ANXIOUSLY AWAITED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 280, 25 November 1937, Page 7

ANXIOUSLY AWAITED

REPORT ON CAGOULARDS CIVIL WAR AVERTED IN FRANCE (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright! Received Nov. 24, 9.5 p.m. PARIS, Nov. 23. Paris anxiously awaited the official statement on the police raids issued to-night. It declares that the Cagoulards planned to overthrow the Republic by a civil war and establish a dictatorship, then to restore the Monarchy. It adds: “The searches have established that we are confronted by a secret military organisation, entirely copying the lines of the army, comprising a general staff command, area divisions, brigades, and regiments showing that it has been designed as a civil war. The searches revealed plans to attack the ministries, wholesale importation of arms, also material intended for the production of false identity papers and arms transport permits. The police found papers stolen from the military bureaux, from where the plotters learned the quantity of materials in the possession of the regular army units, and the names of the commanding officers. Cagoulards had a list of Paris houses with double entrances, a precise plan of Paris sewers tracing the routes I leciding 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 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 sieze the arsenals and municipal buses and convert them into armoured cars. Their preparations were broken up thanks to the vigilance of the Government republican institutions.

“There is nothing to fear from these Fascist enterprises and the guilty will be severely punished. We assure the French democracy that any criminal action against the republic can be crashed.”

The police raided chateaus, including that of the late scent-king, M. Francois Coty, and the Chateau de Chinnes, once owned by Madame Dubarry and situated on 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 in Paris. The police net has dragged in an organisation of 2000 conspirators at Toulouse, allegedly backed by industrialists. An arms dump and concrete trenches have been discovered.

Cagoulard plans were found in the flat of Eugene de Loncie, director and consulting engineer, of the Penhest dockyards company, builders of the Normandie, who is at present visiting Italy. M. de Loncie’s brother, Henri, has been arrested at Nice.