HUGE PLOT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 306, 25 November 1937, Page 11

HUGE PLOT.

CAGOULARDS’ PLAN.

OVERTHROW OF REPUBLIC. PARIS, Nov. 24. The Minister of the Interior, M. Dorrnoy, issued a statement following the official report on the activities of the Cagoularas- issued last night, saying :— 1 ‘Searches have revealed plans to attack the Ministries, the wholesale importation of arms and also material intended for the production of false identity papers and arms transport permits. “The police found papers stolen from military bureaux from which the plotters learned the quantity of materials in the possession of the Regular Army units and the names of the commanding officers. “The Cagoulards had a list of Paris houses with double entrances, a precise plan of the Paris sewers, tracing the routes leading to the Chamber of Deputies and maps tracing lines leading to the homes of Socialist Deputies and the offices of Left Wing .newspapers. The police found the facsimile signatures of certain Ministers and a list of Ministers and Deputies who would have been arrested after the signal for the uprising. “The Cagoulards planned to seize arsenals and municipal buses and convert them into armoured cars. The preparations were broken up, thanks to the vigilance of the Government. “Republican institutions have nothing to fear from these Fascist enterprises. The guilty will severely panlshed. We assure French democracy that any criminal action against the Republic can be quashed.” The police raided chateaux, including that of the late scent king, Francois Cot.y,' once owned by Madame Dubarry, which stands on tho top of a strategic hill dominating Paris. It contained a mysterious underground fortress, a network of concreted bombproof passages and vaults, a telephone exchange and electrical machinery built by foreign workmen who were regularly replaced every fortnight. Five more Cagoulards have been arrested at Paris. A police net dragged ill an organisation of 200 conspirators at Toulouse allegedly backed by industrialists. An anus dump and concrete trenches were discovered.. Cagoulard plans were found in the flat of Eugone de Loncie, a director and consulting engineer of the Penhoot Dockyards Company, builders of the Normandie, who.is at present visiting Italy. Le Loncie’s brother Henri has been arrested at Nice.