Cliveden set or England's willingness to weaken her own position as
the dominant European power by sacrificing Austria and a good portion
of Czechoslovakia. The totalitarian powers proceeded on the assumption
that when the struggle for control of central Europe, the Balkans and
the Mediterranean came they would have to fight.
The Rome-Berlin axis reasoned logically that if, when the expected war
broke out, France could be disrupted by a widespread internal
rebellion, not only would she be weakened on the battlefield but
fascism might even be victorious in the Republic. In preparation for
this, the axis sent into France secret agents plentifully supplied
with money and arms, and almost succeeded in one of the most amazing
plots in history.
The opening scene of events which led directly to the discovery of how
far the foreign secret agents had progressed took place in the
Restaurant Drouant on the Place Gaillon which is frequented by leaders
of Paris' financial, industrial and cultural life.
Precisely at noon, on September 10, 1937, Jacqueline Blondet, an
eighteen-year-old stenographer with marcelled hair, sparkling eyes,
and heavily rouged lips, passed through the rotating doors of the
famous restaurant and turned right as she had been instructed. She
had never been in so luxurious a place before--dining rooms done in
gray or brown marble with furniture to match. Two steps lead from the
gray to the brown room and Mlle. Blondet, not noticing them in her
excitement, slipped and would have fallen had not the old wine steward
who looks like Charles Dickens, caught and steadied her.
The two men with whom she was lunching were at a table at the far
corner of the deserted room. The one who had invited her, Francois
Metenier, a well-known French engineer and industrialist, powerfully
built, with sharp eyes, dark hair, and a suave self-assured manner,
rose at her approach, smiling at her embarrassment. The other man,
considerably younger, was M. Locuty, a stocky, bushy haired man with
square jaws and heavy tortoise-shell eyeglasses. He was an engineer at
the huge Michelin Tire Works at Clermont-Ferrand where Metenier was an
important official. The industrialist introduced the girl merely as
"my friend" without mentioning her name.
With the exception of two couples having a late breakfast in the gray
marble room, which they could see from their table, the three were
alone.
"Shall we have a bottle of Bordeaux?" asked Metenier. "I ordered lunch
by 'phone but I thought I would await your presence on the wine."
"Oh, anything you order," said Locuty with an effort at casualness.
"Yes, you order the wine," said the stenographer.
"_Garcon_, a bottle of St. Julien, Chateau Leoville-Poyferre 1870."
The ghost of Charles Dickens, who had been hovering nearby, bowed and
smiled with appreciation of the guest's knowledge of a rare fine wine
and personally rushed off to the cellars for the Bordeaux.
When the early lunch was over and the brandy had been set before
them, Metenier studied his glass thoughtfully and glanced at the two
portly men who had entered the brown dining room and sat some tables
away. From the snatches of conversation the three gathered that one
was a literary critic and the other a publisher. They were discussing
a thrilling detective story just published which the critic insisted
was too fantastic.
Metenier said to Locuty:
"You will have to make two bombs. I will take you to a very important
man in our organization, a power in France. He will personally give
you the material and show you how to make them. Then I will take you
to the places where you will leave them. I do not want them to see
me."
In low tones, they discussed the bombing of two places. Metenier, a
pillar of the church, highly respected in his community and well-known
throughout France, cautioned them as they left.
Why the vivacious blond stenographer was permitted to sit in on this
conversation, Locuty did not know, unless it was to tempt him, for, as
she bade him good-by, she squeezed his hand significantly and said she
wanted to see him again.
Metenier drove Locuty to an office building where he introduced him to
a man he called "Leon"--actually Alfred Macon, concierge of a building
which Metenier and others used as headquarters for their activities.
Within a few moments the door of an adjacent room opened and Jean
Adolphe Moreau de la Meuse, aristocrat and leading French
industrialist, came in. He had a monocle in his right eye which he
kept adjusting nervously. His face was deeply marked and lined with
heavy bluish pouches under the eyes. With a swift glance he sized up
Locuty as Metenier rose.
