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Updated: July 7, 2025
Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies. Last spring after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against the U-boats on the high seas overconfidence became so pronounced that war production fell off. In two months, June and July, 1943, more than a thousand airplanes that could have been made and should have been made were not made.
In fact, the popular ignorance regarding the nearest point of Africa is even greater than of the actually less known central portions, where the white man penetrates with every risk. To declare that the inhabitants of the four Barbary States Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli are not "Blackamoors" at all, but white like ourselves, is to astonish most folk at the outset.
Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies. Last spring after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against the U-boats on the high seas overconfidence became so pronounced that war production fell off. In two months, June and July, 1943, more than a thousand airplanes that could have been made and should have been made were not made.
But the peril is averted now by the system of tabias or sand-dykes introduced some twenty years ago introduced, I believe, in accordance with the suggestion of Monsieur Baraban, whose book on Tunisia drew attention, among other things, to this deplorable condition of the oases and the threatened loss to the exchequer.
A train full of Algerian troops came puffing into the station, the uproar hardly rising above the general hubbub. The passengers who were able to walk got out first, some limping, some walking firmly with a splendid Eastern dignity. These men were Arabs and Moors from Algeria and Tunisia, who had enlisted in the colonial armies.
"Suddenly," writes the principal Italian journal, "and just when it was hoped that the common sacrifices they had made had strengthened the ties between the two nations, the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders which endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of which will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are one hundred and twenty thousand in Tunisia.
Moroccan oases differ one from another far more than those of South Algeria and Tunisia. As for Sefrou, which Foucauld called the most beautiful oasis of Morocco, it is simply an extremely fertile valley with vineyards and orchards stretching up to a fine background of mountains. But the fact that it lies just below the Atlas makes it an important market-place and centre of caravans.
Seeing that this part of Tunisia is covered with the forsaken cities of the Romans who were absurdly sensitive in the matter of heat and cold, one is driven to the conclusion that the climate must indeed have changed since their day.
They will tell you that there is nothing to be procured in the market; but if you proceed to the spot, you will at least see succulent legs of mutton exposed for sale. Tunisia is a sheep-rearing country there are sixty thousand sheep in the controle of Gafsa alone but you may live there a lifetime before seeing a leg of mutton at a country table d'hote.
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