Barthou's Orders

Many a U. S. theatregoer thinks of Miss Marilyn Miller as a pair of pirouetting toes plus a face as fresh & frank as a buttercup. Contrarily, in France, it is the frankness of her tongue that is remembered, resented. Last summer she declared, "Paris is the easiest place in the world to get a divorce--better even than Reno!" Last autumn she got herself a Versailles divorce from Cinemactor Jack Pickford. The result was that when tidings of her frank flippancy, and that of other U. S. divorce seekers in Paris, reached the ears of staid, august Minister of Justice Louis Barthou, onetime (1913) Premier, he issued certain drastic orders.

Today the French courts obey their new instructions and have tightened up their recent laxity in granting divorces to foreigners. The first notable test case under the new regime came up, last week, when onetime (1920-21) U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby sought to obtain a divorce at Versailles. Rich, potent and himself a lawyer, Mr. Colby had retained to present his case that most distinguished of avocats onetime (1920-24) President of France Alexandre Millerand.

As presented by Lawyer Millerand the case of Lawyer Colby was indeed touching. He had, it seemed, "suffered agonies from the capricious treatment" of Mrs. Colby. She was represented as a "fantastic novelist" who had ridiculed in her works both Mr. Colby and the late Warren Gamaliel Harding. Cried M. Millerand, "she has driven her husband to seek refuge in France, here to obtain freedom and the opportunity to begin a new life!"

Coldly the Court considered. Meticulously it ruled: ". . . Whereas, the French tribunals are in principle incompetent of acknowledging divorces between foreigners; and whereas it does not appear that M. Colby moved his domicile to France but that he inhabits in fact a house placed at his disposal by a friend . . . for these reasons this tribunal declares itself incompetent."

Thus by insistence upon the letter of the law, in obedience to Minister of Justice Barthou, the Versailles court made a glaring example of the case of a U. S. citizen of first prominence. In Manhattan his wife, the onetime Miss Nathalie Sedgwick remarked, "Poor Bainbridge! He never seems to get what he wants!" In more decorous mood, Mrs. Colby has said that Mr. Colby is "far too colossal a figure" to have been encompassed by any of her novels.