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EUROPE AND AFRICA
Western Sahara, postal and telegraphic communications,
means of suppressing revenue frauds, maritime fishing,
railroads, roads, customs duties, uniform forest legislation,
and intellectual and scientific coéperation.!
But as the war and the economic difficulties following
thereupon have emphasized the value of the colonies in the
eyes of Frenchmen and have made them feel that France is
a “nation of 100,000,000,” that there is but une France
integrale, métropolitaine et Africaine, the feeling has naturally
followed that North Africa is the nearest and the most
French portion of overseas France, and since Algeria is the
most thoroughly French part of North Africa, so Algeria
must be the pattern for the development of the other
regions under French control. Whether the French can
make this program attractive to the colonists remains
to be seen.
In the meantime the colonies are not without their re-
action upon France, though perhaps only in one respect can
this reaction be clearly seen at present. The policy of
France toward Turkey and toward all phases of the Moslem
question has been greatly influenced by the predominance
of Moslem populations in the French North African pos-
sessions. And if the statement of General Lyautey to the
Sultan of Morocco after the Franco-Turkish Accord of 1921
partakes of the extravagance of after-dinner oratory, it is a
striking proof of the Moslem-colonial influence upon one
of the greatest citizens of France. General Lyautey said of
the accord between France and Turkey:
It responds to all my wishes, for I have always had the profound
conviction that the two incomparable moral forces which France
and Islam represent were made to unite for the greatest good of the
1 I Afrique Frangaise, April and May, 1924, pp. 275-283 and 327-28.
For the earlier Conference of Algiers, see L’ Afrique Frangaise, February,
1923, pp. 54-58.