Former President Millerand has been its legal defender; former President Doumer was a director of one subsidiary; present President Albert Labrum is a former director of another. So--most significantly of all--is former Premier Andre Tardieu, great leader of the Right. There was no stronger influence upon former Premier Poincare in his occupation of the Ruhr than the Comite; the present agitation over the Saar Basin springs from its headquarters. It is governed by a commission of directors, and upon this commission, as President (we must now displease another lover of anonymity), there sits the misty and cloud-wreathed figure of Francis de Wendell.

Francois de Wendell comes legitimately by his present power and position; his family have been Europe's armorers since before the French Revolution--although the De Wendels have not always been French nor, even always the De Wendels. There was once a Johann Georg von Wendel, who in the seventeenth century was a colonel in the armies of Ferdinand III of Germany. Since his time, however, the family generally has preferred to remain out of uniform, on the theory that in uniform there is no higher title or power than that of general; whereas by the process of foregoing the title, the power may be vastly increased. The members of this family have always been uniquely international. When their vast Lorraine estates lay upon soil politically German they attached to their name the prefix von and turned their eyes toward Berlin: when the political frontier shifted under their rich deposits of coal and iron, they altered the prefix to de and looked to Paris.

Either capital was glad to claim them; the family was equally happy to serve either--or better, both. Today, for example, when political boundary lines throw most of their estates into France, but with a sufficient number of Von Wendels in reserve to manage its German affairs. (Being a De Wendell however, is no necessary barrier to th perquisites and profits still obtainable from the German armament business, as will later appear.) In 1914 the ranking member of the family was Humbert von Wendel a member of the German Reichstag, living at Hayange in Moselle, near the Saar Basin. After the treaty of Versailles he became Humbert de Wendel. A younger brother, Guy is a French Senator, however--and of his other brother the Francois of the Comite, more later.

This international hermaphrodites is not a now family trait. The son of Johann Georg von Wendel, who fought for the German Ferdinand III blossomed late Christian de Wendel, who was a follower of Charles IV of Lorraine. For a good period of years the family retained the prefix De; Christian's grandson, Ignace, was the true founder of the family's fortune--and this curiously enough, began when he established at Creusot the works that the Schuoiders were later to buy. When the Bastille fell Iguace's lose relations with the menarchy drove him from the country. His properties were sequestered but they were managed by his mother and were bought back through dummies for the account of his two sons. During this turbulent period the sequestered properties were arming the revolutionists to the De Wendel profit, while the properties beyond the wabbling frontiers of the Republic were arming the monarchists, trying to regain power, and their allies--also to the De Wendel profit.

Then with the Napoleonic Empire rearing its magnificence upon the ruins of the monarchy, an earlier Francois de Wendel (Ignace's son) returned to Paris to provide the armaments of the De Wendels: a cartoon of them going home after the battle to count their profits from it would not have been far-fetched.

Today's members of the family were, therefore well equipped by wealth and heredity for the task of riding the political horses of France and Germany in the later years when Lorraine was to became one of the major circus rings for their virtuosity. Their long experience made Biley almost a minor to them. When a military advance turned a "French" possession into a "German" one, the De Wendels need have felt no great concern. Regardless of the national tag attached to these mines and smellers, they remained in the placid control of one or the other branches of the family.