Distraction from Scandal

Distraction from Scandel

(See front cover)

For two months the bullet-riddled body of Alexandre Stavisky has mouldered in its grave. But the evil shadow of this arch-swindler continued to march on through the ranks of French politics, striking in the dark like a vampire at large. Paris newspapers, seldom more than 16 pages, are not given to over-writing the news. Of the 30 columns of news in last Sunday's Matin, 14 were definitely concerned with the Stavisky scandal.

No near solution was the murder of Albert Prince, the handsome hollow-eyed Appellate Judge who was lured to Dijon fortnight ago and slain on a railroad track just before he was to testify concerning several of Stavisky's protectors (TIME, March 5). Whether Judge Prince was still alive when tied to the track was unknown, although a doctor discovered poison in his body tissues which seemed to indicate that he was already dead. By then a new theory had arisen, wild as anything in the entire case: Judge Prince was murdered by a gang of professional criminals that had revived the name and the manner of the early igth Century Carbonari. The theory wras voiced officially last week by white-chinned old Henri Cheron, now Minister of Justice. Said he:

"We must succeed in finding the assassins of the unfortunate counselor Albert Prince. . . . The country has been the prey of a band of evildoers who have recoiled before nothing to achieve their crimes. That band must be completely unmasked and punished."

A bloodstained knife and a powder puff were found near the Prince body. Brushing aside the powder puff, police concentrated on the knife. In the 1820's, when pomaded romantics sniffed laudanum, read Lamartine and drank from skull-shaped mugs, a secret society known as / Carbonari (the Charcoal Burners) nourished in France and Italy. There was nothing criminal about the original members who were exiled Neapolitan Liberals, forced, like true charcoal burners, to hide in the forests. Soon they took to murdering their political opponents, and later their members were neither Neapolitan nor Liberal. Their mark was a bloody dagger, left beside each of their victims. If Albert Prince was killed by such as these they were still at large last week, despite a reward of 140,000 francs for their capture.

The Stubs, One who was arrested last week was the dead swindler's wife, lovely dark-haired Mme Stavisky. A onetime dress model known as Arlette Simon, she married Swindler Stavisky shortly after the police raided a gay little dinner they both attended in the suburbs in 1926, bore him two handsome children, and acquired some of the finest clothes, the richest jewels in Paris.

On Stavisky's death hundreds of checks that he had scattered about Paris to lubricate his crooked schemes were found. Nearly all had been made out to cash. The stubs of the checks, presumably with the recipients' names, were missing. When this was discovered Chief Inspector Bony was promptly suspended from the Surete Generate. With a month to think things over, Inspector Bony decided last week that the Government really meant business in its efforts to solve the Stavisky mystery. Back to his superiors went he with a suggestion that if he were reinstated he could find the missing check stubs.

Next night Minister of Interior Albert Sarraut, Public Prosecutor Gomien, Examining Magistrate Ordonneau and "a Personality" whose name no reporter could learn, assembled in the home of Inspector Bony. With a bow the Personality produced the check stubs, 1,200 of them, to a total value of $13.000,000 and explained that "Sacha" Stavisky had given the stubs to his Secretary Anton Romagnino. Romagnino had given them back to Mme Stavisky, who had handed them to the Personality.

Mme Stavisky was promptly arrested "for obstructing justice." Her jewels and furs were taken from her and she was locked in La Petite Roquette prison to await trial. She sent a message to the nurse at her apartment:

''Don't tell the children where I am. If they cry very much tell them I have gone on a cruise."

The end of mystery was not yet. Stavisky Secretary Romagnino had disappeared. So had a pasteboard box crammed with 10.000.000 francs worth of jewels which Alexandre Stavisky is supposed to have salvaged from the collapse of his Bayonne pawnshop and hidden in his Paris apartment. At the week's end twelve persons were under arrest, 18 in all were charged with complicity or suspended from office, in connection with the Stavisky scandal or the Prince murder. Most important of the catch:

1) Joseph Garat, Mayor of Bayonne, a Deputy of France who helped Stavisky set up the ill-fated municipal pawnshop which cost investors $30,000,000; 2) Georges Pressard, Chief Prosecutor of Paris and brother-in-law of onetime Premier Chautemps who was charged with obstructing and postponing the trial of Stavisky for his various ante-Bayonne peculations; 3) M. Guidoud-Ribaud, onetime attache of the Minister of Finance.

Despite the roarings of the Press, authorities refused to publish the names on the check stubs or to say what was contained in the mysterious documents for which Judge Prince had been murdered. The documents were not lost. Before Judge Prince was called away on his fatal trip to Dijon he was smart enough to have each one photostated.

