Warning

The Department of State, writer of official notes to kings, ministers, directors, and potentates of the world, last week despatched a memorandum directed at a handful of U. S. citizens who have been piloting French airplanes in the war against the Riffs in Morocco.

The memorandum was merely a warning. It called attention to a section of the revised statutes which forbids the enlistment of U. S. nationals in foreign military ventures within the U. S. or in territory under its jurisdiction. (The U. S. has by treaty extraterritoriality jurisdiction over its citizens in Morocco).

The legal point involved seems to hinge largely on the question of where the U. S. aviators enlisted in the French cause. A number of Americans, former members of the Lafayette Escadrille, have enlisted in the "Sherifian Air Force"; that is, the French Air Force, but nominally the Air Force of the Sultan of Morocco. The U. S. statute, if applicable, declares that persons making such enlistments are guilty of high misdemeanors punishable by fines up to $1,000 and imprisonment for not more than three years.

Whether Colonel Charles Sweeney and other American fliers in Morocco prefer their present occupation* to immunity from $1,000 fine and three years in prison should soon become apparent.

* Colonel Sweeney wrote to his sister in Spokane: "The Riffs are excellent infantry and first-class shots. You may judge when I tell you that they have already shot out of airplanes from 500 to 1,000 feet up and going from 80 to 100 miles an hour over twenty French aviators." The French communiques from the front have not been so specific.