''Misplaced Confidence"

The gory death in an Alpine chalet of one Stavisky, either a suicide or slain by the French Secret Police because he knew too much; the stench of corruption in the French Government; the marching indignation of French citizens who made for the Chamber of Deputies only to be fired upon (TIME, Feb. 19, 1934)--in short the whole colossal Stavisky Scandal which nearly produced another French Revolution has had one concrete result. Since the scandal broke, French politicians have realized that they must stand together, and the nation has been ruled by coalition Cabinets with greater authority and less squabbling in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate than heretofore.

Last week the so-called Stavisky Trial boiled down after eleven weeks to 1,956 Questions for the jury to answer. For the final fray of decision they arrived indignantly lugging blankets, pillows and night-shirts since the Court had ruled: "This is not America! The jurors will be supplied by the Government with nothing except beds and meals."*

The jury, however, had got their wages raised by firm and united demands during the trial from $1 to $3.30 per day each. As quick-witted Latins they took exactly ten and a half hours to decide the 1,956 issues raised by the case. Through a galaxy of Paris' highest paid and most dexterously emotional lawyers, all 20 defendants offered substantially the same defense: "misplaced confidence." They knew that the late Sacha Stavisky. alias Serge Alexandre, hobnobbed with Cabinet Ministers. They knew that a Rothschild had sold to Sacha horses which raced at Long-champ carrying his silks, while Sacha watched "from the box of the President of the Republic." They had heard of Sacha's obtaining for an Anglophile member of his gang an introduction to the Prince of Wales at Biarritz. Finally they saw Sacha spend, and helped him spend, millions & millions of francs for every luxury Europe could offer gay Spender Stavisky.

All this, the defendants submitted, inspired them with "confidence" in Sacha Stavisky, alias Serge Alexandre. If he now & then asked some of the defendants to perform individual crooked acts, and if some of the defendants even admitted performing these, that did not alter the submission of all the defendants that as individuals they had had no knowledge of the vast ramifications of Swindler Stavisky's crockeries but had considered him a man of substance. Stavisky was, they submitted, a "Financial Napoleon," the magnitude of whose coups and victories on the Bourse erased his peccadillos from the minds of Cabinet Ministers and the Surete Generate, who "never bothered Sacha, although they knew, of course, they knew!"

In particular Stavisky's widow, handsome onetime Chanel Model Arlette Simon, protested during the trial that in 1926 he swore to her that he would "go straight." She vowed that she never doubted he had gone straight until after his death and the disclosure that he had swindled Frenchmen out of some $18,000,000.

The jury last week acquitted Mme Stavisky and ten male defendants. The other nine were fined $6.60 each. On top of their fines, seven-year prison sentences were imposed on Manager Gustave Tissier of the Municipal Pawnshop of Bayonne, headquarters for Stavisky frauds, and Manager Henri Hayotte of the Empire Theatre in Paris, a glittering base of Stavisky operations with women, the near-fashionable world and crooks. Three other defendants got five-year terms. General Joseph Bardi de Fourtou. retired, got two years for lending his honored name to fake stock company prospectuses, and Deputy Gaston Bonnaure received a jail sentence of one year. Although this was made a suspended sentence, the jury recommending mercy, its effect is to deprive M. Bonnaure of his seat in the Chamber, and he, like most other defendants who were sentenced, wept.

Significant seemed the fact that among the acquitted was Editor Albert Dubarry of the scurrilous weekly La Volonte. In the popular mind he had been Stavisky's chief fixer and slipper of 1,000 franc notes to French officials, none of whom have been caught or brought to trial. So important a defendant was M. Dubarry considered that unlike most of the others he had been denied bail. The trial ended with Stavisky's suicide or murder-by-police still a mystery and with Mme Stavisky's memoirs about to be hawked in the U. S.

*Sample jurors' dinner: fresh herring or ham omelette, roast mutton, potatoes, beans, salad, cheese, dessert, wine, coffee and liqueurs.

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