Word: riffian
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Reports began to filter in of desertions from Abd-el-Krim to the French. Several chieftains who had gone over to the Riffian leader were alleged to have offered to return, help fight the Riffians, if only the French would pardon them, grant them arms and munitions. At the same time, it was reported that the Riffians were subjecting unwilling warriors to barbaric cruelties, "such as cutting off their arms and legs in the presence of women...
...also knows that the French cannot beat him without risking far more than he, Abd-el-Krim, thinks they will. This attitude is accounted for by the comparative security which his steep mountains provide him. Troops cannot be moved across them except through winding passes which the Riffian tribesmen dominate. Artillery and bombs are almost useless; for they cannot remove mountains of rock. But against the attackers the tribesmen bring to bear all manner of weapons from cannon to big stones which they dynamite down on to the enemy...
...hills about the Wergha Valley awoke. Abd-el-Krim, leader of the Riffian tribesmen, began his long-awaited offensive on Fez, the northern capital. Guns roared, shells screamed and cracked in vivid detonations, spluttering the ground with jagged, death-dealing steel. Bombs dropped from airplanes whinnied as they tore down to earth where they burst with staggering force. Grenades rasped their ugly barks and poked the earth with their deadly stings. Rifles snapped and bullets spat death. Men lived and men died. The Moroccan War (TIME, May 11 et seq.) entered its most serious phase...
...greatest work is done by what is called "infiltration," which is used with considerable success to stir up the Moorish tribes in the rear of the French lines or actually in them: A single Riffian regular crawls in the night past the French outposts, visits villages in the rear to urge war upon the French and to promise rewards from his Chief, Abd-el-Krim. The visits are repeated nightly; and if kind words fail, threats are used, and occasionally an assassination is committed to terrorize the petty chieftains into submission. The Valley of the Wergha, along which the fighting...
...Cabinet appointed General Stanislaus Naulin in charge of military operations with the object of relieving Marshal Lyautey of the intolerable burden of administering the country and directing the war, and to enable him to concentrate on nullifying the disconcerting Riffian propaganda...