"This is the gentleman whom I mentioned," he said.
"He understands his mission?" De la Meuse asked.
"Yes," said Locuty. "You will teach me how to make them?"
De la Meuse nodded. "It will be a time bomb which must be set for ten
o'clock tomorrow night. There will be nobody in the building at that
time, so no one will be hurt."
An hour later Locuty, who had made both bombs and set the timing
devices, wrapped them into two neat packages. Metenier took him to the
General Confederation of French Employers' Building in the Rue de
Presbourg. In accordance with instructions he left one of the packages
with the concierge, after which Metenier took him to the Ironmasters'
Association headquarters on the Rue Boissiere, where Locuty left the
second package.
On the evening of September 11, the General Confederation of French
Employers was scheduled to hold a meeting in their building. This
meeting was postponed; and, as De la Meuse had assured the Michelin
engineer, the concierges and their wives, contrary to custom, were not
in their buildings that evening.
At ten o'clock, both bombs exploded. The plans had gone off as
arranged except for an accident, the investigation of which made
public the whole amazing conspiracy. Two French gendarmes standing
near one of the buildings were killed.
Immediately after the bombs exploded, the Employers' Confederation and
the Ironmasters' Association issued statements charging the Communists
and the Popular Front with being responsible for the outrages and
accusing them of planning a reign of terror to seize control of
France. The accusations left a profound effect upon the French people
despite the Communists' assertions that they never countenance
terrorism. The _Surete Nationale_, the French Scotland Yard, opened an
intensive investigation which was spurred on by the deaths of the
unfortunate gendarmes. It was not long before the French people heard
of the almost incredibly fantastic plot to destroy the Popular Front
and establish fascism in France--a plot directed by leading French
industrialists and high army officers cooperating with secret agents
of the German and Italian Governments.
The ramifications of the plot are so packed with dynamite in the
national and international arena that the French government, under
pressure from England as well as from some of its own industrialists,
government officials and army officers, has clamped the lid down on
further disclosures lest continued publicity seriously affect the
delicate balance of international relations.
It was obvious from what the police uncovered that it had taken
several years to organize the gigantic conspiracy. Within the teeming
city of Paris itself, steel and concrete fortresses had been secretly
built. Other cities throughout France were similarly ringed in
strategic places. Every one of these secret fortresses was stocked
with arms and munitions, and throughout the country, once the
confessions began, the police found thousands upon thousands of rifles
and pistols, millions of cartridges, hundreds of machine guns and
sub-machine guns. The fortresses themselves were fitted with secret
radio and telephone stations for communication among themselves. Code
books and evidence of arms-running from Germany and Italy were found.
A vast espionage network and a series of murders were traced to this
secret organization whose official name is the "Secret Committee for
Revolutionary Action." At their meetings they wore hoods to conceal
their identity from one another, like the Black Legion in the United
States, and the press promptly named them the "Cagoulards" ("Hooded
Ones").
Just how many members the Cagoulards actually have is unknown except
to its Supreme Council and probably to the German and Italian
Intelligence Divisions. Lists of names totaling eighteen thousand men
were turned up by the _Surete Nationale_, and the hundreds of steel
and concrete fortresses and the arms found in them point to a
membership of at least 100,000. The way the fortresses were built and
their strategic locations (blowing down the walls of the buildings
where the fortresses were hidden would have given them command of
streets, squares and government buildings) indicate supervision by
high military officials.
When contractors buy enormous quantities of cement for dugouts, when
butchers' and bakers' lorries rattle over ancient cobblestones with
enormous loads of arms smuggled across German and Italian borders,
when thousands of people are drilled and trained in pistol, rifle and
machine-gun practice, it is impossible that the competent French
Intelligence Service and the _Surete Nationale_ should not get wind of
it.
