Polignac v. Mon

As a fireman bounds out of bed and rushes to a fire, so Crown Prince Pierre de Polignac of Monaco bounded into a sleeping car berth at Paris and rushed off to Monte Carlo.

In the Principality, embers of revolution were a-glowing. The first alarm was sounded when the Parliament of Monaco --called the National Council--resigned en masse. The second alarm was figuratively turned in by Monaco's one Minister of State, florid, flustered M. Louis Eugene Maurice Piette, after the Communal Council of Monaco. Like delighted children at a fire, the tourists and gamblers of Monte Carlo shrilled questions: "Is it really a revolution? What's it all about? What will the Prince do when he gets here?"

In the morning, when Le Train Bleu glided into Monte Carlo Station, His Highness Prince Pierre Marie Xavier Raphael Antoine Melchior de Polignac, Due de Valentinois, and Comte de Polignac, stepped forth before suspicious, hostile eyes. Proud, race-conscious Monegasques (Monaco natives) despise Prince Pierre as a mere naturalized citizen of Monaco, and a black-hearted Frenchman under his skin. They sneer at the means by which he became Crown Prince--married into it, faugh!

Through angry muttering crowds of Monegasques, Prince Pierre proceeded resolutely to confer with members of the resigned National Council, and especially with soft-voiced, steel-eyed M. Leon, the young manager of Monte's famed Casino.

Salons of the National Council gruffly voiced their grievances, charging that:

1) Prince Louis has "abandoned his people" and now dwells exclusively in France.

2) The Casino Syndicate is corruptly concealing profits and nefariously neglecting public works which it has contracted to perform. Item: the electric plant frequently breaks down. Item: so do the waterworks. Item: ditto the telephones.

3) The Casino Syndicate has used its monopoly power to the detriment of all other "enterprises" in Monaco, suppressing cinema theatres and discontinuing fetes which used to fill even the small hotels with tourists. 4) The authority of the Crown and the extent of the crown lands are still so vaguely defined that in practice the Prince--and in his name the Casino Syndicate--has frequently acted in a manner arbitrary, unjust, scandalous. Finally the resigned and angry councilors made formal demand upon Prince Pierre that he summon his father-in-law Prince Louis from Paris and set up a commission to investigate and right the wrongs of the 22,153 Monegasques.

Experienced Prince Pierre de Polignac temporized, seemed to yield. By all means let there be a commission! Affably His Highness named three each of the resigned National and Communal councilmen to compose the Commission. Also the smart son-in-law had a proclamation from Prince Louis to read--a paternal, gently reproving proclamation:

"Citizens, your Sovereign remains tranquil and confident that recent events have been greatly exaggerated abroad. On the eve of the season most essential to Monaco's prosperity, Prince Louis calls the people of Monaco, in the name of and by the affection they hold for their country to an appreciation of their sane and essential duties."

Such is human nature that after Prince Pierre de Polignac had publicly declaimed these words, the populace, touched that Prince Louis had not utterly forsaken them, raised hearty huzzahs. While the favorable moment lingered, Smart Son-in-Law Prince Pierre dashed to catch the Blue Train back to Paris, where he laid all details before absentee Prince Louis.

Observers spied two niggers in Monaco's smoldering woodpile. Besides the 22,153 so-called Monegasques there are over 10,000 Italians in Monaco, and among them Fascist emissaries are fomenting the idea that Prince Louis intends to dispose of Monaco to France, and that the little principality might better merge with Italy.

Secondly, the lavish bribes previously passed out to influential Monegasques by the Casino Syndicate have been much reduced under the new management of French and young M. Leon. With some unwisdom he has not concealed his opinion that the Monegasques are a lazy enervated lot, and, worse still, he has turned many of them out of Casino jobs and hired Frenchmen.