1 MARCH 1924, Page 10

Certainly, as far as opinion in France is concerned, there

has been a tendency in recent years to look, to an increasing extent, towards North Africa, both from the economic and the military standpoint. Speakers in France nowadays no longer talk of a country of forty millions, but of a French Empire consisting of a hundred millions, while French world policy is based on the annual recruitment of a very large number of native Colonial troops. In other words, France looks towards her North African Empire to supply the deficiency created by her- own declining birth-rate.

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