The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-27
FRANCE HAS HER
 WALSH PROBES
Inghels Exposed Alleged Graft n Preparations
 Funds

Three years ago, two years ago, and one year ago Inghels, a tall blond giant with an enormous square beard, from the ruined region of the north, ..aeod up in the French parliament and declared the rebuilding Of the ruins was being made a carnival of graft, writes Guy ,Hickok in Paris letter to the Brooklyn Eagle.
 He supplemented his declaration days when the French were lulled to sleep by the narcotic slogan, Ger. with names, dates and the details of frauds. But that was in the happy many will pay all"
 Inghels was howled down with cries of "Traitor" and You are working for the boche :"
 But now the Ruhr has been occu- pied more than a year and still there is no ring of German gold in the French treasure vaults. With the brusque fall of the value of the franc in mid-January the French awoke to the ghastly realization that not Ger many but France, at least temporarily, must pay for the reconstruction.
 And this time when Inghels lum- bered up the steps to tell his tale of fraud and corruption he was greeted as a hero, patriot, one of the saviors of his country's finances.
 Proving His Case
 He painstakingly began to show by documents how one man had tripled and another quadrupled his just claims, and how another had received in advances from the government ten times as much as he should have had, and how government officials had re- fused to act when the frauds had been called to their attention, and how, in some cases, government officials had first connived to secure fantastic bene- fits for rich men and had later re- signed from government employ to be- come employees of the very men they had helped to enrich at government expense.
 Inghels has the honest, puzzled face of an overgrown and somewhat thick headed child, except for the big beard. When he is excited he sheds rivers of precipitation, which keep him hopping, mopping, hopping with a discouraged handkerchief.
 lnghels relates a specific example of graft. He develops it thoroughly.
 Then at the psychological moment he loses the paper with the figures on it and has to shuffle his documents painfully for long minutes while his hearers wait.
 He has none of the repartee so necessary to French politician in this assembly of chronic hecklers. Instead of crushing an interruption with a cruel witticism Inghels will give it exaggerated value by wrinkling his forehead, taking off his spectacles and cupping his hand behind his ear asking that it be repeated. The inter- ruptions are usually made in bad faith, but Inghels accepts them as bona fide and tries painstakingly to answer them.
 lnbhels declares that seventy billion francs out of a total of eighty-five bil- lions in damage payments have been made to large property owners, princi- pally industrials, and that the small claimants have received only fifteen billions all told.
 A number of men are already in jail and others have fled the country for exactly the sort of thing that Inghels describes. Furthermore few contrac- tors at work in the devastated regions have told the writer that every build ing they are putting up is very much better than the one destroyed in the war.
 A uSdIcF III UulIuiHS supplies CetlS or village that before the war was vretched place of sun-dTied mud walls.
 its resurrection it is now built en- Qrely of sculptured stone.
 Thought Germany Would Pay
 When the Frenchmen mentioned by xnghels inflated their damage claims HSey did not realize that they were de- Srauding their own country
 Germany will pay all," had been Ginned into their ears until they be- lieyed it. They had voted into power parliament whose members had made that their campaign cry. And if the damage bills were padded bit they supposed that it was at the expense of Germany, not of France.
 One of the paradoxes of Inghel's at tack on the reconstruction grafters was that he found an unexpected ally in Leon Daudet, leader of the royalists, usually his bitterest opponent, Daudet, a much better orator than Inghels, de- clared
 There is certainly a scandal in the devastated regions. am sure that I will displease many colleagues when I say that it is socialist, Mir. Inghels, who started this exposure. I don't care myself and l am ready to kiss Mir. In- ghels on both cheeks if he makes the thieves disgorge.''