The Caillaux Drama

I have spoken of the unfair manner in which the Opposition Press of France have fallen on everybody who has ventured to express the opinion that there was any motive at all for Madame Caillaux’s crime except an inhuman lust for murder. And yet not only the evidence of Monsieur Caillaux himself but the evidence on oath of the President of the French Republic, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré, and the evidence of other independent and unbiased witnesses, shows that there is reason to believe that the immediate motive of the crime was a hysterical fear of disclosures which Madame Caillaux believed would be made in the Figaro. Of course this hysterical fear does not excuse the crime of Madame Caillaux, but it certainly goes very far towards explaining it, and the existence of the belief that there was danger of the publication of letters which contained intimate allusion to her private life cannot be doubted by anybody, no matter what their political convictions may be after reading the evidence which President Poincaré felt called on to give, creating by the giving of it a precedent which emphasizes the doctrine that the President of the Republic has, with the rights, the liabilities and the responsibilities of every private citizen of France. President Poincaré did not go to the Palace of Justice to give his evidence. Monsieur Caillaux, on Thursday, April 2, informed the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard, that certain persons had evidence of importance to give which bore on his wife’s case. Among the names which he mentioned was that of Monsieur Raymond Poincaré, the President of the French Republic, and Monsieur Caillaux stated that the evidence for which he asked the examining magistrate to seek would prove conclusively that on the morning of the crime both he and his wife were, rightly or wrongly, convinced that the Figaro might publish certain letters of a private nature referring to themselves. An official letter was sent by the examining magistrate to the Parquet de la Seine, with reference to the course that should be followed in this matter of Monsieur Poincaré’s evidence, and after some hesitation as to ways and means of enabling the President of the Republic to give evidence on oath, Monsieur Forichon, the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal, was sent to the Elysée, and to him after swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré described the interview which Monsieur Caillaux had with him at ten o’clock on the morning of Monday, March 16. We know that on that morning Monsieur Monier, the President of the Civil Court of the Seine department, called, at her request, on Madame Caillaux, and was consulted by her as to means and ways of putting a stop to the campaign against her husband in the Figaro. Monsieur Caillaux had intended to be present at this consultation, but a Cabinet council had been called at the Elysée at ten o’clock, and he was of course obliged to attend it. The Ministers were nearly all assembled, and were chatting with the President of the Republic in a room leading into the Council Chamber, when, just as the doors of the Council Chamber were opened and the Ministers passed through, Monsieur Caillaux asked the President of the Republic for a few moments’ conversation in private. Monsieur Poincaré, with the unfailing courtesy which distinguishes him, acquiesced immediately, and allowing the other Ministers to pass into the Council Chamber, the President of the Republic remained alone with Monsieur Caillaux in the room they had left, and closed the door. “I have just learned from a sure source,” said Monsieur Caillaux to Monsieur Poincaré, “that private letters written by me to the lady who is now my wife have been handed to the Figaro and that Gaston Calmette intends publishing them.” “Monsieur Caillaux was under the stress of great emotion,” said the President of the Republic in his evidence. “He told me that he feared that Monsieur Calmette was about to publish in the Figaro private letters, the divulgation of which would be extremely painful to him and Madame Caillaux. I replied that I considered Monsieur Calmette an honourable gentleman (un galant homme) altogether incapable of publishing letters which would bring up Madame Caillaux’s name in the polemics between them. But my efforts to convince him that this was so were in vain, and he replied to me that he considered divers articles of the Figaro were written with the object of preparing (the public mind) for this publication. I was unable to undeceive Monsieur Caillaux or to calm him. At one moment he sprang from his seat and exclaimed, ‘If Calmette publishes these letters I will kill him.’ He then declared to me that he was going to consult his lawyers, notably Maître Thorel, the solicitor, on the means to be taken and the procedure necessary to prevent the Figaro from publishing these letters. I advised him to see, as well, the barrister who had taken his interests in hand in his divorce case, Maître Maurice Bernard. Maître Maurice Bernard, I said to Monsieur Caillaux, knows Monsieur Calmette. It will be easy for him to get the assurance from Monsieur Calmette that no letter will be published, and if needs be—if, contrary to my own belief, your suspicions are founded—he would have the authority necessary to prevent the publication of the letters. Monsieur Caillaux thanked me, but declared to me that as he would be occupied at the Senate the whole afternoon he would not be able to see Maître Bernard. In reply to that, I told him that Maître Bernard was a friend of my own who often came to see me, and that he had let me know that not having seen me for some time owing to a journey to Algiers, he would come, either that day or the next, to shake me by the hand. I added that if he came to see me I would make a point of repeating our conversation to him. Maître Bernard did come early in the afternoon. I told him what Monsieur Caillaux feared, and asked him to make a point of seeing him. Maître Bernard replied that he considered Monsieur Calmette quite incapable of publishing letters which referred to Madame Caillaux, but that for all that he would make a point of seeing Monsieur Caillaux the same day, and if need be Monsieur Calmette as well. I heard afterwards that Maître Bernard had seen Monsieur Caillaux at the end of the afternoon, but too late. I was much impressed by the state in which Monsieur Caillaux was, so much so that when the Prime Minister came to see me on business during the afternoon I thought it my duty to tell him of the conversation I had had with Monsieur Caillaux and with Maître Maurice Bernard.”

