FRANCE: Poor Monis

Premier Raymond Poincare went before the Chamber of Deputies last week and spoke of an old man in such fashion that soon there were tears in some eyes. . . . Would Messieurs les Députés recall for a moment Antoine Emmanuel Ernest Monis, who 16 years ago was Premier of France? Many who sat in the Chamber last week must have known him in his prime. They must recall how it became necessary for him to resign the Premiership after a tragic accident. . . . Premier Monis had gone out with his War Minister, Henry Maurice Berteaux, to Issy-les-Moulineaux, there to watch the start of a Paris-Madrid air race. That was in 1911, only eight years after the first motor-propelled airplane flew. As the Premier and the War Minister stood watching, a monoplane swooped down on them and crashed, killing M. Berteaux, wounding M. Monis, who later resigned the Premiership. "Mes amis," asked Premier Poincaré last week, "do you know what has happened to Antoine Monis?" Blank faces greeted the question. M. Monis was probably dead, thought the Deputies. Today even the French Who's Who (Qui Etes-Vous?) omits his name. "Messieurs les Députés," cried M. Poincaré, "Antoine Monis is not dead! To the shame of our country, La France whom he served as Deputy and Senator for 35 years, I tell you now that M. Monis is alive, but destitute. . . ." The Premier told then of how he had found M. Monis, now 81, living in a wretched single room, forgotten, barely able to keep alive by the pittance he earned as a broken-down lawyer's clerk. "Think! A clerk," said M. Poinaré. "Remember that in his day Antoine Monis was among the great lawyers of France, that is to say of all the world. . . . "Messieurs. For the honor of France we must rescue Antoine Monis from destitution. The Government lays before you a bill to grant him an annual pension of 24,000 francs ($960) for the few years that he has yet to live. . . ." On such a bill the Chamber could vote only in one way.