The Suppression of Biribi

The day before yesterday we published the decree by which General Nollet, Minister of War, set up a commission to urgently inspect the military penitentiary establishments in North Africa. This commission, composed of magistrates, officers and a doctor, must embark immediately.

An investigation was necessary and it is important that it be actively and seriously conducted. Recently published accounts have denounced too many horrible abuses for it not to be essential to know the truth.

However, it would be appropriate to await the result of this investigation with confidence. The very haste with which the members constituting this commission propose to go there indicates their legitimate concern to make rapid inquiries.

One of our colleagues showed a certain vivacity yesterday and affirmed that "the suppression of Biribi is an immediately necessary measure and that the opening of a new investigation is a delaying tactic that is perfectly unacceptable." He added: "No one has anything more to learn."

Such impatience, if justified by the excesses that have been discussed, is nevertheless unreasonable. Can one without frivolity abolish an entire institution on the basis of a report of an absolutely unofficial investigation, conducted by a journalist whose good faith cannot be doubted, but who may have been deceived by the stories of convicts whose words should not always be believed to be free of all lies.

Should Biribi be abolished? We will soon know. Should its organization be modified? The investigators will tell us. When they have finished their report and we have been able to read the results of their observations, it will be time to make a decision.

It took Mr. Albert Londres, who is a good journalist, just a few weeks to judge everything; it will not take any longer for the members of the commission, who are good magistrates and enlightened officers, to check what he has seen.

Mr. G.