take no steps on his own account, half his troops were withdrawn from his command and sent home. Finally he was superseded in favour of an officer whose incapacity, unless it were his excess of zeal, soon lost all the ground that had been gained and reduced the French to taking refuge within the walls of Algiers.

In sum, France by no means realised what fortune had fallen into her hands or the task that devolved on her. She did not understand the rôle she had to play. She did not see that it was necessary to proceed with every single detail of organization in a country occupied by a population of different race and religion, living in a state bordering on anarchy, on a soil from which they toilfully derived a bare subsistence. France appears to have concerned herself specially about the fortunes of a few French merchants who had followed the expeditionary force and provisioned it, or of a few colonists attracted by the hope of finding a Promised Land. Those were the people who clamoured for an administration, and they were given one of exactly the same character and scale as that of a French sub-prefecture. That is the germ to which one may trace back the entanglement of tasks

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