THE MORET TREASON CASE

The traitor Plouin seems to be a simple nutcase
(From our special correspondent)
Fontainebleau, October 6.

"Is Auguste Plouin a traitor?" asked the Œuvre yesterday. We will examine this question today. But, first, we believe we can say that it will be difficult for the director of the Sûreté générale to approve the flashy zeal of those of his subordinates who "blown up" such a pitiful affair; they risked alarming the population with stories of "treason" that seem to rest, ultimately, only on the foolish and naive imprudence of a man of whom the least one can think is that he has a disturbed intellect.

Here are the facts in 1916, Auguste Plouin, a singular man, drew the attention of the Sûreté Générale by sending a request for information to a foreign bank on the possible resumption, after the war, of commercial relations with the Germans. The signatory of this letter, then attached to the French mission to the British armies, was not worried, at a time when such imprudence led their authors straight to the Caponniere of Vincennes…

It took eight years for a new gesture by the same "trader" to have his file examined and to open, in the sensational manner that we know, today's investigation. This time, it was a letter, intercepted en route and whose reading should leave even the least psychological of police officers dreaming. Auguste Plouin, who typed it, sent one of his German correspondents a questionnaire of astonishing puerility:

"Do your chemists have a product that can poison the horses of the French occupation army in the Ruhr?

Is there a way to make men sterile by making them consume a product such as saccharin, for example, in a restaurant that I could open?"

"Can these products alter the flavor of fodder and food?"

And he added: "I would gladly buy, if you could provide me with the funds, a house to house the German emissaries in France and thus spare them the inconveniences of police surveillance..."

Some other nonsense of the same kind followed. The Sûreté, warned, was upset: it was its duty. But she does not ask herself how a simple fodder broker can imagine "poisoning" practically, all by himself and without anyone noticing, fodder supplies as important as those of the French armies in the Ruhr. Nor does she consider that the risk run by the male clientele of a single restaurant could not make all the French share the dangers of a general sterility. She accepts at face value the strange proposals of Plouin, which no serious German could really examine without laughing, and she arrives in full force at Moret to arrest the "traitor"

The latter, searched, questioned, confesses everything that one wants him to: he did indeed type the seized letter, "because, his current boss no longer buying much fodder for the Ruhr, he is going to run out of resources and is trying to get some by this means".
Wearing a straw hat and looking very sheepish, he is taken to prison and, under Article 76 of the Penal Code, is entrusted to Messrs. Delerba, public prosecutor, and Milon, examining magistrate, who, young, wise, informed and completely skeptical, barely contain a strong urge to laugh as they examine the file of their "client.".

What could become of this one? It is not a prophecy in the clouds to suppose that, if there is no other offense to reproach him with, the lawyer he will choose will have no trouble obtaining his mental examination. Eccentric in his morals as in his words and writings, Auguste Plouin, "traitor", could well be released from justice to become a defendant in the shower. That is a matter for the magistrates and the defender.

EMMANUEL BOURCIER.