The Iron Master

The true faith of an Armorer [is] to give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them . . . to Royalist and Republican, to Communist and Capitalist . . . to burglar and policeman, to black man, white man and yellow man, to all nationalities, all faiths, all follies . . .

That was the credo of Andrew Undershaft, the munitions magnate in Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. By their works, the world has known many Undershafts. It has always denounced them, and always kept them around. The Undershafts lived by making weapons of war for anyone who could pay the bill; sometimes they also made wars. Through the twilight of fact and legend that surrounded them and their international arms deals, they were known to Sunday supplement readers as merchants of death. The least known, and perhaps the last, of their brotherhood was a man who looked like a tall, friendly duck. He was Franc,ois de Wendel.

Both Sides of the Rhine. The De Wendels have been among Europe's armorers for centuries. Their home is Lorraine, a land perennially contested by France and Germany. One of the early members of the family was Johann Georg von Wendel, a colonel in the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-57). His son Christian changed his name to De Wendel. The De Wendels always had enough Von Wendels on the other side of the Rhine to keep their properties in the family. Christian de Wendel's grandson, Ignace, forged arms for both sides during the French Revolution. Ignace's son, the first Franc,ois de Wendel, supplied weapons for Napoleon.

That was the heritage which fell to the present Franc,ois de Wendel when he was born in 1874. The century into which he grew was to live and die by steel--much of it De Wendel steel.

Franc,ois de Wendel became manager of "The Grandsons of Franc,ois de Wendel and Company," which he built into one of France's largest steel works. His brother Guy was a senator of France. His brother Charles was a member of the German Reichstag. During World War I, the De Wendels were suspected of playing both sides of the Rhine.

Wave of Indignation. When peace broke out, Franc,ois de Wendel became chairman of France's famous Comite des Forges, a sort of super lobby combining all of France's steel, iron and armament firms. He sold arms to white men, black men, yellow men. When governments opposed him, he felled them by withholding credit in his capacity as a regent of the Bank of France. When newspapers opposed him, he bought them. In the French "Who's Who," he described himself simply as "Maitre de Forges" (iron master).

He lived quietly in a great, grey Paris mansion. He was a passionate hunter and a bad shot. He maintained a private game preserve near Paris, but, said a friend last week, he "never went in for displays of wealth. That would not occur to him." In the '30s, the world was swept by a pacifist wave of indignation against the Undershafts and the De Wendels. The clamor against the "merchants of death" was largely justified, but its main effect was to keep the U.S. and Britain from being well enough prepared to prevent World War II.

Burial in the Rain. During World War II, as in the first war, the De Wendel holdings were barely damaged. At war's end, Franc,ois was accused, but eventually cleared, of collaboration with the Germans. He retired to his family seat at Hayange, in Lorraine. There, last week, death--whose conquests he had so ably aided in his lifetime--came to Armorer Franc,ois de Wendel.

The French press took small notice of his passing. Wrote one Paris paper: "Let this be a lesson to generals. The cannon-makers die in bed." In Hayange, the De Wendel family and 15,000 De Wendel workers gathered in a drizzling rain around the village church to bury Franc,ois de Wendel. On the day he died, he had become a grandfather. His only son's child was named Franc,ois, so that another Franc,ois de Wendel could some day be iron master, provided (as seemed likely) that Europe would still need armorers.

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