THE MUTILATED PARK

Versailles

A surveillance committee is created
Thus, the mutilation of the park of Versailles is even more scandalous than had been believed. The visit of the Fine Arts Commission to the site of the massacre yesterday highlighted this.
The architect in charge, Mr. Chaussemiche, had left it to the gardener! He was unaware of the severe cuts carried out by the latter! He only learned about them from the newspapers!
Who is this civil servant, charged by the State with preserving the beautiful trees that the centuries have bequeathed to us (and not the meager arbours of the time of Louis XIV, as Mr. André Hallays very rightly pointed out yesterday), this civil servant who has his office in the castle, a stone's throw from Mansart's Colonnade, and who does not go and see what his gardener is doing!

Mr. Chaussemiche's personality is indifferent to us and we do not want to be verbally more severe than Mr. Paul Léon himself. The spectacle of this civil servant caught red-handed in negligence and incompetence was, moreover, a pitiful thing yesterday.
Mr. Paul Léon returned to Paris very late. He had wanted to see everything. The splendor of this adorable day, which one would have thought was August, had it not been for the reddening of the foliage, highlighted even more the forest disaster whose sadness Mme de Sévigné would have so well narrated.
I can only accept the explanation of insecurity, declared finally the director of Fine Arts.
This judgment implicitly contains the condemnation of the architect: The vast majority of the trees felled by the fault of Mr. Chaussemiche were not in danger of ruin. Mr. Paul Léon's report has not yet been done. As soon as it is, it will be forwarded to the Minister of Fine Arts, who will be responsible for taking a sanction. Given the personality of the official to be struck, it is likely that the head of government will be consulted. We believe that, in any case, a decision will be made within a fortnight.
A monitoring committee, composed of competent men, has already been created. It will meet in Versailles once a month to study the work that could be envisaged.

MAURICE MONTABRÉ.