"Cyclist Salengro"

The only hard-boiled member of elderly and intellectual Premier Leon Blum's present Cabinet was Minister of Interior Roger Salengro, and paradoxically it was he who last week committed suicide.

M. Salengro's hard-boiled father, after killing a man in a riot spent the rest of his life in prison at hard labor for manslaughter. His wife was accused some years ago by Communist newsorgans of having been, during the War, one of those hard-boiled women who made easier the lot of soldiers, and in her grief at this accusation Mme Salengro died of heart disease. The Communists, having joined with the Socialists to make possible the Popular Front Cabinet of Premier Blum, later turned from foes of Socialist Salengro into friends, but he found other foes. Ever since last August, the weekly Gringoire and other Paris organs of the Right have been hammering at hard-boiled Minister Salengro while he hammered back so vigorously that in punishment for Gringoire's attacks and others the great Havas news agency was recently forced by the Premier to drop one of its leading directors (TIME, Nov. 16). Last week, after the suicide of the Minister of Interior, officials of the Ministry of Interior, which controls the police and communications systems, broke the French law insuring non-censorship of cables and for several hours denied correspondents in France the use of dot-dash communication, forcing them to telephone the facts abroad.

The attacks on M. Salengro have rehearsed, week after week, assertions that during the War he, as a French soldier and cyclist dispatch rider, deserted to the enemy. This was rammed home by Gringoire with endless cartoons of "Cyclist Salengro" (see cuts) and by this tag the Minister was nightly mocked by comedians in Paris music halls. Friends of M. Salengro said that a "Commission of Honor" headed by the Chief-of-Staff, General Marie Gustave Gamelin, recently investigated his War record and cleared him of desertion. Enemies cracked back that General Gamelin did not head an official Commission of Honor but only acted in concert with two veterans' organizations, and that anyhow the still-living French officers of Salengro's regiment all say today in Paris that he was a deserter, and they ought to know. Friends retorted that, in Germany, Prisoner Salengro organized an attempted revolt of 40 other French prisoners and for this got two years in one of the Fatherland's jails, which in France should be in his favor.* Enemies kept screaming that Salengro must be investigated by a Court of Honor but in the Chamber of Deputies fortnight ago, after a fisticuffing, shin-kicking fight, the Deputies voted 427-10-103 complete vindication of the Minister of Interior who was then & there embraced by Premier Blum. Both wept, apparently for joy. Why then did hard-boiled and triumphantly-vindicated Roger Salengro commit suicide last week?

The Right press scoffed this week that, of course, he did not commit suicide, and the Royalist Action Franc,aise accused the Left of "exploiting a dead body." Numbers were on the side of the Left and of suicide, however, and all over France workers by hundreds, then thousands, turned out to parade with banners such as "GRINGOIRE ASSASSINATED SALENGRO!", "FASCISM HAS KILLED SALENGRO!", "TO JAIL WITH SALENGRO'S SLAYERS!"

What Were The Facts? Being a widower, M. Salengro lived alone at Lille, Mayor of that big city (pop. 200,000) and popular for his energetic efforts among the poor. His housekeeper had cooked his dinner, left it in the warm oven, and had gone home as usual. His chauffeur went home after leaving the Minister of Interior at his door, and in Paris his secretary at the Ministry had already taken a long-distance call in which M. Salengro said that he felt tired and begged to be excused from a scheduled appointment next day with his friend the Premier.

The dinner remained in the oven uneaten. Subsequent examination showed that Death came about 11 p. m. but no one arrived until early morning. Then the housekeeper shuffled in to get the Mayor's breakfast and at first only thought he had dozed off in his easy chair near the warm stove and slept the night.

A doctor was called. Noon Paris papers announced officially the natural death of the Minister of Interior by heart failure. In the late afternoon Lille buzzed with rumors of suicide. These became official at 11:30 p. m. and M. Salengro was an nounced to have placed wet cloths around his kitchen windows to seal them, turned on the gas stove, died asphyxiated.

In great excitement and with tears streaming down their faces, Premier Leon Blum and Brother Henri Salengro had meanwhile arrived at the dead Mayor's home. Lille reporters found them each with a letter in his hand, gesticulating and distraught. The Press was not permitted to examine either letter but was asked to take down both as read off by M. Blum and M. Salengro, as follows:

"My dear Blum:

"My wife died nearly 18 months ago from calumny which did not spare her and from which she suffered so much. My mother is not recovering from the consequences of her operation and calumny is eating into her heart.

"I have fought valiantly, for my part, but I have come to the end. If they have not succeeded in dishonoring me, at least they will bear the responsibility for my death, for I am neither a deserter nor a traitor. My party has always been my joy and my life. My affection to my people, my remembrances to our friends and to you my thanks."

"My dear Henri:

"Overwork and calumny have been too much. Together with grief they have conquered me. Good-bye to mother, to Jeanette, to thee and thine. I am rejoining Leonie."

Salengro, Socialism & Spain. The Radical French "stayin" strikes of last summer were put down by virile M. Salengro when they were becoming a national menace (TIME, June 8 et seq.) and this week, as nervous Premier Blum temporarily took charge of the Ministry of Interior himself, fresh stayin strikes erupted. Communist Leader Maurice Thorez turned what was to have been a Paris mass meeting of mourning for Suicide Salengro into a howling mob which screamed, "Cannon for Spain!" and "Down with Fascism!" at Defense Minister Edouard Daladier. Vainly he shouted, "I came here thinking we would all unite in commemorating Roger Salengro!"

The whole French Cabinet went to Lille for its Mayor's state funeral and all the way from England came the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Laborite Clement Attlee, as the proletariat chanted, "Fascists are Assassins!" With tears streaming down his cheeks, Premier Blum promised to rush onto French statute books a law modeled on the British law of libel, strictest in the world. "Roger Salengro would not have asked any other vengeance!" explained M. Blum, who seemed to think that unless he took such "vengeance" upon French newspaper proprietors the mob might rend them limb from limb. At latest reports the entire metallurgical industry of Lille was paralyzed by a stayin strike vaguely linked with Salengro, Socialism & Spain.

*His German lawyer successfully defended Salengro with the following amazing plea to the German court martial: "Meine Herren, you must not sentence this Frenchman to death, for, France is a gallant country, and had a German prisoner in France committed the offense with which Salengro is charged we would consider it our duty to bow deeply before him."

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