The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1903-09-20

friendship Of the most llustrious IL 1 may
believe this letter which take haphazard
from the pile which comes from NJ
Tirard, the Prime Minister of the time
The letter was such as passes among
intimate friends. The names which were
thrown to the public as a sop TO curiosity
have drawn out a few replies. NJ. Cast
| mir-Perier humorously denies that he
ever borrowed money or asked a wife
from the Humberts-he is a many times
over millionaire and an old married
man. Paul Deschanel ill-temperedly de-
MES that he borrowed money, which no
one supposed, or that he was really a
sutton for the hand of Eve Humbert, of
which every one was convinced that knew
his assiduity in the old times.
The wife of a former Senator and Pre-
feet of Police wrote TO ask if Ambassador
! Patenotre, who has since married Miss
| EMERSON of Philadelphia, would be ac-
cepted as a sutton for the hand of Maria
| Daurgnac the counter-heiress and eter-
nellie fiancee of the interminable Craw-
! ford lawsuits. Madame Humbert, who
declares that government knew perfectly
well her whereabouts between her disap-
-N~-@
fatty at the trial that NJ. Patenotre saiut-
ed her as usual during her drives round
Madrid where he was ambassador
From the mysterious packages Of let
tiers. which were not read in court, the
Matin, newspaper. whose campaign year
ago precipitated the Humbert cstastro-
phe. was somehow allowed TO reprint
rather begging, but no wise dishonorable
correspondence of NJ. F1ourens. who is
now a Deputy of the Opposition, after
having been Minister of Foreign Affairs
in a Radical Cabinet during the Humbert
ascendency NJ. Labor, who is not afraid
to speak his mind, said of this revelation.
which in most countries would be con-
sidered contempt of court, and was evil
IDENTIFY designed to injure a political ad-
versary. LAS it is none of US, and as
am sure it is not the public prosecutor,
have the right 10 say that it is the police
and the government, which has delivered
these papers to the public
A protestaton. in the name of Minister
of Justice Vale, against such disclosures,
was at once made, but the public is ask
ing itself uncomfortably: What explains
the action of the government in the Hum
bert case after the tide turned?
In 1899. a few months after having de-
nounced the Crawford inheritance as
swindle in his quality as lawyer, NJ. Wal
deck-Rousseau became Prime Minister;
but for nearly three years of his admin
istration no action was taken against
the Humberts The action of the sue
ceeding government, in which the Minis
~ hoc "a
lawyer of the money lender Cattaui, who
manoeuvred the final smash, is still more
difficult Of explanation-and none is Of
fered
In the realm of moral unlikelihoods,
do you sincerely believe that a mature
man of our time can still consider any
thing in this order of ideas unlikely"
With these words Maitre Labori brought
home to the minds of the jury a quality
common to many celebrated trials in Re
publican France, where politics. justice.
religion. race feeling and, perhaps, other
interests which should be kept distinct
are mixed inextricably together. He re-
called the various scandals-in 1887 a SON
in-law of the President of the republic
sells the cross of the Legion of Honor
there is the legislative corruption charged
in the affair of Panama; and then the
Dreyfus explosion, in which Labor. who
has a right to speak, protests that there
were honest men-braves gens-on both
sides Little by little he leads the jury
to follow his strongest rgument-there
could not have been a conscious Humbert-
Crawford swindle. for not only the first
men of the state countenanced it, but also
the courts year after year-''it demanded
from Gustave Humbert incredible credul-
ity. and necessarily supposes on the part
of business attorneys and lawyers a sim
ple-headedness too excessive by far!'
For Bnglishmen and Americans the
question should be put differently: Would
it have been possible to introduce the
Crawford lawsuits into our courts, and
to have kept them going carelessly for
nearly twenty years. without ever oblig
ing the supposed contestants to prove
the fact of the inheritance which was
not, indeed. in dispute. but was at the
bottom of all the litigation?
technical answer to this question
would take a volume and then not con-
clude In justice to the French courts
it must be said that the whole procedure
concerning the Crawford suits was in
order.
1t was taken for granted that the Craw-
fords existed. because they were repre-
scented by lawyers duly empowered, and
themselves were repeatedly served in
prison with legal process. 4 leader of
the Paris bar who accepted their case
from their attorneys without ever hav-
ing seen his clients remarks that there is
nothing strangs about this in such inter
national cases.
Still. II must be acknowledged that there
was all along an evident willingness to
oblige the rich and well connected Hum
berts A fragrant instance of this oc-
licly invented. In 1888 when the fortune
still came from the benevolent Portu-
guese. TO whom not even q name was
assigned, court in the south OF France
forced a doubling creditor to accept the
inheritance as good security, on the word
Of the Humberts lawyer. who naturally
appealed to the authority OF the former
Minister of Justice. Gustave Humbert.
NJ Labor. in his own speech to the jury.
mixed up dates Of reality and invention
things muddled in all the reports and
making the legal aspects Of the case so
perplexing. He appealed TO the legal com
promise supposed 10 have been made since
fords and Humberts and attested by per-