Yokes & Arrows

Morocco's Sultan ben Youssef, Mohammed V, only 31 months ago exiled by the French to remote Madagascar, was being courted like a king. At Rabat airport last week, as he stepped aboard an Iberia Super-Constellation for a visit to Spain, a band played the Marseillaise, and French High Commissioner Andre Louis Dubois was at his side to remind him that Morocco owed its new "independence within interdependence" to France. Hours later in Madrid, Dictator Franco and a phalanx of bemedaled Falangists roared an ovation to show that they also had something to give the Sultan.

Embracing Ben Youssef and kissing him on both cheeks in the best Arab tradition, Franco led him to a Rolls-Royce, and together, flanked by a squadron of Franco's Moorish guard, they drove into Madrid, while thousands of Spaniards waved handkerchiefs and cried Viva el Sultan! Later at Franco's El Pardo palace, the Order of the Yoke and Arrows (a Falangist creation) was hung around the Sultan's neck. Then the Moroccans got down to business in the Goya room at El Pardo. Recognizing that Spain's 44-year-old Moroccan protectorate (a kind of sublease from French Morocco) no longer "corresponds to present reality," Franco agreed to yield the 18,000 sq. mi. of Spanish Morocco to the Sultan's sovereignty. (By prior arrangement the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish for more than three centuries, and Tangier, a free money international zone, were not mentioned.) In return Franco asked for the same rights in the Sultan's new united Morocco that the French enjoy under their new treaty, and certain specific economic concessions. It was agreed that Spain's 100,000-man army, whose native troops will eventually become part of the Sultan's own army, would remain in Morocco in Spanish hands for the time being. It was a triumphant and happy day for Mohammed V, who can now count himself ruler of a united land of 9,000,000 people.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.