SISTER’S TRAGIC DISCOVERY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 24

SISTER’S TRAGIC DISCOVERY

French Actress, Engaged In Counter-Espionage Work, Gives Information which Leads to the Death of Her Brother . - -

LL Paris was shocked when the news was j =0 published that Mile, j IO Claude France, the BJ beautiful French film ! R. s tar, had killed herself, i but only a few of those j who followed her to her last resting , place knew the tragic circumstances j which had driven her into the arms of death. With the exception of two or three | friends (writes Carl de Vidal Hunt to j a New York magazine), the world at large believed that the physical strain at the studio, coupled with the mental anguish of an unhappy love affair, had been the cause of the rising film star’s desperate deed. This theory was partly substantiated by a letter she addressed to one of her friends in which she said she was too tired to go on living in a world that held nothing but disillusions. Two other letters which she addressed to her husband and to her mother, and which have just been made public, throw an entirely different light on the amazing tragedy. Mile. Claude was a German by birth. Her real name was Wittig and her piece of birth Cologne. When she came to Paris with her parents she was two years old. That was exactly 30 years ago. She had a brother, Albert, three years "’.an herself. Just before the war the young beauty won an international contest held at Paris to discover the bestformed and most beautiful girl in the world. As a result of her victory she entered the moving picture business under the name of Claude France. She had just finished her second picture when the war broke out. Being an alien she was “listed" for internment, hut love stepped in and saved her from sharing the prison life of thousands of others. The man was a French officer of good family and excellent standing as a soldier. It was a case of love at first sight on both sides. On the day Claude was to be taken to Meudon for internment, the man of her choice led her to the altar, thus making her a French citizen whose patriotic integrity he vouched for with his honour as an officer. But Claude really did not need any one to speak for her patriotism. At heart she was as much French as the most rabid Chauvinist. She would have donned men’s attire and volunteered for the trenches if her friends had let her. And this despite the fact that her brother was fighting on the other side. At least, that is what Claude thought Albert was doing. As the war progressed the young girl on several occasions showed her sincerity hy working with the nurses under fire. Being of an adventurous turn of mind, Claude eventually drifted into the most dangerous of war work —that of the Second Bureau —meaning the French Secret Service. She was charged with counter-espion-age at a time when the notorious Mata-Hari was under secret surveillance. Claude France often called ‘ upon her and soon noticed among the friends of Mata-Hari a strange gaiety whenever German arms had been reported victorious. It aroused her suspicion and she reported the matter to her superiors. But nothing was found to warrant the arrest of Mata-Hari at that time.

Then came the incident that was to prove directly responsible for Claude s 1 suicide. At a patriotic reception in the home of one of her friends she j noticed a middle-aged man whom she thought she had seen at Mata-Hari’s | apartment. While everybody was listening to a speech. Claude saw the j man stealthily making his way toward another part of the house. She waited a few minutes and then followed him. Looking through a crack in the back wall of a clothes closet, she got a good view of the lighted bathroom. The middle-aged man was writing with a white pencil upon the hare back of another man whose face Claude could not see because his shirt had been pulled over his head. The writing left, no marks on the skin of the man. It was all done in less than two minutes. Claude France had just time enough to return to the drawing room where the "reception was being held to tell her friend, the hostess, what she had seen. The two men were promptly locked in the bathroom and later taken to Sante prison, where a chemical substance was used to bring out the writing on the back of the man. It was a partly effaced message in code to the enemy. Claude France never saw that man. All she heard later was that he was well known to the Paris Secret Service police as “465,” and that he had been in constant communication with “H-21,” which was the number under which Margaret Zelle, known as MataHari. the dancer, was registered in tlie German Secret Service. In February, 1917, two days before the arrest of Mata-Hari, the spy “468” was taken to the moat of the old Vincennes castle and shot. The war w-ent on and Claude continued her work in the service of the “Deuxieme Bureau.” Sometimes she entertained the poilus at the front in company of other French stars, but always she had an eye on the German spies. After the war she resumed her film work, having received big offers on account of her rare beauty and unusually light blonde hair. Claude was a distinct success in French films and the pictures in which she appeared were very popular in Frenchspeaking countries. But the young artist was never really happy, not even in the performance of her artistic duties. A strange restlessness always haunted her.

One day she eloped with a married man, leaving her own husband in Algiers, where he was stationed with his regiment. At last she thought she had found happiness, but she was wrong.

In this frame of mind she was engaged film Maurice Dekobra's sensational novel. “La Madonne des Sleepings,” a story dealing with the reckless love affairs of a woman of the world in search of the bluebird of happiness. During the making of the film Claude fell in love again, this time with her own husband whom she had left seven years before. A reconciliation took place and for a little while things seemed to go

smoothly in Iho patched-up men;*, F.ut it did not last. Some mystery ous shallow seemed to cloud tie brightest hours in her newly-f happiness. Six months after ben,, leunited. the couple became esiranjwj attain. Then came the tragedy. flan* France had been out of work for oral weeks. She was to start on * new picture and was waiting for th« day to report a» the studio. If did not work, she had to dance herself tired. It was always one or the other. On this particular morning, returni ing from an all-night dancing madj ness, Claude entered her little pn. rvate villa about dawn. On passing the doorkeeper’s lodge she asked jf | there had been a letter from the I studio, but the sleepy concierge anjswered in the negative. Claude went Ito her bedroom without waking her maid. She sat down at her small ebony writing desk and penned s?tera I letters, w hich she placed in envelopes and addressed, one to a friend, one to her husband and another to her mother. That night, while con- . versing with a friend of the war days, j she had discovered that the spy **4CF who she had delivered to the firing | squad was a German named Albert Wittig, her own beloved brother for whom she had searched these last nine years. That and her unhappy love life was too much for the young woman's shattered nerves. She donned one of her loveliest dressing gowns, and bade a tearful adieu to her little pet Pekingese dog. Softly she opened the door of the hall to let the animal out of the room which soon ! was to be filled with the gas from the | heater by her bedside. It was h*r farewell to a world of heartache and disillusions. The letter addressed to her husband was short. It read: “In spite of my love for you, I have driven you away. Now' I learn that it was I who slew my brother, the being I loved more than I can tell you. lam his slayer u clearly as though I had fired the fata! shot myself. If I have not the courage to put an end to my own life, 1 know* 1 will go mad.’* The letter to her mother, who urived in Paris with her father fron the Rhineland to attend her funeral was the most pathetic. “Dear Little Mother: I am thinking of you in this supreme hour and boj* you and father will forgive ck Everything is driving me to leave this world. Will I find happiness in to beyond? Will Albert forgive me? ! am so tjred of everything. Hard wort was my only recreation. I was waiting for it, praying for it even to-day as a means to escape from myself and from those hideous thoughts. Butthf ghastly discovery of my deed to-day is more than I can stand. Adieu.” When the doorkeeper entered the servants’ quarters about noon to find out where the gas odour was comfcr from, he had in his hand a letter for Claude France. It was from the film studio requesting her to start wort that morning.