Monsieur Caillaux’s own evidence was equally assertive on the question of the letters. I may say here that it is common talk in Paris that these letters, one a short one, and the other sixteen pages long, contained passages which well explained Monsieur and Madame Caillaux’s fears for their publication. Monsieur Caillaux is said to have written to the lady who is Madame Caillaux now, with the utmost freedom and disrespect of the Republic to which he gives the nickname “Marianne,” and the intimacy of portions of the letters is generally believed to be such that no paper as respectable as the Figaro could possibly affront its readers by putting them in cold print.

The letters, or copies of them, exist, or were in existence just before the crime. They are popularly believed to be highly scandalous in content and in tone. It is, however, only fair to Monsieur Calmette’s memory and to the writer of the letters, Monsieur Caillaux, and his unhappy wife to whom he wrote them, to put on record the protest of Madame Madeleine Guillemard, who wrote on April 8, 1914, to the examining magistrate declaring that she knew the whole text of the letters, that they were intimate and tender, but that “their tone was that of letters written by a gentleman to a lady whom he respects.”

President Poincaré’s evidence, however, shows that Monsieur and Madame Caillaux feared that the letters would be printed, and this fear is made more emphatic by Monsieur Caillaux’s own evidence before Monsieur Boucard, which, with the curious habit which is prevalent in France, the examining magistrate summarized and communicated immediately to the Press.

IV
MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S EXAMINATION

The principal witness for the defence of Madame Caillaux will be her husband, and as is usual in France where every witness is allowed and is expected to tell the examining magistrate who collects evidence before the trial everything he knows which bears in any way upon the case, Monsieur Caillaux has gone at length into his wife’s motives for the crime, and has described very fully the happenings on March 16, 1914, when the murder was committed. He was examined by Monsieur Boucard in his room at the Palace of Justice on April 7 and 8, immediately after the evidence of the President of the Republic had been taken. Monsieur Joseph Caillaux is the son of Monsieur Eugène Alexandre Caillaux, who was Inspector of Finance and Minister of State. He has been married twice.

