"Americans . . . reprehensible!"

"They knowingly misled French justice! The role of these Americans was blameworthy and reprehensible." Thus intoned M. le Juge Adolphe Wattine of the First Civil Tribunal of Paris, last week. He had just rebuked and suspended three French divorce lawyers--Maitres Moreau, Legrand and Prestal--and was now warming up to flay their U. S. divorce clients and especially those U.S. lawyers who act in Paris as inter-mediaires between would-be-divorcees and the French avocats who alone may argue cases before the Paris Bar. Roundly naming names, Judge Wattine mentioned Dudley Field Malone, onetime Collector of the Port of New York, Benjamin H. Conner, President of the American Chamber of Commerce at Paris, and a half dozen more expatriate U. S. lawyers as especial objects of his wrath. As a first and most vital precaution Registrar Chipot of the Civil Court was placed on trial, last week, before all the 119 Magistrates entitled to sit upon that high tribunal. Registrar Chipot is entitled to charge 10 francs (40-c-) for "handling and filing" divorce papers; but he was gravely accused of accepting as much as 20 or even 25 francs (80-c- or $1) as an illegal fee or bribe for "expediting" the papers. Piteously M. Le Registrar Chipot plead that when the franc declined to one fourth its pre-War value, "it became customary for us poor registrars to accept whatever fees were offered." The 119 judges, touched by this appeal, suspended Registrar Chipot for two months only, then adjusted his suspension to fall exactly within the two months annual vacation of the Court, at which time the Registrar has no duties and no opportunity to earn fees, take bribes.