Take a Bite Out of Krim

The Graphical History Tour is waiting to take you away to September of 1925, where we find France and Spain launching a new offensive against the Rif rebels in Spain's Moroccan territories.

"Madame Fiasko" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Sept. 6, 1925

Johnson's cartoon hinges on wordplay in German, blending "Geh' ab" (go away) with the name of Rif leader Abd-el-Krim.

In 1925, Abd El-Krim's Riffian guerillas controlled roughly three quarters of Spanish Morocco. Styling himself to the outside world as President of the Republic of Rif (Al-Jumhūriyyah al-Rif), el-Krim, he was popularly known as mujāhid (war leader). He had set up a functioning government and a cabinet which employed no small number of his relatives.

"Bei Abd El Krim" by Friedrich Heubner in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, Sept. 21, 1925

I'm rather confused by this German cartoon, which appears to me to depict German tourists asking Abd el-Krim, a Moroccan Berber, where to find Turkish concubines. 

The cartoons in the satirical Munich weekly Simplicissimus in the middle of the 1920's seem to have steered away from explicitly political commentary in favor of light jokes about societal stereotypes (the lovable drunk, the lothario, the hausfrau, the ingenue, etc.). Although Abd El-Krim spent some time during World War I in prison for expressing German sympathies contrary to Spain's official neutrality, that doesn't appear to be relevant to Heubner's cartoon in any way.

"The Jolly little Game of Tossing the Pancake" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 19, 1925

I'm also not familiar with this game of tossing the pancake of which Dorman Smith speaks. Yeah, you bake pancakes by flipping them, but what's the game? Seeing which one of you can catch it?

I guess the game is to see how high you can toss the pancake without it landing on the floor. There must be some military equivalence there that explains why Spain and France were having so much fun with it.

In any event, France and Spain launched a new offensive in September of 1925. Spain landed 18,000 troops at Alhucemas Bay, while 20,000 French soldiers marched into the Spanish protectorate from the French-controlled south.

"Another 'Contemptible Little Army'" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, Sept. 29, 1925

According to modern estimates, Edmund Duffy overestimates Riffian manpower; Encyclopedia Britannica puts the Moroccans' forces around 13,000 men. Just the same, the Riffians overran the French front line positions in the initial stages of the offensive.

"Abd-el-Krim" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 26, 1925

El-Krim's forces won several initial battles, justifying Gale's depiction of the armored hands of France and Spain having so much trouble catching a tiny fly.

Those hands could still swat, however, and that is how the game would end.

"Can't Pay for the Old War" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 21, 1925

At the same time as the Franco-Spanish offensive, French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux was in Washington to present the French counterproposal for repaying its World War I debts to the U.S., a debt American cartoonists were impatient to collect.

"One Can Carry this Business of Bluffing Too Far" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 25, 1925

Elsewhere in the Islamic world, Turkey sought to reclaim Mosul, in the north of present-day Iraq, from Great Britain.

"Another Explosive Situation" by Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Sept. 30, 1925

There is very little mystery as to Mosul's importance to the British Empire and the Turkish republic. Until the opening of the Suez Canal, Mosul was once a vital trade post between Europe and the Middle East on one side and India and China on the other. Since then, the major powers have had a keen interest in the region's oil.

"The Old, Old Story" by Orville Williams in New York American, Sept. 26, 1925

The British assumed control of Iraq at the end of World War I, up to then a distinct region of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th Century, consisting of the three districts of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Turkey claimed that Mosul was still under Ottoman control when the armistice ending the war was signed.

"They Tear Up Tickets in Europe, Too" by Cecil Jensen in Los Angeles Post, Sept. 30, 1925

Under the Treaty of Lausanne, the status of Mosul was left for the League of Nations to decide. In the meantime, the British had set up Faisal ibn Husayn as King of the three districts of Iraq, ruling under British mandate.

"Fact Versus Fiction" by Orville Williams in New York American, Sept. 30, 1925

Although Turkish-British disagreements did not erupt into armed conflict, the disputes over Mosul and Morocco offered plenty of ammunition to politicians, publishers, and editorial cartoonists who opposed U.S. participation in the League and any other international institutions.