Le Figaro
- Ill-Founded Objections
- American Games and Interests
- A Separatist Movement Was to Break Out Today in Catalonia
Le Figaro's front page of 4 November 1926 combined political argument with breaking news. In a signed column, François Coty charged that two unnamed writings handed Foreign Minister Aristide Briand ready-made reasons to postpone or narrow his coming talks with Mussolini, arguments Coty linked to pleasing the Cartel. Lucien Romier's editorial on the American elections warned Europeans not to expect precise changes toward them, since American voters decide on local, personal or propaganda grounds. A news report described a Catalan separatist rising planned for that very day, with arrests that included a bomb-carrying revolutionary, and insurgents who even brought doctors, pharmacists with dressings and a flag-bearer.
Translation
Ill-Founded Objections
Between the two writings there is this common trait: both of them offer M. Aristide Briand exactly the arguments that our foreign minister would invoke of his own accord if, to please the Cartel and to serve international politics alone, he decided to postpone or narrow the conversations he is about to have with M. Mussolini.
American Games and Interests
Europeans would be wrong to expect precise changes in their regard from this. The American voter most often takes sides according to local considerations, personal enthusiasms or propaganda that would strike us as puerile.
A Separatist Movement Was to Break Out Today in Catalonia
At Milas they even arrested a formidable revolutionary well known to the police, M. Fabreguas: he was carrying bombs. Clearly this was indeed a large, coordinated operation. Among the insurgents were doctors, pharmacists supplied with packets of dressings, and even a flag-bearer.
Context
How the Prats de Molló plot was planned and how it failed
Le Figaro's news column, dated the very day the rising was supposed to begin, treated the arrests as proof of a large, coordinated operation. The plan was the work of Francesc Macià, leader of the Catalan independence party Estat Català. Two columns were to cross the border from French Catalonia, one from Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans and the other from Coll d'Ares, then occupy Olot and proclaim a Catalan Republic. The participants were to carry hidden weapons, field telephones, medical supplies, printed propaganda and an estelada flag. That kit matches the paper's report of doctors, pharmacists with dressings and a flag-bearer among the insurgents. The French police knew about the plan in advance and arrested most of the participants near the Spanish border, 111 people in all. Macià himself was arrested on the 4th in the country house where he was staying.
Who betrayed the plot, and what happened to those arrested
The French gendarmerie was able to stop the plot with the help of Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr., grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi and a spy for Fascist Italy. He was not really an anti-fascist fighter but a double agent serving the political police. French authorities expelled most of the detainees from France and sent about twenty, regarded as the masterminds, to Paris for trial. The trial opened on 21 January 1927 with 18 defendants, 16 of them Catalans. The list of defendants includes a Ramon Fabregat. He may be the "M. Fabreguas" whom the paper reports arrested with bombs, but the OCR spelling differs, so that identification remains a guess. Macià was sentenced to two months in prison and a fine of 100 francs, and in March 1927 he left France for Brussels. The failure nonetheless made Macià and his cause very popular in Catalonia. He later became President of the Generalitat of Catalonia and held the post until his death in December 1933.
Why rapprochement with Mussolini's Italy was contested in France
Coty's signed column takes for granted that Briand is about to hold talks with Mussolini. It accuses two writings of supplying the very arguments Briand would use to postpone or narrow those talks in order to please the Cartel. The claim that the talks were imminent is the paper's own. French ambivalence toward Fascist Italy runs through Henry de Jouvenel's essay in Foreign Affairs of July 1927. Jouvenel wrote that France was disposed to support the just aspirations of the country it called its "Latin sister," yet that Italy expected much more than France could give. He recalled the crisis of September 1923, when an Italian officer was murdered in Greece and Italy landed at Corfu in retaliation. Poincaré's cabinet then felt that Mussolini's government should be spared anything smacking of humiliation. On 27 November 1926, barely three weeks after this issue, the Italo-Albanian Treaty of Tirana was announced, and Briand publicly and formally declared that he saw nothing reprehensible in it.
What the 1926 US Senate elections changed
Romier's editorial appeared just after Americans voted in the 1926 elections. The Senate contests fell in the middle of Republican President Calvin Coolidge's second term, and they reduced the Republican majority by seven seats. The Republicans kept their majority, but with a much smaller cushion. Romier nevertheless told French readers not to expect precise changes toward Europe from the result. In his view, American voters usually choose sides on local considerations, personal enthusiasms or propaganda that Europeans would find puerile, not on questions of foreign policy.
France's war debt and the American interests behind Romier's headline
In 1926 the sharpest American interest for France was repayment of its debt to the United States. The Mellon–Bérenger agreement of 29 April 1926 fixed the amount and rate at which France would repay. It was deeply unpopular in France, where many people felt the United States should waive the debt, and 20,000 war veterans demonstrated in Paris against it. Related grievances were American Prohibition, which had hurt French exports, and punitive tariffs on other French goods. The French Chamber of Deputies ratified the agreement only on 21 July 1929, narrowly, by 300 votes to 292. In the end, most of the debt was never repaid.
Original
OBJECTIONS MAL FONDÉES
Entre les deux écrits, ce trait commun: ils proposent l'un et l'autre à M. Aristide Briand exactement les arguments que notre ministre des affaires étrangères invoquerait de lui-même si, pour être agréable au Cartel et pour servir seulement la politique internationale, il prenait la décision d'ajourner ou de rétrécir les conversations qu'il est près d'avoir avec M. Mussolini.
Jeux et intérêts américains
Les Européens auraient tort d'attendre de cela des changements précis à leur égard. L'électeur américain prend parti le plus souvent suivant des considérations locales, des entraînements personnels ou des propagandes qui nous paraîtraient puériles.
Un mouvement séparatiste devait se déclencher aujourd'hui en Catalogne
On arrêta même, à Milas, un révolutionnaire redoutable, bien connu de la police, M. Fabreguas: il était porteur de bombes. On voit qu'il s'agissait bien d'une grande opération d'ensemble. Parmi les insurgés se trouvaient des médecins, des pharmaciens munis de paquets de pansement et même un porte-drapeau.