Page:Scott Nearing - Stopping a War (1926).pdf/21

 

Other sessions of the Chamber during which the Communist Deputies spoke against the Riff War were no less tempestuous. Economic fact and political propaganda, clear-cut and unequivocal, was directed again and again at the French war makers and imperialists. 

Once in a long time the secrets which imperialists whisper in one another's ears are shouted from the house-tops. This happened in 1917 when the Russian revolutionists published the secret treaties found in the files of the Tsarist Government. It happened again in June, 1925, when Doriot rose in the Chamber to read a letter written by M. Vatin-Perignon, chief of Marshal Lyautey’s personal staff at Fez, to M. Pierre Lyautey, nephew of the Marshal, living in Paris.

It was one thing to have a Communist Deputy describe the objects of the war and point out its causes. It was quite another to have these facts from the headquarters of the General in command on the Riff front.

The letter was dated May 25, 1925. It is reproduced in full in the Journal Officiel for June 28. The letter asserts that the French were not surprised by the Riff attack. On the contrary, "the Marshal was so well informed and had so thoroughly foreseen what was to happen, that, from January, 1924, on (see his reports to the government) he was preparing for war." Marshal Lyautey had built a line of blockhouses north of the Ouergha. These blockhouses served the double purpose of excluding the Riffs from the rich Ouergha valley and of forcing the French prohibition against trade between the valley and the Riff. These blockhouses were constructed "in May, 1924, while Abd-el-Krim, his attention taken up by the Spaniards, could not react. … This front was established on a strategic line … without striking a blow. After May, 1924, this front was reinforced, fortified, and its communications with the base secured by a system of roads, bridges, and railways."

