Battle of Mud

Unlike the bourgeoisie of other lands, middle-class Frenchmen are quick to quit their snug hearths and do battle in the streets when they think their rascally politicians need a lesson. Last week some of the most substantial families in France were represented in two days of spirited assaults upon luckless police assigned to the painful duty of guarding the Chamber of Deputies. "Thieves! Assassins! Staviskys!" shrieked sturdy citizens breaking their canes in furious scuffles which always ended in their being overpowered and carted off for a brief respite in jail.* "Swindlers! Demagogs! Staviskys!" Meanwhile inside the Chamber, with the roar of the crowd in their ears, Deputies strove to appear virtuous by slinging the vilest sort of mud at Premier Camille Chautemps regarding L'Affaire Stavisky --the case of the Bayonne swindler "Handsome Alexandre" Stavisky who founded a Government-supervised pawnshop under the name of M. Serge Alexandre and was found with a bullet through his brain at Chamonix after his 500,000,000-franc fraud in worthless pawnshop bonds sold to French insurance companies was exposed (TIME, Jan. 15). Out of 22 Paris dailies only eight accepted the report of the Surete Generate (Secret Service) that Stavisky committed suicide as he was about to be captured. Five papers spoke guardedly of his "death." Comment in the remaining nine ranged from strong hints to flat accusations that the Surete Generale had "exe-cuted" a man who knew too much. Cried Le Jour: "The Surete Generale says 'suicide.' Public opinion replies 'murder' and its instinct is seldom wrong." Even the stuffily moderate Journal des Debats observed: "Stavisky's sudden death is so opportune for those who feared the revelations he might make that the circumstance compels attention." In the gutter press epithets elsewhere unprintable were hurled at the Chautemps Cabinet and in the Chamber Deputies of the Right mouthed even fouler words at the Leftist Premier. Rallying to his defense Left Deputies raked up ancient slime, some of it older than the World War, to befoul ex-Premier Andre Tardieu, onetime henchman of "Tiger" Clemenceau and last week's leader of the Right attack. Rehashed were the Oustric, Hanau, Aeropostale and a dozen more scandals until Paris fairly stank. Cheers, significantly from all parties in the Chamber, greeted a firm declaration by Premier Chautemps that he would take steps to stamp "libel" out of the Press. "There have been faults, there has been negligence and the guilty will be pun- ished!" cried M. Chautemps, promising to reorganize the entire police force and punish judges whose collusion enabled Swindler Stavisky to pursue his frauds for some ten years. "Messieurs, we must and shall get at the facts!" continued the Premier. "You shall learn the whole truth of an affair which is threatening the very existence of the Republic!" Dramatically M. Chautemps declared that police had seized "thousands of pamphlets" printed after L'Affaire Stavisky broke "demanding that France confide her destiny to a Directoire [Dictatorship] of men of energy." Many of these men, the Premier hastily added, had not been consulted by the pamphleteers. Scathingly L'Echo de Paris inquired: "Does Premier Chautemps know that among those listed for the Directoire 'without being consulted' was his own War Minister, M. Edouard Daladier?" Whatever the Premier or the Chamber knew last week, the ''Battle of Mud" came to an abrupt end when a motion that the Chamber appoint a commission to investigate L'Affaire Starisky was defeated 360 to 229--the Socialists, who had been verbally lashing the Government, supporting it with their votes. To seal this victory the Left's great champion, M. Edouard Herriot, made a booming plea for a vote of entire confidence in the Government's conduct, put it through 376-10-205, after which the Chamber adjourned. Said Mme Stavisky, after attending the funeral of her husband who was buried with dispatch in Chamonix: "I don't know whether my husband shot himself or not but there is no doubt that he would still be alive if the police had not left him without medical attention for two hours. My husband was always floating financial schemes which we agreed not to discuss. . . . We met nine years ago. It was love at first sight. I bore him a son while he was serving 18 months in jail and we were married afterward. Of course there were other women in his life, mostly spies!" Mlle Lucette Lameras, 27, who was in Stavisky's room when the shot was fired, so the Surete Generale said, made no disclosures, quaffed champagne at the Chamonix police station while being questioned. Sought out in Paris by United Presswoman Mary Knight she extended a heavily bejeweled hand, drawled, "Give me your card. I don't say a word for less than 5,000 francs ($305). I have other bidders. I will let you know shortly. Au revoir." A certain Dr. Jamin of Chamonix complained : "I was the first to be called to attend Stavisky. I protest that I was not also called to testify at the inquest which pronounced him a suicide." In Bayonne the local Mayor, M. Joseph Garat, a Deputy of France arrested as an accomplice of Swindler Stavisky, sat in his cell shivering and disconsolate. One of his last acts as Mayor was to refuse the piteous pleas of shivering prisoners that he install central heating in the jail.

*Pursu:mt to French etiquet in such political riots only one prisoner, out of a batch of more than 200, was held in jail on the day after arrest. He said he was a U. S. citizen, Joseph Klustik, 20, of Uniontown, Pa. Police held him as a vagrant, lent a sympathetic ear to his protest: "I was just standing there. I didn't hit anybody or do anything!"

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