L’Écho d’Alger
- FOR ALGERIA
- M. ALEXANDRE VARENNE IN FRANCE
- A girl lives on clear water
L'Écho d'Alger's front page of 30 October 1926 led with an editorial, 'Pour l'Algérie', that resumed the paper's September campaign against Governor General Maurice Viollette. The paper said it was keeping its promised appointment with him before the Délégations financières on 3 November. It also rejected rumours, spread after the Conseil général had elected its officers, that every quarrel would now end in a stage-style reconciliation. The same page carried an interview in which Alexandre Varenne, Governor General of Indochina, summed up ten months of work: opening administrative careers to young Indochinese, better pay and recruitment for native officials, a drive against usurers, the near-abolition of imprisonment for debt and a new popular credit body. A short Lisbon dispatch reported a young Portuguese woman said to have lived on water alone for seven years, whom scientists planned to study.
Translation
FOR ALGERIA
At the end of the series of articles we devoted, during the month of September, to a critical examination of his methods and his policy, we gave M. Viollette, Governor General, a rendezvous for 3 November, before the Délégations financières, if the Government, we said, left him time to convene them. Faithful to that promise, here we are again, and all the more scrupulously punctual because, after that first session of the Conseil général, at which that assembly renewed its officers, words have been spoken and rumours set in circulation that aim to make people believe that all the conflicts are going to come out here, as at the end of a vaudeville, in the vast effusion of a Lamourette kiss.
M. ALEXANDRE VARENNE IN FRANCE
'Would you like me to sum up for you the whole effort pursued during these ten months? Well, here it is: first, I concerned myself with the natives.
'The very delicate question of their employment in the administration? I resolved it by decrees that give young Indochinese access to most of the administrative careers hitherto reserved for Europeans. At the same time, I strengthened the native administration, by ensuring it better salaries and wider recruitment.
'I have relentlessly hunted down the usurers. They are, in Asia [?] and more especially in Indochina, a veritable scourge. From the moment I arrived, I abolished imprisonment for debt, except in exceptional cases, and I created a popular credit institution.'
A girl lives on clear water
Lisbon, 29 October. – For seven years [?] Mlle Estrela, a young Portuguese woman, has been living on clear water and is none the worse for it. The whole Portuguese press is reporting this exceptional case, and the scientists of Lisbon and Coimbra intend to go to Beira, the locality where the young woman lives, to study the consequences of this diet, whose sobriety seems to them unique in the annals of humanity.
Context
Why L'Écho d'Alger kept up its campaign against Governor General Viollette
The editorial continues a campaign the paper says it ran in September against Maurice Viollette's 'methods and policy', and it rejects rumours of a reconciliation after the Conseil général session. Viollette, a Radical politician, governed Algeria from 1925 to 1927. The historian Michel Pierre describes him as trying to extend the liberal ideas of Charles Jonnart, governor general from 1903 to 1911, who in 1918 had championed measures that most Europeans of Algeria refused to accept. According to Pierre, Viollette went back to France two years after his appointment, little missed by most of the European population, and at the 1926 Salon des Humoristes in Algiers he was drawn as a nursemaid bottle-feeding two native children. L'Écho d'Alger stood squarely in the camp of those Europeans. Its founder, Étienne Bailac, who launched the daily in 1912, had accused reformers of sacrificing 'the rights and interests of the Algerians' to the realisation of a utopia. The editorial's aside that the Government might not leave Viollette time to convene the Délégations hinted at his recall, and he did leave office in 1927. The paper's hostility lasted far longer. When Viollette co-authored the 1936 Blum-Viollette proposal to grant French citizenship to Algerian elites, L'Écho d'Alger nicknamed him 'Violette l'arbi', and the project faded from government business after Blum's cabinet fell.
The Délégations financières, the assembly Viollette was to face on 3 November
The rendezvous the editorial sets is the autumn session of the Délégations financières algériennes, created in August 1898 under Governor General Édouard Laferrière as an elected assembly to advise the government. It comprised 24 representatives of colons (French agricultural settlers), 24 of non-colons (French merchants, manufacturers and workers) and 21 of the indigenous population, so that European delegates held 48 of its 69 seats. An account of Laferrière's governorship judges that the measure gave the local people limited political rights but no real power. Governors general addressed the assembly when it opened: Laferrière's own speech at the opening of the Délégations on 6 November 1899 was printed in Algiers. When L'Écho d'Alger promised to meet Viollette 'before the Délégations financières', it was pointing to the moment when a reforming governor would have to present himself before a body in which settler and other European interests held a clear majority.
