Moroccan Peace?

Formal peace negotiations began last week at Oujda, Morocco, between two Franco-Spanish plenipotentiaries (General Simon and Senor Olivan) and the Foreign Wazir (Minister), Si Mohammed Azarkhan, of the long embattled Riffian Sultan, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abd-El-Krim. (TIME, April 19 et ante.)

Wazir Azarkhan, bright-eyed, perpetually smiling, clad in loose flapping Riffian garments, arrived in a rattletrap motor sent into the Riff to fetch him by the French Government, and promptly showed himself a master at diplomatic higgling, an art known in native Riffi slang as "selling the carpet."

General Simon and Senor Olivan suggested that France and Spain now held the whip hand over the Riff, and that Abd-El-Krim, if he did not want to be wiped out, must disarm the Riffi, go into exile himself, exchange all prisoners, and, after renouncing his assumed title of Sultan, recognize "the true sultan of Morocco", whom the French and Spanish "guard" in vassalage to themselves at Fez.

To these harsh terms Wazir Azarkhan replied with a burst of smiles, arguments, threats, shrieks, and stormy tears. He said that not even Abd-El-Krim can disarm the Riffi, since each cleaves to his rifle as to his wife. He said that Abd-El-Krim might consent to go into exile "after two or three years, when things have quieted down, but not now." He said that the hearts of loyal Riffi are so constructed that they could not possibly turn from Krim to "the French sultan." He spoke uninterruptedly for hours, "sold the carpet" until it could not be seen which end was which.

A Franco-Spanish "ultimatum" was despatched through the loquacious Wazir to Abd-El-Krim.