Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 28th August 1909 — No.10
Facts and Comments
Spain and the Moor
Another corner of the Asiatic world — for Northern Africa is thoroughly Asianised if not Asiatic,— is convulsed with struggles which may well precede another resurgence.
There was a time when the Moor held Spain and gave civilisation to semi-barbarous Europe.
The revolution of the wheel has now gone to 
its utmost length and finds the Spaniard invading Morocco.
But this invasion does not seem to promise any Spanish expansion in Africa.
With infinite difficulty and at the cost of a bloody
émeute in Spain King Alfonso's Government have landed a considerable army in Morocco and yet with all that force can only just protect their communications and stand facing the formidable country where the stubborn Kabyle tribesmen await the invader.
There the army is hung up for the present, unwilling to retreat and afraid to advance, and the Spanish General has again sent to Spain for reinforcements, a feat of military strategy at which he seems to be exceptionally skilful.
If the men of the mountains are fortunate enough to have a leader with a head on his shoulders, the circumstances augur a reverse for Spain as decisive and perhaps more sanguinary than the Italian overthrow in Abyssinia.
Meanwhile King Alfonso has sacrificed all his youthful popularity by this ill-omened war and the bloody severity which has temporarily saved his throne.
And with the popularity of the young King has gone the friendship of the Spanish nation for England, for the Spaniards accuse that friendship of the origination of these troubles and the British Government as the selfish instigators of the intervention in Morocco.