Dueling Mayor

Peppery little Jean Chiappe, longtime Prefect of Police, was one of the most excited men in all Paris last week. Within seven days he had challenged an enemy to a duel, staged a potent political comeback and got himself elected President of the Municipal Council of Paris, a post equivalent to mayor in the U. S.

On his comeback M. Chiappe had gambled high. A Corsican, he was naturally sympathetic to France's extreme right parties. During the preliminary riots before bloody Feb. 6, 1934, Prefect Chiappe was charged with allowing Royalists and Fascists to riot their heads off, smashing Communist and Socialist demonstrations ruthlessly. Socialists asked and got the head of Prefect Chiappe as the price of their support of the luckless Daladier government. Prefect Chiappe was forced to resign. To keep him quiet Premier Daladier reached deep into his plum bag for one of the juiciest of all French administrative posts--the Governorship of Morocco. Still gambling on his popularity in Paris, Jean Chiappe turned the offer down.

For over a year he did nothing but travel for his health, collect books, give smart little dinners for political bigwigs, entertain friends in his private cocktail bar. Then at last he was ready to step out again. The Presidency of the Municipal Council is a one-year job that attracts little public attention but wields great influence with the National Government. A previous President of the Municipal Council was Socialist Pierre Godin. He and Jean Chiappe had been intimate friends for years. Their friendship did not break up when the scandals of the Stavisky case and the February riots forced the resignation of Jean Chiappe, but when a Chiappe candidate beat out Pierre Godin for his seat on the Council, that 60-year-old politician saw red. To the Press he rushed with an open letter to M. Chiappe that said among other things:

"I consider you a dangerous, low politician. . . . You have nothing immortal to your credit except perhaps in the annals of the minor underworld and corridors of shady finance. . . . You were known to be in bed, trembling and sobbing, on Feb. 6 and yet you call yourself 'The Man of Feb. 6.' "'

Jean Chiappe promptly challenged Pierre Godin to a duel.* Attempting to weasel, M. Godin at first refused to accept the challenge on the ground that M. Chiappe had "forfeited his dueling rights" by refusing to fight a Corsican editor in 1933. Later he accepted.

At 8:30 o'clock in the morning MM. Godin & Chiappe motored out to the big garden of Mme Cotnareaunu, widow of Perfumer Franc,ois Coty, on the Avenue Raphael. Old-fashioned dueling pistols were loaded with black powder & ball. On the greensward the seconds stepped off 25 paces. The principals turned up their coat collars lest a spot of white shirtfront give a target.

At the first shot both men missed. Stiffly they waited while the pistols were reloaded. At the second shot M. Godin crumpled up, pinked in the hip. Jean Chiappe turned on his heel, stalked off to his car without shaking hands. Honor was satisfied, but the adversaries were not reconciled.

*Also challenged last week was French Tennist Jean Borotra by Paris Sportswriter Didier Poulain, as the culmination of an exchange of insults started by Sportswriter Poulain's insistence that Borotra had let France down by refusing to play singles in the French Davis Cup matches.

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