Press: Paris Muckraker

Sniffing about Europe in search of fun for himself and filler for his column, Scripps-Howard’s sharp-nosed, sharp-tongued Columnist Westbrook Pegler last week discovered the extraordinary French magazine named Crapouillot, devoted a cabled column to telling U. S. readers about one issue of it. Unique is Crapouillot in devoting each issue to a single subject. Because it reminded him of Humphrey Cobb’s best-selling novel Paths of Glory (TIME, June 3), Columnist Pegler had been attracted by the August 1934 issue, which told the appalling stories of a few of the luckless French soldiers whose Wartime deaths by execution were aimed to teach their comrades proper respect for superior officers.

A vigorous anti-war crusader himself, Columnist Pegler had stumbled on the work of one of the bitterest and most effective enemies of war in France. Jean Galtier-Boissière founded Crapouillot (name of a small trench cannon) in 1915, at first distributed it only to his fellow soldiers. After the War he branched out, took a partner, began to make journalistic history with a brand of fearless muckraking which caused French citizens’ eyes to pop, French officials’ hair to rise. With stark facts and photographs Crapouillot took out such disagreeable subjects as the origins and secret causes of the War; French mutinies of 1917; Wartime homosexuality and prostitution in the Army; false Wartime propaganda. It sandwiched learned, readable issues on automobiles, cinema, wines, books between explosive exposures of “The Truth About the Saar,” ”Mysterious Deaths,” “The Masters of the Wrorld.” Greatest Crapouillot beats were on Wartime censorship, on munitions makers in general and sales of French munitions to Germany in particular.

Crapouillot now appears bimonthly, has an average circulation of 50,000 which occasionally spurts to 100,000. Tall, handsome, 47, author of four novels, Editor Galtier-Boissière is famed as a gourmet and as the best-dressed of French literati. His immunity from libel suits makes knowing Frenchmen nod, credit his exposures with deadly accuracy.

Paths of Glory told the story of a tested French regiment whose battered remnants, exhausted by a long ordeal in the trenches, were ordered by a glory-hunting general to take a strong German position. When enemy fire swept the regiment back, the angry general murderously commanded a supporting battery to shell the French trenches. He was frustrated by the artillery commander, who refused to obey without a written order. Thereupon the general ordered the regiment to the rear, had three of its members executed as examples to the rest.

In a postscript to his novel Author Cobb announced that characters, units and places were fictitious. For proof “that such things happened” he referred readers to, among other sources, the issue of Crapouillot which Columnist Pegler discovered last week. Characteristically, the magazine names real characters, units, places.

In February 1915, reports Crapottillot, France’s 336th infantry regiment fought hard at Perthes-les-Hurlus. In March it was ordered into the front lines at Souain Mill. Three attempts to take a strong German position failed under withering machine gun fire, with heavy losses. The high command ordered the regiment’s 21st company to attack again, at dawn on March 10. At the zero hour the supporting artillery, which had failed miserably in clearing a way through the barbed wire in No Man’s Land, clumsily began to drop shells just in front of the 21st’s trenches. The tired men of the 21st made a wavering start, fell back under violent enemy fire.

Furious at the news, the division commander, General Réveilhac, ordered his artillery to shell the 2 ist’s trenches. He was frustrated by the artillery commander, who refused to obey without a written order. Thereupon General Réveilhac ordered the 21st to the rear, Corporals Maupas, Girard, Lefoulon and Lechat shot by a firing squad, buried under shameful black crosses.

For 19 years the Widow Maupas worked to clear her dead husband’s name. Last year a court especially constituted to review such cases ruled that the 21st had been pushed beyond the limits of human endurance, declared that the executed corporals had been valiant men, awarded their widows damages of one franc each. Meantime General Réveilhac had retired to his fine country estate, been made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, died in bed.