"LE BONNET ROUGE"

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 49, 27 August 1917, Page 7

"LE BONNET ROUGE"

A SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT

EDITOR'S MYSTERIOUS SUICIDE.

(UKIIED PBES3 ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

(AVEISAUAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received April 27, 8.40 a.m.)

PARIS, 26th August.

A surprising development has occurred in the so-called "Le Bonnet Rouge Affair." M. Almeryeda, the late editor of the Bonnet Rouge newspaper/ who was recently arrested on a charge of possessing a secret document, committed suicide mysteriously in prison. Many officials have been cashiered or reduced for negligence. ■ ■

M. Duval, manager of the Bonnet Rouge, who was simultaneously arrested on the Swiss frontier, on a charge of trading with the enemy, has since been charged with treasonable relations with the enemy. The police found a compromising cheque on Duval, and returned it to Duval after photographing it. The Chief of Police has now been dismissed.

The Liberte states that Almeryeda conferred in Switzerland with a notorious Austrian financier, Rosenberg, whose operations were partly responsible for the Second Balkan War.

The Paris police early this month raided the offices of a mysteriously subsidised newspaper, called Le ' Bonnet Rouge (The Red Cap), which was described by a correspondent of The Times as devoted equally to the pacifist propaganda and the interests of M. Caillaux (the ex-Prime Minister),' whose" conduct during the Agadir crisis, when FrancoGerman relations were severely strained, was unfavourably criticised. M. Caillaux -was Prime Minister of France during the Moroccan crisis in 19H. He was suspected of carrying on a diplomacy of his own behind the backs of the- President and Foreign Minister, and, after a dramatic scene in the Senate, wliere his conduct was impugned, his Ministers decided that they could not carry on the Government, and the Cabinet resigned. M. and Mme. Caillaux have frequently during the course of the war had occasion to notice their unpopularity with the mass of the French public. There have been incidents in restaurants and on the boulevards which have shown. that, in spite of the great pre-occupations of the moment, or perhaps rather because of them, there are large numbers of Frenchmen who have not forgotten the course of M. Caillaux's pre-war policy, nor. the nature of the secret diplomacy of the Agadir incident..',...

That in spite of his declarations tha flavour ofhis pre-war policy, remains was shown by his adventures at Viohy last summer. He and his wife were walking in the town when a passer-by .remarked ■loudly, "Voila Caillaux!" There was some hooting, which was increased by M. Caillaux's defiant attitude. A crowd gathered quickly. Soon- sticks and umbrellas were raised. A crippled soldier struck alt. the former Prime Minister with one of'-his crutches. It was with difficulty that M. arid Mme. Caillaux man; aged to reach the refuge of Government House. The crowd had grown to uamanageable dimensions, and the police wore powerless to clear the street. The first-storey windows and the verandah of the house were liberally boinbarded with stones by the crowd, which did not disperse until 1 o'clock in the morning, when all the available mounted and foot gendarmerie of the district appeared on the scene. A company of infantry had to be drafted into the town in order to prevent any further trouble. M. and Mme. Caillaux then left Vichy for an unknown destination. Some relatives of the late M. Gaston Calmette, who was shot by Mme. Caillaux (a -crime for which she was acquitted because the jury would Dot record a verdict which would have sent her to the guillotine), were staying in Vichy at th'e time, but they were in no way concerned in the demonstantions, -which seem to have been due solely to a too lively recollection among the crowd of the foreign policy of M. Caillaux before the war, and of the circumstances of M, Gaston Calmette's death. '