AFTER WAR TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 February 1920, Page 12

AFTER WAR TRAGEDY.

MAJOR AND TRENCH GIRL. SUICIDE FOLLOWS QUARREL. London, Dec. 2. Tlio papers are commenting on the distressing frequency of love intrigues and tragedies in which the families of soldiers are broken up. Dean Inge and other noted preachers pessimistically declare that the experience of war has loosened the conventional restrictions, and others point out that the cases include the result of five years' disintegration of social life. A strange -case was brought to light by a coroner's inquest at Westminster on the body of Major Sydney Douglas Stewart, a former town major at Arras. He married and went to the front early in the war. He became infatuated with a French girl clerk named Jeanne Pignon, and in March, lfllfl, he brought her to London, where they lived together at various hotels and lodgings. They dined at the Criterion on November 28, and quarrelled over the presence of another woman. Stewart angrily left Jeanne, who anxiously sought him in West End resorts, and finally telephoned to his lodgings. The major replied, sobbing, "I want to kill myself." Jeanne replied, "I come home quick." The Major replied: "You'll be too late.'' Jea/ine hurried round in a taxi, and found the major dead in bed, with a revolver in his hand. Jeanne, who is pretty, petite, and redhaired, gave her evidence in broken English, ending: "He much loved me, and I much loved him." Mrs. Stewart deposed that her husband was greatly changed • owing'to his harrowing war experiences. He was three times buried alive at the front, and when the Germans broke through he suffered a fortnight's sleeplessness. She was aware that he was living with Jeanne, and made an ineffective remonstrance. / A friend deposed that Stewart said to him, "I'm in the soup. The War Office has warned me against living with Jeanne." I The deceased left a : short will bequeathing everything to Jeanne. Tlie coroner's verdict was suicide while I of unsound mind.