OBITUARY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 278, 24 November 1931, Page 12

OBITUARY

M. LOUIS LOUCHEUR FINANCE AND POLITICS Received Nov. 23, 5.5 p.m. PARTS, Nov. 22. The death has occurred of M. Louis Loucheur, ex-Cabinet Minister, at the age of 59. 11 Every conference has its villain, and except for a handful who might look for him in the British Delegation tho remainder of the Assembly would promptly identify him with Loucheur,” wrote an observer of the World Economic Conference of 1927 in tho Manchester Guardian. “Perhaps they arc hypnotised by appearances. Loucheur looks tho part. To reinforce the impression M. Loucheur’ has picked up somewhere all the most endearing mannerisms of the master financier of tho films. Ho drives away in a longer, more potent car than anyone else; he is always in a desperate hurry; ho hart a largo mouthful of flashing teeth, big black moustaches, a seductive smile when he is speaking, and an air of impatient anxiety when he is silent. The outfit would be complete but .for a small flat bourgeois nose where the quivering Roman proboscis of the villain should emerge.” Louis Loucheur was born at Roubaix 59 years ago, and he had a highlysuccessful career as an engineer and contractor. Wen in December, 1916, Briand decided to give offices to nonpolitical men of high technical ability, Loucheur became an Under-Secretary of State. In the Clemenceau Cabinet of 1917-20 ho was Minister of Munitions, and he remained head of tho department when at the end of the war it was converted into a department of industrial reconstruction. In this capacity he was consulted when the economic clauses of the Versailles Treaty were being drafted. In 1921 he was Minister for tho Liberated Regions in the Briand Cabinet, and conducted the negotiations which facilitated ]Vyment in kind of part of the reparations. During the next two years he held before the Chamber of Deputies with great ingenuity various schemes for remedying the financial situation. In the Poincare Cabinet of 1924 ho was Minister of Commerce, and at the end of 1925 he became Minister of Finance, but 1 e found every group in the Chamber hostile to the seven proposals which he submitted for meeting the

financial crisis, and he resigned after holding the portfolio for just seventeen days. In the Herriot Cabinet of 1926 ho was Minister of Commerce, and on tho fall of that Government he again devoted himself to industry, and to arrangements for the great international steel cartel which came into being. In 1924 and 1925 he was a delegate to the Assembly of tho League, and in 1927 a delegate to the World Economic Conference at Geneva. When Poincare received a frosh mandate in 1928 he once more included Loucheur in his Cabinet as Minister of Labour.

GENERAL VON MUDRA Received Nov. 23, 5.1 p.m. BERLIN, Nov. 22. The death is announced of General von Mudra, at the age of 81 He commanded the Sixteenth Army Corps at Verdun and armies on the Western Front. General Gerard, commanding the French Second Corps, who became the real defender of the Argonne on November 20, 1914, faced General K. B. J. von Mudra in part of the long struggle which raged from the Aisne to the Oise and Verdun regions, where fighting was conducted in woods and trenches which wore little more than streams owing to the extreme dampness of the soil. The combats were often more like sacrifices. General Hubert replaced General Gerard in January, 1915, and by February, 1916, Verdun had become the real centre of the struggle, and remained so until Petain’s final offensive in tho summer of 1917, though the Argonne was never calm, and largo numbers of men were lost there.