As far back as September, 1936, the _Surete Nationale_ knew that some
leading French industrialists with the cooperation of the German and
Italian Governments were building a military fascist organization
within France. Nevertheless it quietly permitted fortresses to be
built and stocked with munitions. The General Staff of the French
Army, from reports of Intelligence men in Germany and Italy, knew that
those countries were smuggling arms into France, but they permitted it
to go on. The General Staff knew that some eight hundred concrete
fortresses were being built under the supervision of M. Anceaux, a
building contractor of Dieppe, and that skilled members of the Secret
Committee for Revolutionary Action had been recruited for the building
and sworn to secrecy under penalty of death. They knew that these
fortresses were equipped with sending and receiving radios, knew that
some were within the shadow of military centers, knew that the
Cagoulards had a far-flung espionage system. But the French General
Staff made no effort to stop it.
The Popular Front Government was in power at the time, and heads of
the Supreme War Council apparently preferred a fascist France to a
democratic one. In fact, officers and reserve officers of the French
Army cooperated with secret agents of their traditional enemy,
Germany, to build up this formidable secret army.
The investigating authorities, stunned by their discoveries and the
high officials and individuals to whom their investigations led,
either did not dare go further with it, or, if they did, suppressed
the information. Some of it, however, came out.
At the top of the Cagoulards is a Supreme War Council or General Staff
whose members have not been disclosed. Working with them are several
other organizations, all with innocent names, as for example the
"Society of Studies for French Regeneration." The Cagoulards'
activities are divided into broad general lines, each directed by an
individual in complete command and embracing:
Buying war materials within France and smuggling war materials into
the country from Germany, Italy and Insurgent Spain, along with the
simultaneous weaving of an espionage network under Nazi and fascist
direction and leadership.
Building concrete fortresses at strategic centers and storing smuggled
arms in them.
Military training of secretly organized troops.
Getting the money to carry on these extensive activities.
Extreme care was, and still is, taken to conceal the identities of the
ordinary members and especially the leaders. For instance, one of the
leaders known to his subordinates as "Fontaine" is in reality Georges
Cachier, director of a large company in Paris and chief of the
Cagoulards' "Third Bureau," which is in charge of military movements.
Cachier is an Officer of the French Legion of Honor and a reserve
Lieutenant-Colonel in the French Army.
The Cagoulards are still very active. Members are being recruited with
leaders pointing out to the fearful ones that there is nothing to
worry about--almost all of those arrested in the early days of the
investigation are free, out on bail or kept in a "gentleman's
confinement" where they can do virtually as they please. "Our power is
great," new members are told.
As is customary in secret terrorist societies, the members are sworn
to silence with death as the penalty for indiscretion. The penalty
when it is employed is usually administered in American gangster
fashion. Each member is allotted to a "cell," the basic unit of the
military organization, and assigned to a secretly fortified post for
training. One of these posts discovered by the _Surete Nationale_ was
in an old boarding house run by two ancient spinsters with equally
ancient guests who spent their time in rockers, knitting and reading
and not dreaming that underneath the porch on which they sat so
tranquilly was a fortress with enough explosives to blow the whole
street to smithereens. Into this particular fortification, the cell
members would steal one by one after the old maids had retired,
entering by a concealed door three feet thick and electrically
operated.
There are two different kinds of cells in the Cagoulards, "heavy" and
"light" ones. They differ in the number of men and the quantity of
armaments assigned to them. The "light" cell has eight men equipped
with army rifles, automatics, hand grenades, and one sub-machine gun;
the "heavy" one has twelve men similarly armed but with a machine gun
instead of a sub-machine gun. Three cells form a unit, three units a
battalion, three battalions a regiment, two regiments a brigade and
two brigades a division of two thousand men. The battalions (one
hundred and fifty men) are subdivided into squads of fifty to sixty
men with ten to twelve cars at their disposal for quick movement
throughout the city. These automobile squads are given intensive
training.
Members are not required to pay dues, for enough money comes in from
industrialists and the German and Italian Governments to eliminate the
need of collecting money from members for operating expenses. Every
effort is made to function without written communications. No
membership cards are issued. Notices of meetings, drill and rifle
practice are issued verbally, and so far as the mass membership is
concerned, nothing in writing is placed in their hands.
