CHAPTER V NO QUARTER

On the next excursion with the French I happened to see the shooting of six prisoners. We set out from camp as usual at early morning and moved up the coast for a distance of eight miles, with the object of examining a well which in former dry seasons supplied Casablanca with water and was now no doubt supplying the Arabs round about. By marching in close formation and keeping always down in the slopes between hills we managed to get to the well and to swing a troop of Goumiers round it without being noticed by a party of thirteen Moors, of whom only three were properly mounted.

The unlucky thirteen had no earthly chance. The Goumiers swept down upon them, killing seven, and taking prisoners the remaining six. As I was marching with the artillery at the time, I missed this little engagement, and my first knowledge of it was when the prisoners trailed by me on foot: six tall, gaunt, brown men, bare-legged, and three of them bare-headed, none clad in more than a dirty cotton shirt that dragged to his knees. They moved in quick, frightened steps, keeping close to one another and obeying their captors implicitly. Allah had deserted them and their souls were as water. The Goumiers, fellow Mohammedans and devout—I have seen them pray—followed on tight-reined ponies, riding erect in high desert saddles, their coloured kaftans thrown back from their sword-arms—brown men these too, with small black eyes and huge noses. French soldiers of the Foreign Legion drove three undersized asses, carrying immense pack-saddles of straw and sacking meant to pad their skinny backs and to keep a rider’s feet from trailing ground. They were too small to be worth halter or bridle, and the soldiers prodded them on with short, pointed sticks, that brought to my mind Stevenson’s ‘Travels with a Donkey.’ One of the Frenchmen brought along a gun, a long-barrelled Arab flintlock, an antiquated thing safer to face than to fire. Besides this, I was told, one of the prisoners had carried a bayonet fastened with a hemp string to the end of a stick; the others seem to have been unarmed. They were indeed a poor bag.

Without the least idea that such prisoners would be shot, I did not follow to their summary trial, but moved, instead, over to a spring, where some artillerists were watering their horses, while a dozen sporting tortoises stirred the mud. The gunners had bread and water, while I had none. Bread and water are heavy on campaign, and a few cigarettes I had found were good barter. My cigarettes were distributed and we were just beginning our breakfast, when a man standing up called our attention to the Goumiers coming our way again with the Moors. They were walking in the same order, the prisoners first in a close group, moving quickly on foot, not venturing to look back, the Goumiers, probably twenty, riding steady on hard bits.

‘Pour les tuer,’ said a soldier, smiling; ‘Pour les tuer,’ repeated the others, looking at me to see if I smiled.

I shook my head in pity, for the doomed men were ignorant, pitiable creatures.

A hundred yards beyond us were a clump of dwarfed trees and some patches of dry grass, like an oasis among the rolling, almost barren, hills; and for this spot the Moors were headed. Mechanically I went on eating, undecided whether to follow, for I did not want to see the thing at close range. I thought the Moors would be lined up in the usual fashion, their sentence delivered, and a moment given them for prayer. But suddenly, while their backs were turned, just as they set foot upon the dry grass, quickly a dozen shots rang out almost in a volley, then came a straggling fire of single shots. The single shots were from a pistol, as an officer passed among the dying men and put a bullet into the brain of each.

A young Englishman, the Reuter correspondent, rode over to me from the other side and asked what I thought. It seemed to me, I said, rather brutal that they were not told they were to die.

‘I don’t know,’ said the Englishman. ‘I should say that was considerate. But the thing isn’t nice; it isn’t necessary.’

The Goumiers set fire to the grass about the bodies, and soon the smoke and smell, brought over on a light Atlantic breeze, caused us to move away.

Across the dusty, shimmering plains signal fires began to send up columns of smoke, warning the Arabs beyond of our approach. But we were going no further.

There is no censorship of news in England, but the English press often decides what is good for the public to know and what it should suppress. In my opinion the above affair, reported to the London papers by their own correspondents, who were witnesses, should have been published. But the papers either did not publish the despatches, or else, as in the case of the Times and the Telegraph, which I saw, they gave the incident only the briefest notice, and placed it in a more or less obscure position in the paper. This, on the part of the London editors, was no doubt in deference to the British entente with France. The question arises in my mind, however, whether a paper purporting to supply the news has any right to suppress important news that is legitimate.

The shooting of prisoners continued until I left Morocco; and I am of the opinion that it goes on still. The French did not hide the fact; as I have said, any of the officers would tell you that they took no prisoners in arms. The Arabs opposing them, they pointed out, were murderers who had looted Casablanca, attempted to slaughter the European residents, and failing, had turned upon each other to fight not only for plunder but for wives. What would have happened to the European women, the Frenchmen asked, had the consulates not sustained the siege? What happens to French soldiers who are captured? They argued also that drastic methods brought submission more quickly.