FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27576, 5 February 1955, Page 9

FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM

Recovery Qf First Printed Edition

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, February 3. The first printed edition of the Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, was found in a suitcase in a London underground station after being stolen from the British Museum, it was said in a London Court today. A detective told a Magistrate’s Court that Thomas Gerald Bolitho, aged 64, and described as an exporter, had admitted taking the copy—the original Strasbourg edition—from the museum and replacing it with a later Paris edition. Bolitho was remanded for a week, charged with theft. The detective said that on Bolitho’s direction he recovered the stolen copy from a suitcase deposited in the leftluggage office at the West End underground station of Baker street, the “home” of Conan Doyle’s great fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. The Strasbourg edition of Rouget de I’lsle’s anthem, printed In 1792 to rally the French forces marching against Austria, was valued about £lOOO. It vanished from the British Museum on January 29.