A twenty-page handbook with instructions on street fighting was issued
to group commanders and, lest a copy fall into wrong hands and betray
the organization, it was boldly entitled: _Secret Rules of the
Communist Party_. The instructions are specific and are based upon the
insurrectionary tactics issued to the Nazi Storm Troopers. They fall
into six sections: General Remarks; Group Fighting; Section Fighting;
Choice of Terrain; Commissariat; and Policing Groups.
One or two excerpts from these instructions for street fighting
follow:
"The particular force for street fighting is infantry, provided with
automatic weapons and hand grenades. Members of the detachments should
be instructed that automatic weapons must always be used in
preference. Essential arms are: sub-machine guns, rifles including
hunting rifles, hand grenades, revolvers, petards." (Petards are small
bombs used for blowing in doors.)
With regard to "mopping up" in houses, the instructions state:
"If the door is barricaded, it must be opened with tools or
explosives. If it is a heavy door, break it in by driving a lorry at
it. Clean up basements and cellars by throwing bombs down through the
air holes or other openings after your men have got into the house.
Only after these have exploded should the cellar doors be forced.
Then, when ascending the stairs, keep close to the walls while one of
your men keeps firing straight up the shaft. Mop up as you go down
floor by floor. If necessary, pierce holes in the ceilings and mop up
by throwing down hand grenades."
The chief of the Cagoulards' espionage system is Dr. Jean Marie
Martin, a bushy-haired stocky man with dark, somber eyes. Dr. Martin
usually travels with several false passports and with the utmost
secrecy. At the moment he is in Genoa where he went to meet
Commendatore Boccalaro, Mussolini's personal representative in charge
of smuggling arms into foreign countries.
The preparations by the Rome-Berlin axis point to plans for a fight to
a finish between fascist and non-fascist countries. A feeble or
disrupted democracy will obviously strengthen the fascist powers in
any coming struggle with anti-fascist powers. Germany and Italy, faced
on their own borders with a democratic France allied with the Soviet
Union in a military defense pact, would face a powerful enemy in the
event of war. But if France were torn by a bloody civil war, she would
be virtually unable even to defend her borders. Consequently, it is
essential for Germany and Italy to weaken and if possible destroy
France's democracy.
France and Germany have been traditional enemies in their struggle for
land containing raw materials needed by their industries to compete in
the world markets. But the growth of the French labor movement and the
power of the Popular Front which threatened the control and the
profits of French industrialists and financiers, made them find more
in common with fascist and Nazi industrialists than with French
workers who menaced their economic and political control. The result
was that leading French industrialists were willing to cooperate with
Nazi and fascist agents to destroy the Popular Front and establish
fascism in France. About half of the 200,000,000 francs, which it is
estimated the fortresses and arms cost, was contributed by French
industrialists. The other half came from the German and Italian
Governments.
Germany and Italy sent swarms of secret agents into France to
supervise the building of the underground military machine and to
carry on intensive espionage with the assistance of the French Army
and Government officials who were members of the Hooded Ones. The
espionage service was organized by Baron de Potters, an old
international spy who travels with two or more passports under the
names of Farmer and Meihert. De Potters gets his funds from the Nazis'
strongly guarded "Bureau III B," established in Berne, Switzerland at
21 Gewerbestrasse. "Bureau III B" is the official name of this branch
of the Gestapo. At the head of it is Boris Toedli whose activities
include not only espionage but underground diplomatic intrigue and
propaganda. He works directly under Drs. Rosenberg and Goebbels.
Toedli supplies not only the Baron but other espionage directors with
money and there is plenty of it at his disposal for quick emergency
uses. The money is deposited in the _Societe des Banques Suisses_,
account No. 60941.
The head of the Italian espionage system directing the work in France
and cooperating closely with the Nazis is Commendatore Boccalaro, head
of the Italian Government's Arsenal in Genoa. One of his specialties
is the smuggling of arms into foreign countries.