No man knew better than Gaston Doumergue that the crisis that still grips France will not end until the entire Stavisky rottenness is exposed, explained and paid for in the penitentiary. Gaston Doumergue was called from sunny retirement in Southern France a month ago to save France. The country was on the verge of violent revolution. Hundreds were wounded and more than a score killed in the bloodiest riots Paris has seen since 1871. The plump little Premier came and a distraught people cheered him to the echo. He whipped together a cabinet drawn from every party but the Socialists, Royalists & Communists. He promised sweeping reforms. He soothed frayed nerves by beaming with vast good nature on everyone in sight. But Gaston Doumergue knew and every French politician knew that the barricades would rise again amid the crack of rifles, the clatter of charging troops and the dreadful roar of marching mobs if the Stavisky scandal is not blotted out of memory by an era of honest government.

All this will take time. Meanwhile there were other problems, the solution of which would help to distract the public. The budget was completely unbalanced. Gold was pouring to the U. S. and the franc seemed in danger. France was engaged in an expensive trade war with Britain, and there remained as always the Hitler bugaboo. To drive the stubborn Deputies, Premier Doumergue had just one effective weapon: the threat to resign, go back to his country place, and leave Mm. les Deputees to the mobs of Paris.

Budget, One of the conditions under which the smiling little Southerner agreed to return to politics was that the long-dangling Budget be passed before March 1. Recalcitrant Deputies were dragooned by an ancient device. At midnight Feb. 28 lackeys stepped into the Chamber and stopped the clocks. Mm. les Deputes settled down to wrangle hoarsely till dawn. At 6:30 in the morning, the final vote was taken, and the Budget passed. It called for an expenditure of 50,162.000,000 francs ($3.172,000.000) and leaves France with a deficit of 1,881.000.000 francs. But Premier Doumergue was given dictatorial power to slash expenditures until the Budget balances.

New Deal! Clearer & clearer Frenchmen began to see parallels between Gaston Doumergue's emergency Cabinet and the Roosevelt New Deal. Last week President Roosevelt asked Congress to authorize him to raise and lower tariffs and make foreign trade bargains (see p. 13). Last week Premier Doumergue received precisely that same authority with the Budget bill. Just as President Roosevelt likes to rule by executive order when Congress is away, so Premier Doumergue plans to do the same thing as soon as he can send the Chamber packing. The Ministry of Commerce is to be reorganized and something suspiciously like an NRA code is hanging over the French heavy industries including steel whose leaders have been meeting quietly for days to consider a voluntary agreement covering wages and production for the next three years.

Defense. Nothing served better to take Frenchmen's minds off the Stavisky scandal than new plans for national defense. But this was no cheap distraction. France already has the biggest and best army in Europe, and a navy that has improved 1,000% since the War. For the first time since the Third Republic was founded, two generals sit in the Cabinet--Marshal Petain, Minister of War. and General De-nain. Minister of Air. Bills were sent to Parliamentary committees last week providing for military expenditures of six billion francs ($390.000.000'). France will continue her frontier chain of forts. Because she is absolutely dependent on foreign oil she will build a series of enormous oil reservoirs for the army and navy such as Italy already has. She will set aside a special sum to be used over three years in developing swifter fighting planes. She will build a new 26,000-ton battleship. sister ship to the still incomplete Dunkerque.

Reforms. Of topnotch interest to every French citizen were proposals for reforming and reorganizing the entire parliamentary system. What would Premier Doumergue suggest? How far would he go in overhauling democratic machinery that failed to function in a crisis? The best answer seemed to be in the character of the man himself.

Gaston Doumergue's career has been simple. Born at Aigues-Vives in Card 70 years ago, he served in the colonial service in Cochin-China, first entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1893. In the past 40 years he has popped in & out of various Cabinet posts, was Premier for a brief period (December 1913-May 1914). He first became an international figure in 1924. Amid a cyclone of charges and counter-charges Alexandre Millerand was accused of having interfered in party affairs, was forced to resign the Presidency. Politicians turned instinctively to the round little fellow who had never been connected with any political scandal, a bachelor, a Protestant, and after a lifetime in politics, still a poor man.

On the side lines, as President of France, Gaston Doumergue acquired a vast disgust for the French political game of which he had been a part for so long. As head of the State, he had a chance for the first time in a generation to appreciate the layman's point of view as governments fell, week after week, month after month, with nothing done. But. like most Frenchmen, honest "Gastounet" is at heart extremely conservative. He may adopt such simple superficial reforms as commend themselves to his cautious Gallic mind. But anyone who expects him to remake the legislative and political machine of France, to rid it of blocs, to break with deep-rooted traditions, is likely to be disappointed.

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