A commission that succeeds…

Commissions are too often and too rightly maligned not to emphasize the success of the one that has just determined the suppression of Biribi.
Many investigations had already been ordered into the military penal colonies: they had not succeeded. A senior officer was even charged with a special mission and, despite a long stay in Africa, discovered nothing abnormal.
The commission appointed by General Nollet worked quickly and well. Under the vigorous leadership of its president, General Michaud, it visited all the penitentiaries; it questioned nearly eighteen hundred prisoners, in such a way that they were able to answer sincerely; it took energetic sanctions on the spot. It was so laborious that two of its members, magistrates, fell ill as a result of the fatigue endured.
Back in France, General Michaud and his colleagues presented conclusions whose clarity contrasted happily with the usual uncertainty of official reports, where established institutions are only lightly touched. And the military penal colonies, whose odious abuses Francis de Pressensé denounced from the podium eighteen years ago, have finally been abolished.
It is a new fact that a commission, instead of burying a reform, has brought it to fruition.

G. G.