75 
> But a as the material was. maid ba te aut ‘he buyers will certainly have taken care 
& to receive only branches and no trunks which yield little oil. Mr. Provence’s whole 
article is therefore due to ignorance or constitutes a vile calumny. — 
_ Already before the war, it had been necessary, in Germany, to parry Provence’s 
+ libels and in the article here translated this literary feud is continued in a form that 
| _ might be amusing, if it did not represent — a symptom of instigation, with which our | 
__ enemies tarnish the century”. 
, _ Binz then quotes the relative passage from our Report of April 1913, which we beg 
e to copy here for the sake of completeness: — 
x “An article by one Marcel Provence, entitled “Les Allemands en Provence”, appeared 
be last October in “Les Quatre-Dauphins’, a monthly review, and was reprinted in several 
= local papers in the South of France. Its object apparently was to stir up animosity 
_ against our works at Barréme among the population of the lavender districts. We would 
_ take no ‘notice here of this attack, which is thoroughly characteristic of the tactics of 
4 the French chauvinist press, were it not that we cannot bring ourselves to deprive our 
_ teaders altogether of this comic contribution — for as such every normally constituted 
_ person, no matter what may be his nationality, will regard it. The author depicts what 
_ he saw on the occasion of a visit which (without permission, by the way) he paid to 
i our factory at Barréme. He grows excited because the greater part of the installation 
= ‘came from Germany. But the special object which provoked his indignation was a harm- 
_ less ornament in the gable of the building, which owes its existence to the fancy of our 
_ French architect, but in which this patriotic writer espies the likeness of a German 
_ soldier’s peaked helmet! But even this is not enough. The fact that our peaceful little 
Bs factory is only 25 metres distant from the railway should, he thinks, afford grave ‘cause 
& of misgiving, for “strategic reasons”. It is therefore obvious that we are believed to 
_ contemplate a military attack upon the little “back-block” line from Puget-Théniers to 
5 Digne! The article in gestion brims over with these and similar horrors! We have been 
= much amused by it, especially because we have heard that it was inspired by one of 
: our competitors in the South of France: But how poor an opinion must an author have 
5 of the intelligence of his readers that he should dare to dish up such rubbish to them! 
ee Fortunately we have a better opinion of the people of Barréme, to whom the establish- 
% ment of our works has brought nothing but advantage, and we know how they look upon 
such libels. Mr. Marcel Provence might have spared himself this public operate! 
he ‘Provence replies to this in “Le Few’: 
“How a French author was treated Ag German spies before the war: — 
¥ I found in the library of the Ecole de Pharmacie de Paris the famous Report of 
a April 1915, in which Schimmels offend me. I translate the passage referring to me, 
hae but I esteem my readers too highly -as to render a certain baseness. I therefore omit 
_ one sentence. Here is the wording in all its beauty.” 
g In rectifying his defence+) Binz says to this among other things: — 
E “The “bassesse” of Schimmel’s Report is the following passage of the German 
a original, where it reads regarding the attacks in the press: “We hear that one of our 
_ competitors in the South of France is supposed to be the peat 
Provence deemed it advisable to suppress these words, “out of esteem for his 
readers’, as he pretends. This threadbare argumentation will not deceive anybody. 
"The real cause was another: Schimmel’s above quoted sentence, however mildly 
£ expressed, bears more than the stamp of probability, for since then it has come home 
~ 
") Deutsche Parf.-Ztg. 4 (1918), 31. 
