MADAME BONNET

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21232, 1 October 1940, Page 2

MADAME BONNET

YISIT TO BERLIN | ANTIPATHY TOWARDS BRITAIN (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, August 13 I hear on good authority that j within the last few weeks Madame | Bonnet, wife of the former French Minister now helping to prosecute i in the “war guilt” trials, has been to i Berlin, writes a correspondent of the Evening Standard. She went there at the invitation of Otto Abetz, former Paris agent of Ribbentrop, who was expelled from France a year ago and who has now returned as “Ambassador.” Madame Bonnet, a beautiful woman of charm and culture, with an impeccable taste in clothes, has not concealed her politically British 1 antipathies, although she has on several occasions been welcomed in England. Opposed Royal Visit As wife of the French Foreign Minister and a hostess of distinction, Madame Bonnet planned the banquets and luncheons during the visit of the King and Queen to Paris two years ago. Few people knew that some time before, her views on European alignments had caused her to express herself in opposition to the Royal visit. This did not prevent her from saying to Queen Elizabeth at the moment of her departure from “Madame, your Majesty has captured all our hearts.” Her tribute was sincere. Family Fortune Lost A story I have heard is that Madame Bonnet’s interest in Nazism was quickened by the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Her family lost almost their entire fortune when the Bolshevists defaulted on the French holdings of Russian bonds, and Madame Bonnet, like some other Frenchwomen who have wielded power behind the scenes, inclined more and more to a creed that seemed to her to represent an antidote to Communism. M. Bonnet himself is stated to have invested money in the German cherrfical industry, particularly in dyeworks, in the boom that followed the signing of the Locarno Pact.