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‪The Senegalese Blaise Diagne (1872-1934), elected to Parliament in 1914, a freemason since 1899 and a partisan of assimilation, was named in January 1918 by Clemenceau commissioner general for native recruitment in Africa. In an article published in Les Continents on October 15, 1924, he was accused of profiting personally from this post, and the article was attributed to the Guyanese René Maran (1887-1960), born in Martinique, who won the Prix Goncourt in 1921 for his novel Batouala , and who had founded the bi-monthly newspaper with the Dahomean Kojo Tovalou Houénou (1887-1936), attorney and dandy. Diagne sued for libel and won, thereby ensuring the demise of the newspaper. Unpublished letters by Maran, whose integrity cannot be doubted, show that, contrary to what has been believed to date, he was not the author of the offending article.‪