FRANCE’S MUNITION KINGS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23044, 21 November 1936, Page 19

FRANCE’S MUNITION KINGS

The decision of the French Government to take legal proceedings against Messrs Schneider on the charge of supplying defective torpedoes marks another stage in the French campaign for the nationalisation of armament firms, writes the London diarist of the Evening Standard. The firm, established during the Second Empire, has its works at Creusot, in the centre of France It has always prospered, and has made fortunes for three generations of Schneiders, several of whom have now married into such aristocratic French families as the SaintSauveurs, the Juignes and the Brissacs. M, Eugene Schneider, the present head of the firm, takes no direct part in politics, although he is said to be a generous contributor

to party funds. There was one Schneider who was President of the French Legislature in Napoleon Ill’s time. He was the hero of an amusing story. He had as a contemporary, but not as a relative, another Schneider—Hortense, the famous singer and beauty, who had many worshippers, including the Khedive Ismael. Once the Khedive was hurrying from Marseilles to see het when he was laid low by an attack of liver, and had to go to Vichy. He ordered his secretary to telegraph to Hortense: “ Come at once. Everything arranged." By an error the secretary sent it to M. Schneider, who at the time was negotiating s contract with the Egyptian Army, He went to Vichy at once, and war shown into a magnificent suite be*decked with the costliest flowers. When the Khedive came in there was astonishment and disappointment on both sides-