Alexandre Varenne and the Indochina reforms he described
Alexandre Varenne was a politician and journalist, best remembered as the founder of the newspaper La Montagne, and a member of the socialist SFIO during his career. He was Governor-General of French Indochina from 1925 to 1928, so the 'ten months' of the interview cover the first part of his term. Speaking in France, he presents his own record: decrees opening most administrative careers formerly reserved for Europeans to young Indochinese, better salaries and wider recruitment for the native administration, a campaign against usurers, the abolition of imprisonment for debt except in exceptional cases, and the creation of a popular credit institution. These achievements appear in the paper as the governor's own claims, and the interview itself does not describe how the decrees worked in practice. The juxtaposition on the page is telling. Varenne and Viollette both took up their governorships in 1925, and L'Écho d'Alger printed Varenne's account of opening careers to colonial subjects on the same front page as its attack on Viollette's methods and policy in Algeria.
How earlier 'fasting girl' claims were tested
The Lisbon dispatch reports only that Mlle Estrela had lived on water for seven years and that scientists planned to study her; it gives no result. Claims of surviving without food had a long history. In the Middle Ages the ability was attributed to saints such as Catherine of Siena and Lidwina of Schiedam, and numerous cases of 'fasting girls' were reported in the late nineteenth century. Doctors such as William A. Hammond ascribed the phenomenon to fraud and hysteria. The best-known test ended in tragedy: in 1869 the parents of Sarah Jacob, the 'Welsh fasting girl', agreed to strict supervision by nurses from Guy's Hospital, and she died of starvation, after which it emerged that she had been eating very small amounts in secret. Her parents were convicted of manslaughter. The claims of Mollie Fancher of Brooklyn were never verified before her death in 1916. The historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg regards such cases as an early form of anorexia nervosa. The planned visit by scientists from Lisbon and Coimbra followed the same pattern of seeking to observe such a claim directly.
Original
POUR L'ALGÉRIE
A la fin de la série d'articles, dans le courant du mois de septembre, par nous consacrés à l'examen critique de ses méthodes et de sa politique, nous fixions rendez-vous à M. Viollette, gouverneur général, à la date du 3 novembre, devant les Délégations financières, si le Gouvernement, disions-nous, lui laissait le temps de les réunir. Fidèles à cette promesse, nous revoici, avec d'autant plus de scrupuleuse régularité qu'après cette première séance du Conseil général, où cette assemblée renouvela son bureau, des mots ont été prononcés et des bruits mis en circulation qui visent à laisser croire que tous les conflits vont ressortir ici, comme à la fin d'un vaudeville, dans la vaste effusion d'un baiser Lamourette.
M. ALEXANDRE VARENNE EN FRANCE
«Voulez-vous que je vous résume tout l'effort poursuivi pendant ces dix mois? Eh bien, voilà: D'abord, je me suis occupé des indigènes. «La question si délicate de leur emploi dans l'administration? Je l'ai résolue par des arrêtés qui permettent aux jeunes Indo-Chinois l'accès de la plupart des carrières administratives jusque là réservées aux européens. En même temps, j'ai renforcé l'administration indigène, en lui assurant des traitements meilleurs et un plus large recrutement. «J'ai impitoyablement traqué les usuriers. Ils sont, en Asie [?] et plus spécialement en Indo-Chine, un véritable fléau. Dès mon arrivée, j'ai aboli, sauf pour des cas exceptionnels, la prison pour dettes et j'ai créé un Crédit populaire.
Une jeune fille vit d'eau claire
Lisbonne, 29 octobre. - Depuis sept ans [?] Mlle Estrela, une jeune portugaise, vit d'eau claire et ne s'en porte pas plus mal. Toute la presse portugaise signale ce cas exceptionnel et les savants de Lisbonne et de Coïmbre se proposent de se rendre à Beira, localité où habite la jeune fille, pour étudier les conséquences de ce régime, dont la sobriété leur paraît unique dans les annales de l'humanité.