Page:Algeria from Within.pdf/51

“To many of us nobility can be achieved by much learning.”

In other words, the scarlet burnous and the loud-sounding title would carry no weight if it were not enforced by the French authority.

To-day, therefore, the inhabitants of Algeria are Arabs and Berbers, of whom fifty per cent. claim almost pure Berber blood, and Frenchmen. There are many Spaniards in the department of Oran, and in the east a fair sprinkling of Italians and Maltese. The Jews, too, form an important section of the community; those who live in the north wear European dress, and in the south most of them wear Arab costume, with a certain little difference in the burnous, and in some districts they have robes peculiar to themselves. Their women, even in some families of the north, keep the dress of their people—the embroidered kerchief about the head and the rather shapeless frock. By a law known as the Décret Crémieux, voted in 1871 to facilitate the conscription of recruits for the Franco-Prussian War, all Jews north of a certain latitude in Algeria automatically became French citizens. It was not very popular at the time, but its consequences now are much appreciated. In spite, however, of this French citizenship and all the wealth acquired in commerce, the Jews of Algeria have kept themselves strangely apart. Even in Algiers all their shops are in a certain quarter; they close without exception on Saturday, and attend the synagogue with the utmost regularity. They never intermarry, and they form as distinct a race as the Arabs. In fact, in many districts—and especially in the south—they are always referred to as Israelites. Sometimes they are persecuted, but this merely knits them closer together. They despise the Arabs, but fear them, and tremble at any sign of force.