They will do things that no
Frenchman can do; they will establish themselves in places where no
Frenchman could live; they will eat things which no Frenchman could
swallow; they will oust the very Arabs out of the country in course of
time, by sheer number of progeny and animal vitality. Oh, yes; it's clear
the Sicilians can lower their standard to any extent. But they can never
raise it. They are the cancer of Tunisia. Wherever they go, they bring
their filth, their _mafia_, roguery and corruption. Every Sicilian is a
potential Arab, the difference between them being merely external; the
true African variety wears less clothes and keeps his house cleaner. I
know them! A race of sinister buffoons and cut-throats, incapable of any
ennobling thought, whose highest virtues are other men's vices, whose only
method of reasoning is the knife.... Don't accuse me, Messieurs, of
prejudice, when I am trying to state the case impartially."
You will often hear it put as baldly as that. The alien inhabitants of
Tunisia are well hated by a certain type of Frenchmen. The country has
been compared to a wine-bottle that bears some high-flown label indicative
of fine stuff within--the French administration--but is filled,
unfortunately, with a poisonous mixture from round the corner, the Jews,
Sicilians, Maltese, and Corsicans.
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