Unless an Arab carries a great deal of weight he is helpless if the Bureau Arabe decides against him. Apart from this, however, the chief of the annexe has other more peaceful and useful duties. He has all the functions of the mayor to perform, and is surrounded by a municipal council. These worthies— who are partly Arabs, partly French and partly Jews—vote silly laws such as traffic regulations for the non-existent vehicles. They decide whether the main street shall be painted green or gold; they vote money to repair the roof of the colonel’s house. Their most important function is the distribution of water in the oasis. This, as will be explained in a later chapter, is a question of life and death in the long Sahara summer, and it requires infinite care to arrange it all. But, apart from this, the municipal council does little, and, though the Chef d’Annexe occasionally performs a civil marriage, the law and order of the Great South rests in the hands of the military.
I use the word order purposely, as it is through their presence that we can travel safely over those magnificent roads which they also have made across the rolling plains. For, though justice is sometimes miscarried, there is little chance of the bandit escaping if he commits highway robbery or murder on the roads of the Bureau Arabe.
These are, therefore, the pros and cons, and let it be said for these colonels and captains who have spent all the best years of their lives in the Sahara, that they are confronted by great difficulties, and that until the day when the Arab is emancipated and set on the same footing as his conquerors, the only method by which an end can be achieved is severity.
So far it will seem that we have left the realm of complication and entered that of straightforward government. A mere illusion.
Living in the same town and almost next door to the Bureau Arabe, we find the Juge de Paix, the Notaire, and the Commissaire de Police. What the first two can do to justify their existence is beyond the imagination. The Commissaire has functions which he exercises, but which seem quite unnecessary, as in all his actions he is entirely paralyzed by the Bureau Arabe.
For instance, if some petty crime is committed he can investigate it, but he can not condemn without the authority of the Chef d’Annexe. If one requires a gun-license one has to apply to the Commissaire de Police, but he must go to the Bureau Arabe to get it. He is in charge of the few native policemen who wander about the oases in search of crime and bribes, but, though the prison is next door to his office, it is guarded by the military.
It is all the same curious system which causes the Governor-General’s powers—extending across the Sahara, to the verge of Central Africa—to depend on the Home Office in Paris.
Moreover, we have not yet finished with all these different forms of administration, and in the next chapter I shall try to explain how the native functionaries aid in the government of the country.