The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-12-29
FIVE YEARS THE LIMIT
NOTORIOUS HUMBERT SWINDLERS
WILL ESCAPE LONG SENTENCES.
Arrival Of the Train at Paris De-
layed-Usurers the Chief Sufferers
by the Fraud.

PARIS, Dec. 2S.-The train bringing to
Paris the members of the Humbert family
who were arrested in Madrid, was due to
arrive at 4:52 o'clock tomorrow morning
but owing to an accident to brake it was
two hours late at the Spanish frontier.
thereby missing connections with the Paris
express at Bordeaux. In their anxiety to
avoid the assembling of crowds and demon
strations upon the arrival Of the Hpmberts.
the authorities here refuse to say at what
Cells at the conciergerie have been pre-
pared for their reception.
At Hendayo, on the Spanish frontier. the
car containing the prisoners was detached
from the Madrid train outside the station
on the Spanish side of the frontier and the
Humberts were hurried into French car
held in readiness and handed over to the
French officials. After this had been done
the Spanish police retired. The change of
cars was accomplished SO rapidly that the
waiting crowd barely caught a glimpse of
the party. but ii greeted the prisoners with
ironical cheers and hootings. This greatly
enraged Nine. Humbert.
There is much discussion over the ex-
pected punishment of the Humberts. I'm
der French law five years is the maximum
sentence for swindling. A local newspaper
says: 1.-The most odious thing in the
swindles is the spending of the savings of
clients who received annuities, poor little
capitalists guilty of too much credulity.
But ii is precisely these little capitalists
whose claims will have been met by the
Humberts if they can do so. And after this
settlement there will only remain against
the Humberts the charge of having de-
ceived usurers; that is to say, people who
in lending their money above the legal
rate recognize and accept, so to speak in
advance, all the risks their money may
have to run. These people are not inter-
esting, and one should not be astOnished If
some of them came out of the Humbert
affair little worse treated than the Hum
berts themselves.
ION the whole, il all comes back to a
swindle such as is practiced almost every
day in civilized centers This swindle has
made more noise than the others because
1t was more ingenious, because ii lasted
longer, because those who perpetrated it
were better known, because political ami
litical parties exploited 1T in order to dis
credit their adversaries But all that
neither increases nor diminishes the guilt
of the Humherts and the responsibility
which their acts ought to establish, ac-
cording to the greater or lesser damage
to public morals and not according to the
greater or lesser hubbub which they arouse
among the spectators. Therefore, after
having affirmed that the Humberts would
not be arrested for fear of compromising
well-known persons, let us be ready, now
that the Humberts are arrested, to hear
the same people affirm that the Humberts
are being spared so that they will not
compromise anybody. We have taken the
Panama affair habit OF profiting by all in
cidents, even those foreign to politics, TO
calumniate each other. From this point of
view, the Humbert case was godsend,
and it is being exploited"
AT Bordeaux the Numbers car was at
tached to the fast train which is scheduled
to arrive here at half past tomorrow