STRENGTH FOR THE FREE WORLD

Strength [music] for the free world, a weekly program presenting documentary evidence of the progress the free world is making towards strength through mutual [music] security. >> [music] >> On this foundation of greater economic and social strength, the rearmament [music] of the Allied Nations is being built. All around the world, the free peoples are uniting with our cousins to resist want and to withstand aggression. >> [music] [music] [music] >> These films, produced abroad for the people of the free nations, present new evidence [music] of their efforts to build strength for a lasting peace. >> [music] [music] [music] >> The story of Mahmoud begins in a school. It was a French school, but in Morocco in North Africa. Here, on the edge of the Sahara, Mahmoud and his little Arab friends learn the three R's. It wasn't always easy work, either for the students or the teacher. Even in a grammar class, social problems could come up. Yes, Ali had a sister. No, Ibrahim had no sister. And Ibrahim's brother, Mahmoud, did he have a sister? He said, yes. The teacher told him he couldn't have a sister since his brother didn't have one. Then he pointed out that their father had two wives. >> [whistles] >> Most of the pupils, like Mahmoud, lived in the village of Timelay, near the school. Timelay was, well, it was a Moroccan oasis. A palm grove strung along a trickle of water. A jumble of little square houses made of dried earth. On the surface, the place seemed a paradise. A fine playground for children. But underneath the beauty, there was wretchedness. Behind every pretty vista, there was hardship and filth and disease. Even what little water there was was polluted. The soil was exhausted by centuries of misuse. The proud, courteous village people lived barren lives. They endured. Mahmoud's home was like all the others. His family lived as Arab families who for generations. These two mothers worked continuously. The staple foods, boiled barley meal and rancid oil. Meat once a month with luck. A fine diet for growing children. They kept their ancient customs. In time of drought, the kids of the town still prayed for rain in the old way. Under the endless sunlight. They gathered their scanty harvest just as their ancestors had. With such methods, crude, even savage. Their best years were poor. And a bad year meant famine. The teacher was so depressed by all this that she decided to add gardening to the school curriculum. She was no expert, but she thought she could teach her students at least the rudiments of good modern farming. But well, hoeing and raking were pretty everyday affairs. Not nearly as interesting as arithmetic and reading. Young Mahmoud was especially bored by this kind of work. He was a good boy and very bright usually, but no matter what gardening chore the teacher gave him, she could be sure that half the time he'd forget to do it. She told him that the day would come when he'd be a real farmer and he'd have to look after his crops, but he hated the idea. All he really cared about was machinery. One day, although he'd been told not to, he tried to start the school's water pump and broke it. He wouldn't water his flowers, but he loved to play with any machine he could lay hands on. The teacher was pretty angry. She decided a little discipline was in order, so she kept him after school a few days later. She had him write a hundred times, "A child shouldn't play with motors." He said he only disobeyed because he wanted to learn mechanics. She always got the same answer from all her students, but Mahmoud, she was convinced, really meant it. And so she asked him if he'd like her to show him how to drive a car. It seemed the least she could do. >> [music] >> She showed him how to drive a car that afternoon, but he showed her much more. He showed her his country in all its harshness and beauty and danger. >> [music] [music] [music] >> It was a country where plants good for oil could grow out of the parched earth right alongside plants that held a deadly poison. >> [music] [music] [music] >> It was a country where you had to learn early in life what things were harmless and what weren't. >> [music] >> It was a country where there were people whose lives were less easy even than Mahmoud's. The blue men they're called. They have no villages. They're nomads from the heart of the great desert. As tough and timeless as the land they live in. All this Mahmoud showed his teacher that afternoon. They had become friends. And Mahmoud needed friends. For where could he find his future in that desolate country? >> [music] [music] >> Its soil was turning to desert. Its houses were crumbling to dust. A fourth of its people were leaving for the cities to become what? Well, in Timimoun, as in most Arab towns, everybody who could tried to learn tumbling in order to perform in circuses and nightclubs all over the world. It was a way out, a means of escape. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> But not everybody could be an acrobat. Those who couldn't left home in their youth, became dock hands or grocers or laborers in some distant place, and came home only to die. But even escape wasn't the answer. The French school system tried to give the very young, like Mahmoud, a chance to educate themselves into a better life right at home. America, they said, is the country of big houses and big machines. Machinery. Always machinery. It was pretty ironic. >> Mahmoud had missed school one week. And when the teacher went to look for him, she found him helping his family at the village's ancient oil press. That was the only big machine he knew. He introduced her to his father. At that time, Mahmoud had a simple choice. He could get away into the world, or he could stay in Timlay and grow up to be like his father. Soon after that, the teacher's term at Timlay ended. She received orders to move to another school in Casablanca. >> Mahmoud! Mahmoud! >> Mahmoud hadn't ever really believed she'd go. It was a serious blow to him. He wanted to go with her. He said no one could live in Timlay. She had a hard time convincing him he had to stay home till he grew older and finished school. She told him he'd only become a mechanic if he stayed and studied