Al Maghrib - First year - No 56 - August, 23, 1937
Next month, Morocco will have to opportunity to see the realization its students' desire to arbitrate the General Conference of North African Students. This conference will be one of those rare occasions to renew brotherhood ties and strengthen the relations between the future prospects of the Maghreb world, united by a common religion, language, ethnicity and history. It also will inspire the social body's collective and individual components with a spirit of dynamism and vigor. It will create an environment for a passion for learning as well as a more focused interest in the development of men who are aware of their duty with respect to their nation and who know how to gage the responsibility bestowed on them by their country's prestigious past and promising future.
The conference will be held in Rabat. The students have made two previous attempts in the past to hold this gathering but the education administration opposed their initiatives without invoking any motive to justify their opposition.
This time, we hope that the government will not see the gathering of North African students with the same prior defiance. We hope it will consider their conference as a normal event inciting in principle no fear. That is unless the administrative machinery is allied to the reactionary forces who dictate to the persons in charge to fight all projects destined to aid this country in embarking on the road to its awakening and progress.
Under those conditions, we need to revise our view and note that the Moroccan administration is under the thumb of reactionaries and that its aims are to watch over the interests of the colonial sector who always seek their profit to the detriment of this country's masses.
The authorities of the Moroccan protectorate have opposed what the Algerian and Tunisian colonial administrations have already authorised. Regardless, we wish to forget the past and the circumstances that led the protectorate power to prohibit proceeding with the two previous conferences. We turn toward the future and hope that all will go well this time.
The higher authorities have given their approval after being in contact with the Association of Moslem Students of North Africa in Paris. It is up to us now to take ownership of our responsibility to demonstrate that this conference is neither a conference for any particular economic class or political organization. Instead it will be a conference of the African nation in its entirety and will be organized by youths who are ready to take control of their country's destiny and to be at its service.
If individuals and organizations bring forth their assistance to this event on a material level (of which our students are in great need) as well as provide moral support, they will contribute to the success of a conference of extreme importance whose recommendations will have a positive impact on our national life. We must assist the preparatory committee; the rich with financial assistance and those in charge of the educational sector, with their research.
Thus we will able to provide proof that we have taken into serious consideration this event to which we attach very high interest and that our nation is involved with the efforts deployed by its youth, who are the only ones who can guarantee progress for this country.
