they commenced to move forward, and, after severe fighting, on September 30 gained a position commanding Ajdir. The Rifis thereupon set fire to the town and withdrew from it, and the Spaniards subsequently advanced and occupied the site. A few days later French cavalry from the south and Spanish cavalry from the east joined hands at Syah, in the east of the Spanish

zone.

The French and Spanish successes were followed by the submission of a number of revolted tribes which had been previously wavering, but, on the whole, the moral of Abd-el-Krim's followers did not suffer as much as was anticipated. The Moors subjected Tetuan to shell fire, without doing any damage to speak of, and showed themselves defiant all along the front. The rainy season had now commenced, and put operations on a large scale out of the question. After a little more desultory fighting the Spanish and French troops went into winter quarters, leaving the Rifis still unsubdued and with spirit unbroken.

On November 2 General Sanjurjo was appointed Commanderin-Chief of the Spanish forces in Morocco, in place of the Marquis de Estella.

On November 9 the Spaniards proclaimed a new Khalifa of Spanish Morocco in the person of Muley Mehedi, who was invested by the Marquis de Estella with the Collar of the Order of Carlos III. The tribes, however, were not to be won back to their allegiance to Spain, which they detested on account of its cruel methods of waging war. The French, during the last two months of the year, used diplomatic methods with more effect, and induced some important tribes in their zone to return to their allegiance.

In the course of the year considerable sympathy was manifested in England with Abd-el-Krim in his struggle for independence, which, in fact, attracted world-wide attention, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain found it necessary in the summer to deny officially that England was rendering him any assistance. In the last week of the year an Englishman, Captain Gordon Canning, arrived in Paris as the official emissary of Abd-el-Krim with proposals for peace, but the French Government refused to receive him.

Tangier. The new status of Tangier, laid down by the Convention of 1923 (vide ANNUAL REGISTER, 1923, p. 289), was formally introduced on June 1 with an imposing ceremony in the Mendubia (the official residence of the Mendub, or Sultan's representative). Of the eight Powers concerned with the status of Tangier, threethe United States, Italy, and Portugal-were not represented. The public of Tangier took small interest in the affair; it had already learnt from experience that little improvement in its conditions was likely to result from the new régime, which imposed on it a crushing financial burden without making any

return. Before the month was out, an agitation was on foot among the mercantile and industrial population to secure a revision of the Convention, with a view chiefly to reducing the cost of the administration.

Another cause of anxiety to Tangier was its proximity to the sphere of military operations between the native tribes and the Spaniards. Native troops in the service of the Spaniards more than once violated the frontier of the international zone, and refugees fleeing from Abd-el-Krim crowded into the city. The French and Spaniards, on various occasions, desired to land troops at Tangier for the interior, but England refused permission.

EGYPT.

The year opened with Parliament dissolved and a Government in power whose support by the people and the electorate was in doubt. Zaghloul, who had been hurled suddenly from the pinnacle of power at a moment at which he might reasonably have considered himself secure for a long period, was certainly not reconciled to his lot. Charges of disloyalty to the King, which he was quick to refute, although not very convincingly, did not strengthen his position, and evidence of the general tendency was the progressive defection of prominent supporters almost until the eve of the general elections, which were appointed for January and March. At the previous elections 192 supporters of Zaghloul had been returned out of a total membership of 214. The new elections did not exactly reverse that decision, but of the 214 members returned only 102 were avowed Zaghloulists. The power of Zaghloul was obviously shaken. The first consequence of the elections was the formation of a Coalition Cabinet from which the Zaghloulists were excluded, under Ziwar Pasha, the retiring Prime Minister, who also took the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. A week after the completion of the elections Parliament met, and to the general astonishment abroad, if not at home, its first measure was the election by ballot of Zaghloul as President of the Chamber. Such a rebuff it was impossible for the Government to accept, and the Parliament was accordingly dissolved on the very day of its opening. For the remainder of the year Egypt was governed without a Parliament, and so that a similar contretemps should not again arise, immediate steps were taken for formulating a new and more restrictive electoral law.

The drafting of this new electoral law was under consideration throughout the remainder of the year, including the political crisis of the autumn. This crisis arose ostensibly out of a matter which was somewhat remote from politics, the publication of a book, "Islam and the Principles of Government," by Sheikh Aly Abdel Razek, a cadi of the Sharia Court. In this book the Sheikh propounded the theory that the Moslem Code was intended

solely as a guide to personal conduct, and not for incorporation in the statutes of the State. The author proceeded to discuss current Islamic questions from an advanced point of view hitherto unknown in Egypt. His statements aroused the intense opposition of the Orthodox Moslem divines, particularly the declaration that the Caliphate was never an essential and indispensable institution. Anger was also aroused by the Sheikh's condemnation of polygamy, and his severe criticism of the present status of Egyptian women.

The publication of the Sheikh's book aroused fierce controversy. The Azharists demanded that the Government should prosecute the author, and when this was refused, the Azhar divines instituted themselves proceedings, whereupon over a hundred prominent writers and others petitioned King Fuad to order the abandonment of the trial, the petitioners declaring that the Constitution permitted liberty of thought, a thing sacred in all civilised countries.

The trial resulted in the conviction of the Sheikh, and should have been followed by his dismissal from office and inhibition from holding any Government appointment. But the Minister of Justice, Abdel Aziz Pasha Fahmy, the leader of the Constitutional Liberals in the Cabinet, refused to carry out the sentence, and was promptly himself dismissed by the Prime Minister. This dismissal was followed by the resignation of the other Liberal members of the Cabinet, and of Sidky Pasha, the Independent Minister of the Interior. It was anticipated that these resignations would have led to the fall of the Cabinet. But the vacant offices were filled by other members of the dominant party, the Ittehadists, and Ziwar Pasha with a compact Cabinet was still in office at the end of the year.

