Page:Algeria from Within.pdf/58

these southern territories varies somewhat, but it can be said roughly that anywhere two hundred miles from the coast one has passed out of civil control and into military. Thence these territories stretch away across the Sahara until the Niger is reached—great, open spaces with small fertile points where there is water. All this waste land is also under the Governor-General and his permanent staff in Algiers. There is one slight difference. Whereas if he were to make a speech to the townsfolk of some smiling vine center near Algiers he must ask the Secrétaire-Général for the necessary data to address the multitudes, in the south he applies to the Directeur des Territoires du Sud. This functionary, who is often intelligent, has an enviable post, and if he is interested in the Great South, with its strange people, he can make a study under very advantageous circumstances. Here again, however, we have an anomaly, for, though the Directeur des Territoires du Sud is responsible for their order, his administrators are all soldiers and the country south of the civil territory is under the strictest form of martial law. A little explanation on the system of government will perhaps make matters clearer.

The southern areas are divided into what are known as Cercles Militaires, and they may cover an area of one hundred square miles. The Cercle is under a colonel and is subdivided into annexes, each under a captain, who is responsible to the colonel for his area. There are a number of officers attached to these annexes, all specially trained in their duties—in fact, from the colonel down, all the staff have passed through the school of the affaires indigènes and have spent practically all their life in the south. For the future we will refer to the military administration as the Bureau Arabe, the name under which it goes in the