National roads 2,074 kilometres Secondary roads 569 ”
RAILWAYS BUILT
622 kilometres
LAND CULTIVATED
1915 1918
Approximate area Approximate area 21,165 17 hectares 1,681,308 03 hectares
JUSTICE
1. Creation of French courts for French nationals and those under French protection. These take cognizance of civil cases where both parties, or even one, are amenable to French jurisdiction.
2. Moroccan law is Moslem, and administered by Moslem magistrates. Private law, including that of inheritance, is based on the Koran. The Sultan has maintained the principle whereby real property and administrative cases fall under native law. These courts are as far as possible supervised and controlled by the establishment of a Cherifian Ministry of Justice to which the native Judges are responsible. Special care is taken to prevent the alienation of property held collectively, or any similar transactions likely to produce political and economic disturbances.
3. Criminal jurisdiction is delegated to Pashas and Cadis by the Sultan, except of offenses committed against, or in conjunction with, French nationals and those under French protection. Such cases come before the tribunals of the French Protectorate.
EDUCATION
The object of the Protectorate has been, on the one hand, to give to the children of French colonists in Morocco the same education as they would have received at elementary and secondary schools in France; on the other, to provide the indigenous population with a system of education that shall give to the young Moroccans an adequate commercial or manual training, or prepare them for administrative posts, but without interfering with their native customs or beliefs.
Before 1912 there existed in Morocco only a few small schools supported by the French Legation at Tangier and by the Alliance Francaise, and a group of Hebrew schools in the Mellahs, maintained by the Universal Israelite Alliance.
1912. Total number of schools 37
1918. ” ” ” ” 191
1912. Total number of pupils 3006
1918. ” ” ” ” 21,520
1912. Total number of teachers 61
1918. ” ” ” ” 668
In addition to the French and indigenous schools, sewing-schools have been formed for the native girls and have been exceptionally successful.
Moslem colleges have been founded at Rabat and Fez in order to supplement the native education of young Mahometans of the upper classes, who intend to take up wholesale business or banking, or prepare for political, judicial or administrative posts under the Sultan’s government. The course lasts four years and comprises: Arabic, French, mathematics, history, geography, religious (Mahometan) instruction, and the law of the Koran.
The “Ecole Superieure de la langue arabe et des dialectes berberes” at Rabat receives European and Moroccan students. The courses are Arabic, the Berber dialects, Arab literature, ethnography, administrative Moroccan law, Moslem law, Berber customary law.
MEDICAL AID
The Protectorate has established 113 medical centres for the native population, ranging from simple dispensaries and small native infirmaries to the important hospitals of Rabat, Fez, Meknez, Marrakech, and Casablanca.
Mobile sanitary formations supplied with light motor ambulances travel about the country, vaccinating, making tours of sanitary inspection, investigating infected areas, and giving general hygienic education throughout the remoter regions.
Native patients treated in 1916 over 900,000
“ ” ” ” 1917 ” 1,220,800
Night-shelters in towns. Every town is provided with a shelter for the indigent wayfarers so numerous in Morocco. These shelters are used as disinfection centres, from which suspicious cases are sent to quarantine camp at the gates of the towns.
More than 15,000 cases were treated in 1917.
The French Department of Health distributes annually immense quantities of quinine in the malarial districts.
Madame Lyautey’s private charities comprise admirably administered child-welfare centres in the principal cities, with dispensaries for the native mothers and children.
VII
A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY
[NOTE—In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have tried to set down a slight and superficial outline of a large and confused subject. In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its chief merit is its lack of originality.