FRANCE: Deluge after Deluge

When President Gaston Doumergue and Prime Minister Andre Tardieu, both looking rather dour, returned to Paris last week after a flying trip to southwestern France, they could well appreciate why the tricolor banners flying from the walls of the gayest city were tied with black bands. For in, the region whence they had come new torrents of rain had followed thg tragic deluge of last fortnight (TIME, March 17), impeding rescue work, causing new catastrophes. Whole villages had been vacated, and in the city of Bordeaux the populace watched fearfully the rise of the mighty River Garonne, swollen by downpours all along its course. In the villages and coasts watered from the western Pyrenees still greater inundations were reported.

During the second rainfall 400 soldiers including many burly, black Senegalese, donned gas masks and entered the muddy, stinking valley of the Tarn between Montauban and Moissac. There they buried in quicklime the carcasses of 3,000 horses and cattle. After four days, drenched and nauseated, they had to be relieved.

Although anything even approaching a comprehensive report was impossible, 10,000 people were known to be homeless; there were 172 identified dead. Heavy were the subscriptions to relief funds, bringing the estimated total to $500,000. Largest individual subscription: $20,000 from Sir Basileios (Basil) Zacharias Zaharoff of Monte Carlo, famed "Mystery Man of Europe," munitions maker, promoter of "wars.