BOLO SHOT.

Taihape Daily Times, 4 June 1918, Page 5

BOLO SHOT.

TRAITOR'S LAST MINUTES. RELIC FOR HIS WIFE. The eleventhhour revelations of 8010, who conspired with German money to weaken France in the war, have availed him nothing. He was shot at Vincennes at 6 o'clock in the morning. Captain Bouehardon, whose patient ' investigation had led to the pasha's condemnation, went himself to the prison, and for five hours conducted a final inquiry, culminating in B'olo's confrontation with his friend and patron M. Caillaux, during which the exPremier violently apostrophised the wretched felon. Then yesterday justice left him sternly to bis reflections. But 8010 firmly believed that he had saved his ship. Some new fact, he told the warders, would come to light to save him. He is stated to have believed that the Kaiser would intervene to cause a neutral banker to affirm that he bad a quarter of a million sterling in* a German bank before the war and so explain the sums he received through New York as the price of his

treachery. . ' When Major Jullien, commissioner of the Paris court-mratial, entered his cell at five o'clock on the Wednesday morning he "was sound asleep. "Be Brave Bolo; the hour has come!" announced the officer as the warders awakened him. The wretched man was Crushed for a moment, but rose,-shayed and slowly dressed, donning the blue jockct suit he wore : in court, knotting his white tie carefully, and putting on a pair- of white kid gloves/ A dented bowler hat pulled down over his ; ears completed the costume and added a sinister note to the remains of the pasha's elegance. He confessed to the prison priest and took Holy Communion. Then he smoked his last cigar. He placed a mauve silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, which he asked the priest to give to his wife, when all was over, as being the last thing he had touched. He showed a flash of his arrogance when a warder addressed him bluntly as "Bolo" ''Monsieur 8010, if you please," he corrected. "It is I who command here." According to one account, when awakened and told that the end was at hand, he replied, "So much the better; I'm delighted!" Soon the prison gates were thrown open and a long line of closed motorcars emerged and started at breakneck speed for Vincennes. In one were the condemned man and his guardians, while high military and police officials filled the others. Half way, cavalry lining the road closed in on the cortege and barred the way to journalists' cars which had taken up the chase. . Arrived at Vincennes, 8010, removing a glove, signed his name for the last time with a large flourish and was taken to the execution post. Asked if he would have his eyes bandaged the pasha trembling and deathly white, nodded, and as a blue handkerchief was adjusted he murmured, "Not so tight." Three sergeants, 3 corporals and 6 privates formed the firing party. The lieutenant commanding then lowered his sword," and every shot went home. But in accordance with military law the officer advanced and fired a final bullet into the head of the traitor..