THE BONNET ROUGE GANG

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 16, 18 July 1918, Page 8

THE BONNET ROUGE GANG

Duval was the principal of seven defendants in the case which the prosecuting attorney called the second link of the chain of conspiracies against the security of France. Duval was the manager of the notorious paper, the Bonnet Rouge, and was alleged,to have received £40,000 from Marx, a Mannheim banker, for pro-German propaganda in France. The other defendants were sentenced to terms of five to ten years' penal servitude. Of these, one Leymarie, formerly principal secretary to M. Malvy,: ex-Minister of. the Interior, as chief of the political police, ordered the cheque for £6000 found on Duval at the Swiss frontier to be returned to him. Most of the other defendants were on the staff of the Bonnet Rouge.

Writing from Paris on 29th April, the .Paris correspondent of London Daily Telegraph said: The Bonnet Rouge trial opens to-morrow before the Paris CourtMartial, the same which convicted 8010, and the Public Prosecutor will, be Lieutenant Mornet. The whole of this Bonnet Rouge case is part and parcel of Boloism, and all these affairs hang together. One or two men remain to be tried after the Bonnet Rouge proceedings, and then the whole abscess will have been ■ cleaned out. The Bonnet Rouge and Boloism were simply German moves to spread defeatism in France, and to bring French public opinion to make an early and, separate peace. The whole campaign is as plain as day now. The Bonnet Rouge was first denounced in the Chamber, on 7th July, 1917, by M. Maurice Barres.

A fortnight later, M. Clemenceau indicted the whole' Bonnet Rouge and 8010 gang in the Senate. M. Malvy resigned, and he himself asked the Chamber to grant leave to prosecute him before the High Court. M. Malvy appeared in the Senate some months ago, as being accused of high treason, and his .trial by the Senate, that is, of course, the High Court, will be resumed shortly. Then came the prosecution of M. Caillaux, now a prisoner in the Sante Prison, and you know the rest, tho conviction and execution of 8010. . ;

The Bonnet Rouge trial is the nest hygienic measure. The Bonnet Rouge, a halfpenny evening newspaper, was started by the anarchist and swindler Vigo, alias Almereyda.' He began quietly, almost patriotically, and then gradually but skilfully, played his cards, and the newspaper became defeatist. More than that, censored articles were reprinted in a special edition and sent to the front. All this time, M. Malvy was Home Secretary, and received Almereyda constantly at his home and office, and M. Caillaux was in constant and intimate correspondence with Almereyda.. Duval, one of the managers of the Bonnet Rouge, returning from about his twelfth trip to Switaerland, was stopped and searched, on 15th May, 1917, at the frontier sta-. tion of Bellegarde, and a cheque for 150,937 francs; 50 cents (over £6000) was found upon him and seized, but a week later it was returned to Duval through the Home Office, M. Malvy being Home Secretary.

It was not until 12th July, five days after Mi. Barres' intervention in. the Chamber, that the Bonnet Rouge was suspended from publication, and it was on 15th July only that Duval was arrested. Duval's cheque represented payments made by the German banker Marx, of Mannheim. Duval himself acknowledged that he was -paid £20,000 by Marx, but asserts that he received the money a few months before the war. It is alleged that he drew, not £20,000, but £40,000 from Marx, and not before, but after, the outbreak of war. It was with this 1,000,000 francs that the Bonnet Rouge was started. Duval made, apparently without any difficulty, over a. dozen trips to Switzerland, and one extraordinary thing happened during those visits. A Madame Amherd keeps .the Hotel International at Geneva, and it was there that Duval used to put up. On one occasion he casually handed over 500,000 francs to this woman. She signed a receipt for 345,000 francs, dated 29th June, 1914. A curious fact is that she herself acknowledges that she had from him, not 345,000 francs, but 500,000 francs, and that he handed her this money, not in June, 1914, but in May, 1915, for the good reason that she and Duval had never set eyes on each other until May, 1815. Duval thus appear* as

the prime financial agent in the whole Bonnet Rouge affair. Unfortunately, Madame Amherd lives in Switzerland, and presumably will not respond to a subpoena as a witness at the trial. Her evidence would be interesting.