hard. >> When the teacher went, Mahmoud's chief hopes went with her. He was left with the same barren world. France had done a lot to improve Morocco, but she didn't have the finances or the equipment. Without some outside help, for all France's efforts, little would change for Mahmoud and his people. They'd go on eking out their existence as they'd always done. Going through the same motions as ever. Mahmoud, with his best friend gone, gave up. Gathering together all his tiny savings, he left. He ran away. It was a complicated journey. First, he took the bus that tours the edge of the Sahara like any commuter line. >> [music] >> After that, a native trucker hired him as a grease monkey. That got him a little farther. >> [music] >> A good part of the way he walked, >> [music] >> but he saw the ocean for the first time in his life, and that was very important. >> [music] >> He saw snow for the first time, too, on the tops of the Atlas Mountains. But it was a long way. >> [music] >> At last, he got to Marrakech, a big oasis and a tourist town, and there he caught a train for the rest of his trip. Because there was only one place for him to run away to, Casablanca. And once there, there was only one thing he wanted to do, see the port. American economic aid had just begun to arrive in North Africa at that time. The docks were working full tilt. Mahmoud couldn't have known that he was watching the arrival of the help he and his people needed. All he knew was that he could feast his eyes on all kinds of machines, bigger and more interesting than anything he'd ever imagined. But a city is expensive, and his few francs [music] didn't last long. There were too many wonderful things to do. >> [music] [music] >> There was even the ancient Muslim custom of almsgiving to drain his pocket. Until the day when But no, he was too proud for that. He lived in some corner of the enormous native slum that surrounds the whiteness of Casablanca. It's called Bidonville. Tin Can Town. He learned there that it isn't just in tiny lost villages that people can be hungry and miserable. Every day, the same old hunt for work. Every day, the same story. Paper boy? No, there was a syndicate of paper boys. If you didn't belong, you couldn't work. There were too many people, too few jobs. But there were always rotten oranges to be fished out of the bay and eaten. They're good if you're hungry enough. There were certain last resorts to try, too. Casablanca, like any place, has its share of little crooks. >> He tried his hand at all kinds of jobs. He was a shoeshine boy for a while. Two big brushes, a rag, and a box will set a little Moroccan up in business. Once a distant cousin took him in, a grocer who also came from the south and gave him a temporary job. And at one point, he thought his dream of being a mechanic had come true. It was a poor apprenticeship, though, and a thin life. And then one night, when he least [music] expected it, his luck turned. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> She took him to a restaurant and he told her all his adventures. She was his friend. She find a way to help him. And she did. She went to the offices of the agricultural modernization program for Morocco. There an engineer told her that Timulay was part of the program. He said that a new model farm was being built at the village. A cooperative farm. And Mahmoud could work on it after he first went to a place called Les Chene. The Oaks. The Oaks was a technical school operated by the modernization program. On the teacher's recommendation, Mahmoud was admitted to it in spite of being under age. >> [bell] >> Mahmoud had a fine time at the school. At first, although he was very pleased and excited at the change in his fortunes, he was very skeptical, too. He was noticed one day by a man he called the big chief. The same agricultural engineer his teacher had talked to. The big cheese said that soon there'd be equipment in Timbuctu as fine as what the Oaks had. Mahmoud said he didn't believe it. That in Timbuctu there'd always be wooden plows. It just wasn't possible that a place like Timbuctu could be part of an improvement plan. But gradually at the Oaks he began to realize that it was true. The French had started a modernization program after the war, but only now with the help of America's Marshall Plan and Point Four program did they have what they needed to achieve their aim. He took a certain amount of hazing at the school. After all, he was the youngest student and he'd never slept in a bed before in his life. But for him this was worth everything. It was an education he'd never dreamed to have. >> [whistles] >> He worked hard and he stayed near the head of his class. >> Then, just before the vacation, the big chief came to him and said, "You want to go to Timulay with me, Mamood?" And Mamood said, "Oh, yes." His mother and father were very glad to see him again. He'd become a local hero. They even killed a sheep in his honor, and there was a feast. >> [music] [music] >> He found many changes in Timulay. For one thing, the olive oil didn't taste bad as it had ever since he could remember, because the old mill had been shut down. A new one had been built beside it. It wasn't the most modern mill in the world, but it was a great deal better than the old one, and the oil it made was sweet. The village air was filled with the noise of wonderful new machines. Mamood knew that soon he'd be one of the mechanics who'd keep them running, who would keep that noise in the air. His father was afraid of all the modernness at first. He said grain wouldn't grow again if steel touched it. But Mahmoud told him why this wasn't so. There'd been very little rain that year, but they'd built a dam and a tank, and there was always water. And so Mahmoud could swim. And this thirsty soil could be farmed with a brand new tractor the villagers bought from the modernization program. Today Mahmoud has come home to stay. He hasn't changed. He's still a little Moroccan boy, >> [music] >> but his world is changing. Lost so long in the past, it's becoming a part of the present with a real stake in the future. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Ooh. >> [music] [music] [music] >> Ooh. >> [music] [music] [music] >> Ooh.