The last few months were, however, otherwise not politically without incident. The Liberals, having seceded from the Government, declared that the Constitution was in danger, and decided to take all practicable steps towards the summoning of the Parliament that had been dissolved. They held that this was the constitutional course, inasmuch as a new Parliament had not been elected within the period laid down. In this they were joined by the other sections of the opposition, including the Zaghloulists. Since the Government declined to convene Parliament, the opposition decided to hold a meeting on the day in November appointed in the Constitution for a Parliamentary assembly. Being denied access to the Parliament building, they met in a hotel, where they elected a president, passed a vote of want of confidence in the Cabinet, and appointed a deputation to wait on the King. The King was, however, not sympathetic, and a week or so later the dismissal of Hassan Pasha Nashaat, a palace official, whose influence at times seemed to exceed that of the Prime Minister, still further strengthened the latter's position. All that

was left for the three opposition parties was to refuse to participate in the elections to be held under the new electoral law, to demand in vain the re-assembly of the Parliament that had been dissolved, and to protest equally vainly against the Jarabub agreement with Italy.

In the meanwhile Lord Allenby, the High Commissioner, had resigned and been succeeded by Sir George Lloyd, now Lord Lloyd (October 10, 1925). Before his arrival seven of the men convicted of murdering Sir Lee Stack had been hanged. The eighth had his sentence commuted to penal servitude for life, in view of his confession and consequent assistance in securing the conviction of his colleagues.

The settlement of the frontier dispute with Italy-the Jarabub settlement was effected towards the end of the year. This dispute was a survival from the war diplomacy, and the settlement was part of the payment promised by Britain to Italy for her intervention on the side of the Western Allies. Considerable difficulty was encountered in arriving at a settlement, and at times there was some well or ill-founded alarm. In the end, however, the Italian demands were accepted, and it was agreed to recognise Italian sovereignty over the oasis of Jarabub, the religious centre of the powerful Senussi, in return for a rectification of frontier close to the sea at Sollum, by which that port was rendered more secure as an Egyptian possession. The Caliphate Conference that was to have been held in Cairo in March was postponed, until the coming year, it was said. The political situation in Egypt and the Hedjaz and inadequate time for organising the Conference were given as the reasons for postponement. A Communist scare in the early summer led to several arrests and greater stringency in the frontier control, but nothing more definite eventuated.

The Sudan, having had a surfeit of history during the previous year, was exceptionally quiet in its successor. At the beginning of the year a Sudan Defence Force, quite independent of Egypt, was created in place of the Egyptian Army that had hitherto garrisoned the country.

CHAPTER X.

AMERICA: THE UNITED STATES-CANADA-ARGENTINA-BRAZILCHILE-MEXICO-PERU-OTHER LATIN-AMERICA COUNTRIES.

THE UNITED STATES.

WITH a conspicuously quiet man in the White House, American politics lost something of their usual effervescence during 1925. Neither in his messages to Congress, nor in his public addresseswhich were few in number and cautious in tone-did President

Coolidge, beginning his second term on March 7, greatly interest the public, though the historian will note with surprise the one unusual contribution to the Zeitgeist which the President made, namely, his insistence upon the Democratic Party doctrine— heretical in a Republican-that the Federal Government was tending to usurp powers and functions which ought to be left to the individual States. Not that he embraced whole-heartedly the interesting doctrine of States' Rights, but, contenting himself with a concrete situation, he endorsed the suggestion which had been advanced by a number of the States, that the Federal Government, which already enjoyed enormous revenue sources, ought to leave to the States the imposition of inheritance taxes. Addressing the National Tax Association in Washington on February 19, Mr. Coolidge declared that the Federal inheritance tax was socialistic," and he favoured leaving that source of revenue to the States. Later in the year, on October 23, the representatives of seventeen States appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee and, quoting the President with obvious relish, urged that the time had arrived for the Federal Government to retire from the "field of inheritance taxes." Mr. Coolidge boldly followed this up, in his message to Congress on December 8, with a plea for the reduction of Federal taxes and a defence of "States' Rights that was distinctly startling, coming from the leader of the party historically opposed at almost every point and on almost every issue, to the rival political theory. This may prove, in the future, to mark the beginning of a new tendency in American political philosophy. Or, on the other hand, it may not. In either case, it may fairly be described as the only surprise which the President gave during 1925 to his countrymen.

Perhaps Mr. Coolidge was obeying unconsciously forces greater than he knew; at any rate, a proposed amendment to the Constitution conferring upon the Federal Government the power to regulate child labour, was defeated when the adverse decision of thirteen States deprived the proposal of the requisite support of thirty-six of the forty-eight States. This proposed amendment, which had passed the Lower House on April 27, 1924, and the Senate on June 3 of the same year, was rejected by the thirteen States referred to on precisely the broad general argument sponsored by the President-that Federalism in the United States, the centralising of power in Washington, had gone too far.

Mr. Coolidge's other main achievement-partly political, partly personal-was to press steadily for American adherence to the World Court. To millions of Americans, the World Court was an alternative to, and an escape from, Mr. Woodrow Wilson's detested League of Nations; to other millions, it was and is and must be, the beginning of American participation in the common responsibility for world affairs. As the leader of, and spokesman for, the Republican Party, Mr, Coolidge presumably adhered to