BOLO'S TREACHERY

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 20

BOLO'S TREACHERY

DEATH SENTENCE PASSED. There- is intensified public interest in the 8010 Trial, .largely due to the dragging in, directly and indirectly, of a remarkable list of notable persons, including M. Poincare statesmen, and royalties. The court is densely with a fashionable audience. Monsignor 8010, prisoner's brother, a popular Paris preacher, passionately defended the accused. He declared that many of the documents had been falsified, and the Germans had intrigued to ruin his brother. Bolo's trial closed on the 13th after Monsignor 8010 had made a stern struggle on behalf of his brother, denouncing the Bernstorff telegram* as forgeries. The Public Prosecutor, in his final speech, said that the evidence showed that 8010 was a ruined swindler before the war. Germany used him as a tool for shaking the morale of the French nation, for which purpose the Berlin Government supplied him with £400,000. The Public Prosecutor demanded that 8010 be sentenced to death, also that the former Italian deputy Ca'vallini be sentenced to death. The civil tribunal of the Seine declared 8010 a bigamist and his second marriage to bo void. 8010 Pasha has been sentenced to death. The court was "unanimous in passing a sentence of death, on the ground that he conveyed intelligence to the enemy. Cavalrini was sentenced to be shot if he returns to France. Porchere was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for having commerce with the enemy. There was a sensation in the crowded court ae the judges answered each of the 11 questions regarding 8010 with a unanimous verdict of guilty.

Tho crowd outsido cheered the verdict, shouting " la mort." 8010 was not present when tho verdict was given. Tho press unanimously • approves or Bolo's sentence, and announces that 8010 is appealing to tho Court of Cassation. The Petit Parisien says the appeal necessitates rehearing, as tho dofence alleges that the witness Casella was seen conferring with the president of tho court. In the closing scene of Bolo's trial, the Public Prosecutor made a terrible peroration. He said he would like 'to see others in the dock beside 8010, but he was a go-between in all this abominable machination. The only possible punishment was a firing squad at Versailles. France and her allies were awaiting the verdict. It must not be said that a Frenchman who • took 12,0.00,000 francs to betray France would not be shot. He concluded: " Without a shadow of anxiety or -a shadow of emotion; with all my love of country, I call on you to sentence 8010 to death." AN AMAZING ROMANCE OF THE . WAR. Tho arrest of 8010 Pasha, who had boon well known in business and social circles for some years, followed (on October 1) the receipt of a cable from New York intimating that the Deutsche Bank in 1916 paid £.600,000 into 8010 Pasha's accounts inAmerican banks, and that tho amount had been transferred to Paris through a French bank (says a writer in the Sydney Sun). 8010 Pasha was the son of a poor clerk in Marseilles, whose meagre pay, insufficient even for the modest family needs, was eked Out by the fees of a girls' school kept "by Bolo's sister. 8010 was clever without being really intellectual: he failed to obtain the bachelor's degree which opens tho door to tho professions in France. Ho fell back on other arts and talents. He became a dentist, then a curler of ladies' hair, then a merchant in live lobsters, a boat owner, a restaurant proprietor, and so on through a variety of roles. Most of these resulted in failure; but 8010 was not greatly disturbed; he was experimenting with the money of friends. While curling the fringes of h;s fair clients in Marseilles 8010 was acquiring polish of manner and all the arts of winning confidence, while allowing his imagination to run riot in magnificent schemes He ended his career in Marseilles by ruining a friend, and clearing, off with his wife. Yet such was his power of persuasion, or of securing compliance by other means, that years afterwards 8010 induced this very man to take upon his shoulders a charge of having assumed the name of 8010 in an affair of fraud that had landed that worthy in prison. Finally he married an opera singer, the widow of a wealthy man, and this gave him his first real footing. 8010, by his marriage, acquired a superb villa at Biarritz. When the former Khedive left Egypt he became straitened, but soon, according to the Figaro, 8010 was a millionaire. In 1915 he received three cheques for £30.000 each, drawn on the Dresden Bank through Swiss and Italian houses. Later he acquired a share in Le Journal for £220,000, . The "Government recently searched his residences at Nice, Paris, and Biarritz, where he is known as Monto Cristo Tho 8010 .disclosures included-tile story of the buying of the ''Bonnet Rouge," a pacifist paner. of which tho manager was M. Duval and the editor, M. Almeyreda. Almeyreda was arrested,, and ■■ the goods were found on him," as the American police phrase goes, in the form of a document concerning national defence. It was stated that Duval made no fewer than 15 journeys to Switzerland and received a number of cheques for important sums from the inevitable ~" mysterious woman" at the Schweizorhof and the International Hotel, Geneva. Passports for these journeys he obtained through tho Ministry of the Interior. It was declared that £BOOO of these sums were traced to Almeyreda. The military secret service authorities, however, became alarmed at Duval's constant journeys across the frontier, and asked the police to watch him. On his fifteenth journey, at the request of tho military authorities, he was stopped and searched at the frontier. A cheque for £6OOO odd was found upon him, and he was told that the cheque would bo held and returned to him through the trade intelligence section of tho War Office. Duval was allowed to proceed to Paris, and the Ministry of the Interior obtained the cheque from the War Office, and at the instance of Almeyreda and other friends of Duval, M. Malvy's Chef de Cabinet, unknown to the. Minister, handed the cheque back to him, and it was cashed. Almeyreda, in prison at Fresnes, committed suicide by strangling himself with himself with a bootlace, but the circumI stances also pointed to the likelihood of his having taken poison.