Along the dusty roads of Lusitania Spanish peasants last week saw a sight that white men had not seen in 450 years: Moorish tribesmen, bearded and burnoosed, swinging their long brass-mounted rifles on the way to fight in Spain. News of the march caused grim chuckles to a ginger-bearded fat gentleman on the Island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. Abdel Krim, Rif chieftain who mocked the armies of Spain for six years until French intervention in 1925 brought about his defeat & exile, knew last week that his own Rif tribesmen were being rearmed by the very officers they had fought, paid four pesetas a day and sent to Spain to war on the Socialist Government.
In a thick fog that covered the Straits of Gibraltar, 3,800 rebel soldiers, of whom 1,000 were Moorish tribesmen, were run past the blockade of Spain’s loyal navy in a fleet of fishing boats, mail boats and tenders.
Here’s another amusing snatch:
In the gentle beginning of Spain’s revolution five years ago, Madrid cafe-sitters loved to embroider the idle theory that the person really responsible for the rise of Spanish Socialism was Sosthenes Behn, U. S. board chairman of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., the man who brought the radio and the telephone to the Spanish provinces.
“Social ideas did not get to the peasants,” they argued, “because they cannot read or write, but now they can all listen.”
And from July 20 1925:
The ferocity of the Riff attacks was accounted for by the part played by tribeswomen who, hands smeared with henna, race after their warriors shrieking hysterically and smearing any who hold back or in any ether way display cowardice. After each attack, the men are examined and those with henna stains upon them are summarily shot.
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