Foreign News: Vive l’Audace!

The inimitable, irrepressible, M. Léon Daudet, editor of the Parisian Royalist newspaper L’Action Française, escaped last week from the Prison Santé. He went there only after 3,000 policemen, firemen, soldiers, had overawed a band of his Royalists numbering 980, and forced him to submit to arrest (TIME, June 13 et seq.). It was a group of these keen-witted, although sometimes foppishly clad, Royalists who filched M. Daudet deftly out of jail last week and spirited him into hiding.

Their plan was simple, shrewd. At noontime, while Minister of Interior Albert Sarraut was lunching, a young Royalist entered a telephone booth in the Ministry of Interior. He called the Prison Santé, asked for its Director, M. Catry, and mimicking the voice of an assistant of Minister Sarraut, ordered that M. Léon Daudet and two other prisoners should be instantly released from jail.

Director Catry, no fool, suspected trickery. After hanging up he waited a few moments, then called the Ministry of Interior. Meanwhile several dozen other Royalists had called all the Ministry’s telephones except that in the booth. Therefore the call of Director Catry was switched to the only available phone, that at which stood the mimicker, who, for a second time, ordered M. Daudet’s release, rebuked M. Catry.

He, no longer suspicious, went to Editor Daudet’s cell and released him. M. Daudet burst into tears, kissed M. le Directeur Catry, wrung his hand, and rushed out into the street to mount a taxi. Even the taxi driver was a Royalist in disguise.

Not until two hours later did Paris learn the news. . . . Even dyspeptics chuckled, and men of spirit openly roared at one another over café tables: “Vive Daudet! Vive l’Audace!”

Premier Raymond Poincaré hastily convened the Cabinet which promptly suspended Director Catry of the Prison Santé.