CLEANING UP PARIS

Evening Star, Issue 20586, 11 September 1930, Page 17

CLEANING UP PARIS

WAR ON CITY'S STATUES PARIS, August 16. Paris possesses an energetic iconoclast in M. des Isnards, a municipal councillor, who led the campaign for the removal of all statues that until recently stood in front of the Madeleine. The statues have disappeared, the road has been widened, and everyone is pleased with the result. M. des Isnards, however, is not prepared to rest on his laurels. “ Paris needs a Dictator of Good Taste,” declares M. des Isnards. “He should be given full powers to rid the city in three months of all the monuments that encumber and disfigure .t. The suggestion had been made that the superfluous statues of Paris should be removed to the borders of the new highway to be built between the capital and St. Germain. I am afraid this route will not be long enough for the purpose. To find room for all the stone nobodios who placidly contemplate Paris from their pedestals one would have to select the road to Marseille;; from Bordeaux.” M. des Isnards, if he were the Dictator, would have a Paris unadorned, and ho would begin in the Tuilories gardens. The great Gambetta monument would be the first to fall. “Would the memory of Gambetta suffer,” he asked, “if his effigy—his attitude is that of a man trying to decide whether it is raining—were removed from the Carrousel P”