FRANCE: Pride in Pawn

The staggering scandal which burst at Bayonne last week, appropriately followed by a minor earthquake, could only be appreciated from the point of view of Frenchmen who are justly proud of their pawnshops.

The original Paris Crédit Municipal was founded by King Louis XVI, as a noble experiment to see whether the rapacity of private lenders could be checked by the State. It could. Under the august patronage of Napoleon I and his successors, pawnbroking in France has made steady, philanthropic strides. No Crédit Municipal can be founded without the assent of the President of the Republic. Those at Grenoble and Montpellier are so heavily endowed that their interest charge to needy borrowers is zero. In Paris the Crédit Municipal has its seat in an 18th Century palace, maintains a garage in which 2,000 motor vehicles can lie in pawn, chiefly during the winter months when their thrifty owners see no sense in gadding about. Because everything pawned in France is automatically insured at lowest rates, wealthy Parisians often pawn their plate and jewels when going to the seaside in summer, not because they need the money but because there is no cheaper way to make their possessions safe. In nearly all cases pawnshop profits go to charity. Thus the Paris Crédit Municipal is known respectfully as "Le Mont de Piéte" (The Mount of Piety) and with flippant affection as "ma tante" (my aunt). On the day President Roosevelt closed every U. S. bank more than 500 U. S. citizens obtained cash from Paris' Aunt.

"Kill him! Kill him!" screamed citizens of Bayonne last week as Manager Gustave Tissier of their Crédit Municipal was hustled for questioning to the prefecture. Shocked friends recalled that only recently he was proposed for the Legion of Honor. Now police were saying that Manager Tissier had given jewelry left in pawn to his pretty friend. Impossible? Mais non! Soon grim detectives from Paris were staggering Bayonne with the assertion that Manager Tissier and his handful of jewels were not the point. They claimed, after a hasty rummage through the Crédit Municipal's books, that French insurance companies had been mulcted of perhaps 500,000,000 francs ($30,000,000) by a swindler of Kreuger rank operating behind the pious, philanthropic front of the Crédit Municipal. This swindler was not Manager Tissier. He was not the chairman of the Bayonne Crédit Municipal, hitherto respected M. Joseph Garat, Mayor of Bayonne and a Deputy of France, who was soon also under arrest. He was—all France was amazed to learn—two well-known men who suddenly turned out to be one and the same. Without makeup or disguise this super-Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had managed to be both M. Serge Alexandre, the supposedly philanthropic founder of Bayonne's Crédit Municipal, and also the notorious swindler M. Alexandre Stavisky, supposedly known to every detective in France. To cap all this the Founder, when last seen in public, was seated in his own leased box at a Paris theatre with none other than the Chief of Paris Police, M. Jean Chiappe.