FRANCE TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 June 1920, Page 10

FRANCE TO-DAY.

CARNIVAL OF CRIME. The Paris Apaches are once more on the. warpath, it is reported. Daring' the early part of the war there were rumors that tlie.se notorious under-world, representatives of the French capital had disappeared. Some were paid to have beon executed by the authorities; others were supposed to have joined the Army, and occasionally their deeds of valor were mentioned in the newspapers. But now they have returned in greater force than ever before, and are taking the lead in the "wave of crime" which we learn is sweeping Paris, and reaching out even into the country districts, as one result of the relaxation following the cessation of years of war tension. Not infrequently during the lost few months the newspapers have contained stories of crimes committed by American soldiers in Paris. For the majority of these offences, we are told, it has been discovered that Apaches in stolen American uniforms have been responsible. .Not only have they disguised themselves as American soldiers, but in many instances they have made their "getaway" from th'j scenes of their crimes in "stolen American ears. Wo are further informed, however, that as a matter of sad fact ther? are some Amcr'.-ans among the Apaches. While most of these criminals are French their numbers are said to have been considerably increased by undesirables from practically all the armies that operated in France during the war, and in addition to a few American renegrades, there wjll be found in the Apache ranks to-day English, Scottish, Trisli and Welsh recruits, as well as Italians, Serbs, Lithuanians, Chinese and other Orientals. The somewhat doubtfully gratifying information is likewise forthcoming that of the whole lawless band the Americans are reported to be the most reckless and in some ways the. most skilful. In a recent article in the New York Tribune Wilmott Lewis, Paris correspondent of that pape", gives an account of the Apaches and the epidemic, of crime with which the French authorities now have to contend. Speaking of Apache methods, he says: They work in twos, or in bands, and always they have women associated with them—women who are, in some sort, what the destroyers are to a fleet, light, fast-moving scouts, skirmishing about to find possible booty and report to the heavier pirate vessels in their lairs. Then, perhaps, the signal given we are treated to an example of what, in the argot of the underworld, is called le coup du Pere Francois. The prey having bceu marked down—some portly bourgeois homeward bound after dark-«-the attempt will be made as he reaches a dimly li: stretch of deserted street. Of the two men concerned, one is armed with a strong cord, or something equally pliant and dependable. The holder of the cord flings it about the neck of his victim, turns his back upon him and pulls. Back to back he hoists the unfortunate into the air, and holds him there gasping, choking, by the cord about his throat, while the second robber goes through his pockets and hands the loot to the waiting woman. The woman moves quickly away, taking a roundabout route to the point at which a division of the "&wag" is to be made, while the men remain long enough to make certain that the victim will not too rapidly recover and give the alarm.

The coup—"stunt" would be a rough translation of the word in this connection—is as clever as it is cruel. It is not often resorted to, for simpler methods are generally effective, but it has been revived, with many another method of robbery, in the period succeeding the armistice, the period which lias seen what is vaguely described as a "wave of crime."

Unlike the American crook, who often "pulls" a crime out ill the open in broad daylight, it seems the Paris criminal operates mainly in the dark and'off the beaten path. In order to beat a "crimp" in the nefarious practices of the nocturnal marauder, the Prefect of Police of Paris recently subjected certain sections of the city to what the French call rafles, or, in our speech, "a clean sweep." This is described:

The police set aside daily a certain area for operations, and for a given hour in the morning to a given hour in the night they spread a sort of drag-net over the area. Patrolmen in uniform and plainclothes men laid heavy hands on all known criminals ttyat they encountered, and held up for enquiry all others of whose honesty they might have the slightest doubt. Here they were aided by one of the features of life in France. Your typical Frenchman seldom fails to carry with him J papers establishing his identity. There is his livret militaire, which sets forth hit military service and record; there is his carte d'electeur, without* which he can not cast a vote; there is the receipt for I his last quarter's rent, which at least shows that he lives in the odour of sanctity as far as his landlord is concerned, I and there may be a shooting permit or [ other official document of that sort. The j general effect of one or all of these is to | separate the possessor from the class of | vagabonds, the irresponsibles, the ne'erI country demanding military service of all Frenchman is thus classified, for in a do-wells. Every honest, and well-behaved its sons he must be classified. As for the dishonest ami the ill-beihaved, either their papers are incomplete, or they have no papers; in either ease a matter for grave suspicion. The case of forged or I stolen papers need not be discussed.

