Lion of Senegal

Lion Noir is the name of a popular French brand of black shoe polish. Black Lion is also the self-given nickname of the second tallest, darkest-skinned member of the French Chamber of Deputies--Negro Galandou Diouf, 64, Deputy for Senegal, one of the four colored and one of the most colorful men in the French Government.

The Black Lion has been a teacher, soldier, politician and peanut-farmer. He hates Communists. In a recent debate on the fate of the Communist Deputies, he roared: "What France really needs is toimport a few more good anthropophagites like me and we would eat 'em alive." As a good Mohammedan, he has three wives and seven legitimate children. "Two wives," says Diouf, "are a necessity for every normal man. A third is apt to be expensive and thefourth is a downright luxury." He loves practical jokes, such as collecting a huge crowd of Frenchmen on the banks of the Seine by pointing at the river and jabbering in pidgin French about how big and dangerous French crocodiles are.

Galandou Diouf claims that he is the only legal representative of 19,000,000 French West African Negroes. Exceedingly well informed on colonial matters, he wants protectorate rights, on a par with Morocco or Algeria, for all French colonies. He would like to be the first colonial Senator and, eventually, Minister of Colonies. Last week he was in trouble --along with a retired colonial bureaucrat named Pierre Francois Tallerie.

The Black Lion, M. Tallerie and a certain Major Brehier were accused by the West African Mouride Tribe of fraud. M. Tallerie and a Mouride sheik named Bamba had signed a contract under which the former was to build a mosque in Touba, Negro religious centre near the west border of the Ivory Coast. The Colonial Council refused to pass on the project. Tallerie claimed indemnity from the tribe for alleged advances from his pocket. The Black Lion collaborated with Major Brehier in writing angry letters to the tribesmen demanding M. Tallerie's money. The tribesmen paid. Then, thinking they had been swindled, they sued. Last week a Paris court returned judgment in favor of the defendants, and the Black Lion came out on top of the heap. Indemnities: The Black Lion, $465; M. Tallerie, $116; Major Brehier,$23.

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