Bonds Burned

"Papa" Joffre is still, in the U. S., "The Hero of the Marne"; but in Paris his strategy has long been the target of savage attacks by military critics. Even such a comparative bystander as the omniscient Winston S. Churchill, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, has taken the trouble to describe good "Papa" Joffre as 'this bullheaded, broad-shouldered, slow-thinking, phlegmatic, bucolic personage."*

Marshal Joffre, to many smart, shallow people is "just a fat man who was lucky. But solid citizens still believe in him. They showed their faith when the franc was tottering (TIME, May, 3, 1926) by subscribing 19,000,000 francs to the Joffre Save the Franc Fund. Last week the final scene in that impressive drama was acted at Paris.

As everyone knows the 19,000,000 francs were used to buy Government securities. These bonds were then canceled from the State's obligations, thus bettering its credit. Last week there remained only the ceremony of burning 19,000,000 in canceled bonds.

At the burning Marshal Joffre was represented by an aide, Major Desmazes who arrived briskly at the Mint last week, with several bearded senators. A blast furnace intended for melting silver was started, and into it workmen shoveled paper which had once been valued at the par equivalent of $4,000,000. The blazing heat and tedious length of this ceremony were deemed by physicians unsuitable to the health of massive Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre, aged 75.

*THE WORLD CRISIS (1916-1918), Vol. I. p. 6--Winston S. Churchill&-Seribncr.