The Legion to Indo-China

A former member of the French Foreign Legion has remarked, "predominantly it is composed of men of violence, bums, morons of vile habits and booty-hunting louts." But La Legion Etrangere has, with great courage and rigid discipline, conquered a great part of the French Colonial Empire, second largest in the world. Last week the unsavory but effective Legion celebrated its 100th Anniversary--or rather did not.

In Algeria, in Sidi-bel-Abbes, hot and dusty citadel of the Legion, there was an ordinary dress parade, no more. Short and stocky Colonel Rollett, his red whiskers now streaked with grey, read the Legion roll of honor. The band blared "La Marseillaise," then rollicking war songs, the slightly sinister airs of the only military force in the civilized world today which, when it captures a town, has officially the right to loot, the Legion's cherished Droit de Pillage.*

Where is the Legion's next big fighting job? The Legion is of the future, not the past. Its members (50% German, 12% Russian), scarcely know or care that 100 years ago King Louis Philippe of France, that perplexed bourgeois, created the Foreign Legion chiefly because the French people demanded that he disband or at least send out of France his palace guard of German and Swiss mercenaries. There never has been much romance in the Legion, U. S. and British thriller-novels to the contrary. It is not even true that a fugitive criminal is safe in the Legion from arrest or extradition.

The Legion's next big job, it seemed last week, will be in pacifying French Indo-China. Two thousand of the total Legion personnel of 14,000 have already reached Saigon, and more are being hurried thither from Syria and Morocco. In Paris last week was His Excellency M. Pierre Pasquier, Governor General of French Indo-China, come at the urgent request of the High Colonial Council to discuss native unrest in his Far East bailiwick.

M. Pasquier is one of the most exquisite old men in all the world (see cut). He has on his hands 285,000 square miles and more than 20,000,000 natives. Just about a year ago they first began a riot on a Communistic basis, the more literate natives having read and ill-digested some tons of pamphlets smuggled in from Russia. Russians are propagandizing hotly in Indo-China primarily because the Soviet State charges and believes that France is its most dangerous enemy in Europe.

Thus far the chief uprisings have been among Indo-China's Annamites, a fighting people gifted with both intelligence and guile. Near Vinh, the provincial capital of North Annam, some 5,000 Annamites gathered not long ago and began the march upon the capital. Bombing planes were sent out against them. Two hundred natives were slain. The slaughter was comparable in every way to the notorious British massacre of Indians at Amritsar in 1919--for it turned out that the 5,000 Annamites were, in this particular instance, unarmed, had only been making a march of protest.

When exquisite Governor-General Pasquier announced that he must go to Paris, cunning plotters so dexterously tampered the ship on which he planned to sail that His Excellency actually went aboard in full regalia and settled down in his suite de luxe before it was discovered that the propellers would not work.

All French Indo-China laughed at its Governor General's discomfiture, but M. Pasquier knew what to do. He flew to Paris, a bold feat which restored his prestige. For the first time in three years the High Colonial Council is meeting in Paris, pondering how to stamp out the Reds.

*Pay of a Legionary is only five centimes 1/4 cent) per day.

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