Daudet Aftermath

A Parisian telephone operator, a mother, Mme. Montard had just been put in jail. And how then could she perform her duty to the babe which had nestled at her breast a few hours before? In jail! And what was to become of her four elder children, none as yet in their teens? In jail! And why was Mme. Montard in jail?

Members of the Chamber of Deputies were loud in shouting, last week, that no sufficient reason existed. Mme. Montard had simply chanced to be employed as local switchboard operator for the Royalist newspaper L'Action Franc,aise when its staff decided to get their editor, M. Leon Daudet, out of prison by mimicking the voice of a high official and ordering his relaese (TIME, July 4). Mme. Montard, by handling these hoax calls, became, in the eyes of the police, a conspirator. She was arrested, led into the grey depths of La Prison Sante.

Soon epithets rang and adjectives cooed, as MM. les Deputes expounded their grand theme: The Sanctity of Motherhood. General conclusion: that the charge of "conspiracy" was only a detestable cloak of subterfuge under which the agents of a debased gendarmerie had ravished from a hungry infant its proper milk. By tens, and finally by hundreds, the Deputies demanded that the Government order Mme. Montard released. Premier Raymond Poincare, great War President of France, faced an extremely dubious and trying dilemma. Obviously the woman could not be kept in jail; but the Cabinet had lost much of its prestige when M. Daudet escaped, and to back down tamely now in the matter of M. Daudet's telephone operator would be to lose still more "face." Therefore the Premier stood adamant when a motion of censure against the Government was introduced. If the Chamber wanted to unseat him--so be it! But MM. les Deputes quickly came to their senses, supported the Cabinet, 351 to 110. Soon the Government, magnanimous, prudent, ordered Mme. Montard released "provisionally."

Meanwhile the police, to their intense chagrin, continued powerless to find the secret hiding place of M. Daudet who, last week, contributed daily an impudent, secretly written article to L'Action Franc,aise, reviling and ridiculing the Cabinet.