Woe to the unclassified wlten the police drag-net ia laid down, therefore. So, section by section—arrondissemenfc by arrondissement—the authorities passed i fine-tooth comb through the population of Paris, and the result was remarkable, Notorious crooks who had broken onl, of gaol during the war were discovered; deserters of all the armies of the great alliance were sought, and it was found that a new generation of malefactors, come to its criminal majority in the last five years, had begun operations. Men, women, and children, all the tagrag and bobtail, the scum, the dregs of the nations, were held by the police, examined, and, as the case might be, either sent back to prison to serve out unexpired sentences or kept for trial on new charges. To say that hundreds were thus dealt with is vague enough, but since exact figures are not forthcoming the phrase will serve to show that a useful work was, done. It will soon have to be done again Paris is a happy hunting-ground for crooks of all classes, from the humble pickpocket to the flashy wiills-drcssed operator in the haunts of luxury; and tie reason is not far to seek. The police force of the city, efficient enough and devoted enough, is yet miserably insufficient for the needs of more than 3,000,000 inhabitants.

The Paris police, it seems, work in pairs, as it is unsafe for them to move singly. This reduces the already small force by a half. Many of the big busioteg interests, therefore, eaalur their

own_ detectives, who are trained in the Institute of Criminology. This institution is under the direction of a former police commissioner, 11. Cassellari, who stated to Mr. Lewis that never in all his professional experience had crime been so rampant as in Paris to-day. He went on to discuss the situation.

"For instance," lie said, "there is a regular epidemic of motor car thefts just now. Many of these, lam sorry to say, have been traced to American deserters, who arc extraordinarily adroit, and all of whom seem to bo familiar with the working of an automobile. "Then there is a recrudescence of night burglaries, particularly at * furstores and jewellers' shops. "These, for the most part, are carried on by a rough-and-ready means. In the majority of eases we have found no trace of any use of elaborate equipment of the modern cracksman, and this lends a certain color to the idea that wo have ,to deal with men who are new to the business."

Thousands of Orientals were brought to France during the war. A large number of these still remain in the country, we arc told, and their presence adds much to the perplexity of the crime problem: "It is in the north-cast of France—on the wilderness of the devastated region —that they work. There are places lying not far from the coolie camps whore the white inhabitants do not dare go out of doors after nightfall, so great is the terror inspired by small bands of reckless yellow men. Cases of attacks have been so numerous, there have been so many ■ stabbings, shootings and stranglings that, when darkness fails the French population chooses discretion rather than valor and retires to pray for the day when the East will have moved toward the rising sun." The vast accumulations of army stores left in France by the Americans are in some measure responsible for the increase of crime, it is said, being considered the legitimate prey of lootersIn this connection some blame is attached to the French Government, owing to its failure to provide adequate protection for this material, thus inviting the criminally inclined. As we read:

"The stocks arc no poorly protected as practically to amount to an invitation to pillage, and this at a time when shortage of necessities and the high cost of living have worn resistance to temptation terribly thin. Where the Americans put 250 men on to guard the French employ perhaps twenty-five, and the results are easy to guess," At St. Nazaire, for instance, the conditions are nothing short of deplorable. Foodstuffs sadly needed in the north are let to rot (lack of transport is held to cover a multitude of crimes), valuable articles like typewriters and sewingmachines are exposed to the rain and the damp and are riiined, while day after day, week after week, depredation goes on to such a degree that exasperated and honest Frenchmen ask whether this much-tried land will ever reap any benefit from the vast accumulation of the war-period. They will show you at St, Nazaire the shocking condition of what was once tui orderly American storage depot, and they will tell you fantastic stories of the audacity of the robbers. At Brest, at Nantes, at Le Mans, the same stories are current, but St- Nazaire will serve for an example. "There is a tale of a workman who had succeeded in getting possession of an official stamp used for marking goods to be cleared from the depot- He stationed himself at one of the gates through which these goods flowed out, and through an entire morning—unquestioned and unsuspected—he stamped load after load in his own favor, robbing the State of more than 20,000 francs between eight o'clock and mid-day. He has disappeared; there is no record of the goods he thus acquired, and the sum may be written off as a loss. "Another story is of a band of robbers who found an entire goods-train lying idle 011 a siding at St. Nazaire station and coolly took charge. They stoked, the engine and rolled the train off to a point many miles away, where at their leisure they unloaded and made off with merchandise valued variously at from 500,000 to 1,000,000 francs. All that remains as trace of their exploit is the empty train."