Return of a Native

Last week a tall, white-bearded old gentleman named Laurence Vincent Benet returned to make his home in the U. S. after 51 years in France. Born to a Civil War brigadier on the military reservation at West Point 73 years ago, he went to Paris in 1885 as a penniless young engi eer fresh from Yale. His job was with Hotchkiss & Cie., French armament concern founded by a Connecticut Yankee who had sold arms to the Union until 1865, moved to France before the Franco-Prussian War. Engineer Benet has spent most of his life perfecting the Hotchkiss machine gun, now standard equipment in two of the world's biggest armies, French and Japanese.

More honored abroad than at home, Mr.

Benet has been Hotchkiss' managing director for years, wears the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, is a Commander of the Crown of Rumania and a Commander of the Military Order of Christ (Portu al). He was the grand old man of the American Colony in Paris and Mrs. Benet's salons were the envy of all aspiring U. S.

expatriates. During the War, Mr. Benet helped found the American Ambulance Service. Just before the Benets closed their apartment on the Avenue de Camoens, packed up their collection of art and pensioned their cook and chauffeur, Parisians joined the American Colony in giving the departing couple a heartfelt farewell.

Mr. Benet resigned as Hotchkiss managing director before he left, but his permanent successor has not yet been named. The company's most profitable product is its machine gun, invented by Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss about the same time Maxim and Catling were devising their early weapons. The present Hotchkiss is a magnificent piece of engineering capable of 600 shots per minute. Other arms are manufactured and also automobiles, but the machine gun is the product that really enabled Hotchkiss & Cie. to earn as much as 23,500,000 francs in the late 1920's. Last year's report has not yet been published, but it is expected to reveal complete recovery from the depression low of 12,000,000 francs. In terms of U. S. corporations Hotchkiss is small but tightly autonomous. Managing Director Benet has not only been able to show a better return on his capital than Schneider-Creusot, the big French arms combine, but he has not been absorbed by Schneider-Creusot, an even more notable achievement.

The Benets are not returning to a strange land. Almost yearly they have traveled to the U. S., spending much of their time in Washington, where Mrs. Benet was born & reared as Georgetown's Margaret Cox, and where Mr. Benet-belongs to clubs like the Army & Navy and the Metropolitan. In Washington they will make their home.

In Manhattan last week rich old Mr. Benet parried interviewers with: "Why should you want to write about me? I'm just a horny-handed engineer. I'm not interesting. My nephews are." Nephews are Poets William Rose Benet and Stephen Vincent Benet.

One reason their uncle gave for his return was his desire to know them better. In Paris, however, it was thought that the Benets did not want to live through another European war. If anyone should know the probabilities of war Mr. Benet should, for the French War Ministry was always at his service. Yet in one of his last public appearances before his departure, he flatly denied that a war scare had influenced his decision, dramatically announced that he would return whenever France was endangered. Last week cheerily reviewing the European scene, Mr. Benet said he did not expect war within the year, possibly not within five years.

Crisp, urbane, witty, Mr. Benet had fun last week with newshawks who asked him whether he regarded his career with horror. "I believe that I have been called a 'merchant of death,' " he said. "Do I look it? I suppose you will describe my slow, thin-lipped smile. Reporters always do. It would be much better to use the quotation 'the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat!' You might put that in a subhead."

Later, while obliging photographers, he remarked: "I'm sorry that my fingers are not dripping with blood this morning." Mrs. Benet, who was decorated seven times for hospital and refugee war work, was wearing the plain red button of an Officer of the Legion of Honor. Her husband's Legion button had silver & gold bars. Explained Mr. Benet: "I'm a hot dog. I'm a Grand Officer."

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