Then will the prosperity of the people revive--indeed, achieve a condition hitherto unknown save in two or three reigns of the distant past, perhaps not then. The poor will not fear to sow their barren fields, or the rich to display their wealth; hidden treasure will come to light, and the groan of the oppressed will cease. Individual cases of gross injustice will doubtless arise; but they will be as nothing compared with what occurs in Morocco to-day, even with that wrought by Europeans who avail themselves of existing evils. So that if France is wise, and restrains her hot-heads, she may perform a magnificent work for the Moors, as the British have done in Egypt; at least, it is to be hoped she may do as well in Morocco as in Tunisia.
But it would be idle to ignore the deep dissatisfaction with which the Anglo-French Agreement has been received by others than the Moors.[25] Most British residents in Morocco, probably every tourist who has been conducted along the coast, or sniffed at the capital cities; those firms of ours who share the bulk of the Moorish trade, and others who yearned to open up possible mines, and undertake the public works so urgently needed; ay, and the concession-prospectors and company-mongers who see the prey eluding their grasp; even the would-be heroes across the straits who have dreamed in vain of great deeds to be done on those hills before them; all unite in deploring what appears to them a gross blunder. After all, this is but natural. So few of us can see beyond our own domains, so many hunger after anything--in their particular line--that belongs to a weaker neighbour, that it is well we have disinterested statesmen who take a wider view. Else had we long since attempted to possess ourselves of the whole earth, like the conquering hordes of Asia, and in consequence we should have been dispossessed ourselves.
Even to have been driven to undertake in Morocco a task such as we were in Egypt, would have been a calamity, for our hands are too full already of similar tasks. It is all very well in these times of peace, but in the case of war, when we might be attacked by more than one antagonist, we should have all our work cut out to hold what we have. The policy of "grab," and dabbing the world with red, may be satisfactory up to a certain point, but it will be well for us as a nation when we realize that we have had enough. In Morocco, what is easy for France with her contiguous province, with her plans for trans-Sáharan traffic, and her thirst to copy our colonial expansion--though without men to spare--would have been for us costly and unremunerative. We are well quit of the temptation.