Foreign News: Death of Bokanowski

“Journalists insinuate that I never fly because I am unwilling to risk my life. You see that an air voyage has no terrors for me.”

Thus, spoke one day last week M. Maurice Bokanowski, Minister of Commerce and Aviation, director of the Postal Service. A few minutes later he stepped into an airplane which rose unsteadily to an altitude of 300 feet. Suddenly a sheet of flame shot from the motor. The plane crashed down in flames. Two hours later M. Bokanowski’s body was extricated from the twisted steel.

Newspapermen, awkward and embarrassed, informed Mme. Bokanowski, who was playing golf just outside Paris at the time of the accident.

Twice Maurice Bokanowski had cheated Death. During the War he served as a lieutenant, received a thought-to-be mortal wound, recovered. Later, in 1916 while he was crossing the Mediterranean on the Provence, she was torpedoed. For ten hours he clung to a bit of wreckage. Finally he was rescued by a lifeboat.

The day before his death M. Bokanowski lunched with Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré and the whole cabinet. The occasion was festive. M. Poincaré was celebrating the cabinet’s second anniversary. Simultaneously was celebrated M. Bokanowski’s 49th birthday.

Maurice Bokanowski was born in Havre, but spent his childhood in Toulon, French naval base, where his father made a fortune in department stores. Admitted to the bar when comparatively young he soon became one of the most brilliant, popular and highly feed lawyers in Paris. Originally of radical sympathies he became more and more conservative. His career in many respects was not unlike that of ex-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Grateful Parisians will remember him as the man who modernized their sadly inefficient telephone system.

France will remember him as a close friend of Raymond Poincaré and one of her most sound financial organizers.