THE GENDARMES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 246, 19 July 1928, Page 8

THE GENDARMES.

WHO THEY ARE AND WHO NOT. The appointment of a new commanding officer to the Garde Republicaine draws attention to the fact, which most foreigners ignore, that there ‘x no such thing or person as 4 gendarme in Paris. Colonel Miguel, the officer in question, was indeed until recently a colonel of gerdarmerie; but what would be the gendarmerie in the country becomes, in Paris, the legion of the Garde Republicaine, with a special uniform and magnificent brass helmets and horsehair plumes for great occasions; although it remains part 1 of the same force of military constabulary for all purposes of administration and promotion. People still imagine that a gendarme in Paris ig what a policeman would be in London; In fact, not only is the gendarmie not found in Paris, but neither it nor; the Garde Republicaine is quite a police force, and both are controlled by the Minister of War. Two Detective Forces.

The ordinary policeman, with a cap rather like an English guard, is an “agent de ville,” As what a Frenchman understands by the word “police”—for it also exists in France —it is rather what an Englishman would understs-'-’ the detective force. There-jpre indeed, two such detective forces, or even more, and they are under the orders of at least three of the Departments of State. The Minister of Public Works has the railway police under his charge. The Minister of Justice controls the police judiciare, which is employed in the detection of crime, while the Surete Genprale, or political police, whose function it is to discover and prevent any attacks upon the safetyj| of the State takes its orders the Ministry of the Interior. The same Ministry, "however, also has the general direction for the whole country of that organisation which is not police in the special French sense, but nevertheless also given the name. The municipalities are locally responsible for their police, and this applies even to the villages, where the garde champetre is under the orders of the maire only. In the towns there is the resident com- " missaire de police, a minor magistrate, who has the police force under his orders, and in large towns there are, of course, many commissaires de police in the several districts. In Paris, where there is no maire, the commissaires de police and the force as a whole come under a special functionary, the Prefect of Police, appointed nominally by the President of the Republic, but still to a certain extent under the order of the Minister of the Interior. It thus happens that it is to th>. commissariat de police that a man who made a disturbance in the street would be taken, though the men who took him there would be called agents de ville.

As for the gendarmes, it is in the country districts that they really take an active part in what in Etigland would be called police work. They ride about the country—always in pairs— and it is to them that a village maire invariably addresses himself when the law has been broken. For although the garde champetre has powers of arrest, when he has put on his military-looking cap, and has slipped over his shoulder the broad leather belt with its large oval brass plate—rather suggesting a Free Forester’s sash—he would certainly hestate to take stern measures. He is just a peasant farmer, like the maire and the rest of the “municipal council” of the village, and a garde champetre merely in his leisure mo- I ments. The gendarmes are soldiers—generally corporals or sergeants who have taken up this career after passing out of the active army—and it is their business to do the dangerous work.