Boccalaro's history shows that the not so fine Italian hand is
interfering in the internal affairs of foreign governments. As far
back as 1928, he secretly supplied carloads of arms from the Genoa
Arsenal to Hungary, and in 1936 he supplied Yugoslavian terrorists
with war materials in efforts to get those countries under Mussolini's
sphere of influence. Boccalaro, too, seems to have had reasons to
suppress information in at least one case where the death penalty was
inflicted upon a member of the Cagoulards.
Among the Hooded Ones who have been found with bullets or knives in
them was an arms runner named Adolphe-Augustin Juif, who tried to
charge the secret organization a little more than he should for
smuggling guns and munitions into France. When the organization
threatened him, he advised it not to resort to threats because he knew
a little too much.
On February 8, 1937, his bullet-riddled body was found in San Remo,
Italy. When Juif's wife, not hearing from him, sought information
about his whereabouts, she wrote to Boccalaro, since she knew he was
working with the Genoa director. The Italian papers had announced the
finding of his body; nevertheless, on March 3, Boccalaro wrote to the
murdered man's widow:
"Your husband, my dear friend, is carrying on a special and delicate
mission (perhaps in Spain or Germany) and has special reasons of a
delicate nature not to inform even his own family where he is at the
present moment."
Among the men whom Juif met before he was murdered was Eugene
Deloncle, director of the Maritime and River Transport Mortgage
Company and one of the most important industrialists in France.
Deloncle, a high official in the Cagoulards, used the name of
"Grosset" in his conspiratorial activities. The other man whom the
murdered Juif met is General Edouard Arthur Du-seigneur, former Air
Force chief and Military Adviser to the French Air Ministry. The
General is one of the military heads of the Cagoulards and frequently
met with Baron de Potters.
The _Surete Nationale_, the French Intelligence Service, and the
examining magistrate have documentary evidence that Germany and Italy
were and are deliberately conspiring to throw France, as they did
Spain, into a civil war. Publication of these documents would have
far-reaching effects, internally and externally. Great Britain,
however, planning to establish a four-cornered pact between England,
France, Germany and Italy, brought pressure to bear upon France to
suppress further disclosures about the Cagoulards. To England's
pressure was added that of leading French industrialists, financiers,
government and army officials. Gradually, news about the Cagoulards is
dying out. The real heads of the Hooded Ones either have not been
named or, if arrested in the early days of the investigation, have
been released on bail. And recruiting for the underground army is
still going on.
IV
_Dynamite Under Mexico_
Most people in the UNITED STATES feel secure from European or Asiatic
aggression since wide oceans apparently separate us from the
conquering ambitions of a Fuehrer or a Son of the Sun. However, despite
our desire to be left in peace, the Rome-Berlin axis, which Japan
joined, has cast longing eyes upon the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe
Doctrine is of value only so long as aggressor nations feel we are too
strong for them to violate it; recent history has shown what pieces of
paper are worth.
In the process of trying to get a foothold in the Americas, the Nazis
have sent agents into all of the countries, but because most of the
Central and South American republics are still resentful of past acts
by the "Colossus of the North," they offer the most fertile fields.
The two spots on the Western Hemisphere most vital to the United
States are the Panama Canal Zone and Mexico--the Zone because it is
our trade and naval life line between the oceans and Mexico because
potential enemies could find in it perfect military and naval bases.
Let us see what the totalitarian powers are doing in Mexico:
On June 30, 1937, the S.S. "Panuco" of the New York and Cuba Mail
Steamship Co. steamed into Tampico, Mexico, from New York with a
mysterious cargo consigned to one Armeria Estrada. As soon as she
docked, the cargo was quickly transferred to the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad freight car No. 45169, which was awaiting it. A
gentleman known around the freight yards as A.M. Cabezut, arranged for
the car to leave immediately for the state of San Luis Potosi in the
heart of Mexico.
There was no record on the bill of lading to show that the shipper was
the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Conn., and that
the cargo, ordered on January 23 and February 23, 1937, by an Italian
named Benito Estrada, was a large quantity of rifles, pistols and one
hundred and forty cases of cartridges for various caliber guns.