Again, Philibert

Frenchmen think he looks exactly like Ed Wynn, they are not sure whether he is insane, and they are always ready to read reams about the latest exploit of Hippolyte Marcellin Philibert Besson, the famed "Incredible Philibert" (TIME, Dec. 23). It is incredible but true that in hard-headed France, M. Philibert has got away with printing a fantastic international money which he calls the Europa Franc and which he manages to spend in the shops of his native district of Haute Loire which sent him in 1932 to the Chamber of Deputies. It was not his constituents but the Chamber which deprived Philibert of his seat last March, after he had infringed French law in various eccentric ways, always escaping from the police to Belgium in a bright blue straw hat. Last week Incredible Philibert, the Zioncheck of France, was arrested after another fantastic chase and this time the vexed French gendarmes succeeded in having him placed under observation. They charged him with purloining commercial papers, demanded that he tell what he had done with them. "Gladly!" cried Philibert. "They are in Spain!"

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