On Washington's Birthday, 1916, there came to New York one who posed as a French publisher and publicist. He brought excellent letters of recommendation, and was well supplied with money. He was personable, and well sponsored, and he was correspondingly well received. Within a month he left the United States for France, with appropriate expressions of his appreciation of American hospitality.
In April, 1918, that same man faced a French firing squad, guilty of having attempted to betray his country, and of having traded with the enemy.
He was Paul Bolo Pacha, Paul Bolo by common usage, Pacha by whatever right is vested in a deposed Khedive to confer titles. Born somewhere in the obscurity of the Levant, he came as a boy to Marseilles. He was successively barber's-boy, lobster-monger, husband of a rich woman who left him her estate, then café-owner and wine-agent. Then he drifted to Cairo, and into the good graces of Abbas Hilmi, the Khedive. Abbas was deposed by the British in 1914 as pro-German, and went to Geneva; Bolo followed.
Charles F. Bertelli, the correspondent in Paris of the Hearst newspapers, naïvely related before Captain Bouchardon, a French prosecutor, the circumstances of his acquaintanceship with Bolo, which led to the latter's cordial reception at the hands of Hearst when he arrived in New York. " ... Jean Finot, Directeur of _La Revue_, ... had sent him a letter of introduction to Mr. Hearst and had requested me to accredit him with Mr. Hearst. He had said to me: 'Occupy yourself with the matter, Bolo has very great political power; he is the proprietor of _Le Journal_ and it would be well that Hearst should know him.' ... I made the voyage with Bolo.... I spoke of Bolo to Hearst and the latter said to me, 'If he is a great proprietor of French newspapers, I should be very glad to....' As a compliment to Hearst, Bolo gave a grand dinner at Sherry's.... Bolo had two personal guests: Jules Bois and the German, Pavenstedt...." We need draw on Bertelli no further than to introduce the same Adolph Pavenstedt in whose offices Papen and Boy-Ed had sought refuge at the outbreak of war in 1914; Adolph Pavenstedt, head of the banking house of G. Amsinck & Co., through which the attachés paid their henchmen for attempts at the Welland Canal, the Vanceboro bridge, and at America's peace in general. Bolo had made Pavenstedt's acquaintance in Havana in 1913.