His first wife was Madame Gueydan, who was the divorced wife of a Monsieur Jules Dupré. Monsieur Caillaux married her in 1906. Monsieur Caillaux and his first wife did not live very happily, and their relations became more than strained in July 1909, after the fall of the Clemenceau Cabinet, in which Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance. In September of that year Monsieur Caillaux and his wife were at Mamers. One night, Monsieur Caillaux declared to the examining magistrate, a packet of letters disappeared from a drawer in his writing-table. Two of these letters were letters written by Monsieur Caillaux to Madame Léo Claretie (née Raynouard). Madame Claretie was at that time (September 1909) already divorced from her husband. As we know, she became Monsieur Caillaux’s wife in 1911. These two letters, which disappeared from Monsieur Caillaux’s writing-table are the two letters to which reference is made at the end of the last chapter, letters which Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed to be in the possession of Monsieur Calmette. The letters were of a most intimate character. One, a very short one, was written on letter paper with the heading of the Conseil Général de la Sarthe. The second, written on paper of the Chamber of Deputies, was a long sixteen-page letter containing, Monsieur Caillaux said, the story for the last few years of all the intimacies of his life. “In this letter,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “I told my future wife, at length, of the reasons, many of which were based on political grounds, which prevented me from freeing myself immediately from my wife (Madame Gueydan) and from marrying her.” Monsieur Caillaux was much upset at the discovery that Madame Gueydan-Caillaux had possession of these letters, and for their restitution he offered his wife either a complete reconciliation or a divorce. Madame Gueydan-Caillaux accepted the reconciliation with her husband, and on November 5, 1909, the parties met in the presence of Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, and an intimate friend of Monsieur Caillaux’s, at Monsieur Caillaux’s house, 12 Rue Pierre Charron. In Monsieur Privat-Deschanel’s presence the letters were solemnly burned, together with others bearing on the disagreement between husband and wife. Before they were burned Madame Gueydan-Caillaux gave her word of honour to her husband and to Monsieur Privat-Deschanel that she had kept no photograph and no copy of the letters. Their destruction was followed by a complete reconciliation. Monsieur Caillaux declared that as far as he was concerned the reconciliation was sincere, that he gave up all thought of Madame Raynouard-Claretie, his present wife, and he asked Monsieur Boucard to call on Monsieur Privat-Deschanel to bear witness to this. Some months later Monsieur Caillaux found, he says, that it was quite impossible for him to remain friends with his wife, and at the beginning of July 1910 he instituted divorce proceedings. The divorce was pronounced on March 9, 1911 by agreement between the two parties. Very soon after, in November of the same year, Monsieur Caillaux was married in Paris to the divorced wife of Monsieur Léo Claretie, who is now in prison for the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette. As a curious sidelight on the mixture of intimate home details and of politics in the Caillaux drama it is worth while remembering here, that in her evidence to the examining magistrate Madame Gueydan, Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife, stated the reasons, as she understood them, for this change of mind on the part of Monsieur Caillaux. She declared that in November 1909 Monsieur Caillaux, being a candidate for re-election in the Sarthe District feared that her possession of the letters and her antagonism to himself might make trouble for him during the electoral campaign. In April 1910 the election was over and he was elected, he feared her no longer, wanted to marry his present wife, and instituted divorce proceedings in consequence in July, forcing her to allow herself to be divorced by the sheer deadweight of his influence, which if exercised against her would, she knew, have prohibited her from obtaining the services of the best counsel and have reduced her to absolute penury. In October 1911 when Monsieur Caillaux was Prime Minister, his chef de cabinet, Monsieur Desclaux, told him one day that a journalist, Monsieur Vervoort, who was on the Gil Blas, had been offered by Madame Gueydan, his former wife, the right to publish certain letters. The details which Monsieur Vervoort gave about these letters, referred exactly, Monsieur Caillaux said, to the two letters which his former wife had burned in his presence, and to a letter which appeared in the Figaro of March 13, 1914, in facsimile. This letter was written by Monsieur Caillaux to his first wife, Madame Gueydan, before he married her. Like the others it was a love letter with long passages about politics in it. It was written thirteen years ago, but it contained Monsieur Caillaux’s statement: “I have crushed the income-tax while appearing to defend it.” (J’ai écrasé l’impôt sur le revenu en ayant l’air de le défendre.) It is this letter portions of which the Figaro published in facsimile. It was written in Monsieur Caillaux’s well-known handwriting, and he had signed it “Ton Jo”. The intimacy of the “Ton” was of course in itself something of an outrage when it appeared in a newspaper, for the letter was written to another man’s wife.

Monsieur Caillaux considered, he said, that the letters (the “Ton Jo” letter and the other two) formed a trilogy, so that if one were published, publication of the two others was likely. When Monsieur Desclaux told him what Monsieur Vervoort had said, Monsieur Caillaux answered, “These letters have been stolen from me. Their publication would cause me pain because of their intimate bearing on my private life. I cannot believe that any journalist could have so little respect for himself or his profession as to make use of such weapons.” Monsieur Desclaux replied that neither Monsieur Vervoort nor his editor, Monsieur Pierre Mortier, were going to use the letters. Some weeks after this Monsieur Caillaux married his present wife. Monsieur Caillaux at this point in his evidence broke off to declare to Monsieur Boucard that his second marriage was a very happy one. This declaration was not as unnecessary as it sounds at first sight, for long before the actual drama, during the weeks of the bitter campaign in the Figaro against the Minister of Finance, from January’s beginning till the day of M. Calmette’s death, and afterwards, Paris gossip had been very busy with the names of both men. They were said to be rivals in their private lives. I do not care to go into the details of the gossip which associated their names in rivalry, for this gossip, in which another woman’s name was mentioned, is decidedly unpleasant. Monsieur Calmette’s married life would have been cut short by the law courts if death had not intervened, and if Monsieur Calmette had been killed on March 17, instead of on the 16th, his wife would no longer have been Madame Calmette. Divorce proceedings between the two had culminated, and the divorce would have been made absolute on that day. As it was Madame Calmette, whose father, Monsieur Prestat, is the chairman of the Figaro Company, learned the news of her husband’s murder only the day after it occurred. She had been away from Paris, and returned in the evening of March 16. As she left the railway station she heard the newspaper hawkers shouting the news, but believing that they were announcing the fall of the Cabinet did not take sufficient interest in the details to buy a paper. Next morning telegrams of condolence from her friends, and perusal of the morning papers told her what had happened, and incidentally apprised her that she inherited as his widow a much larger share of Monsieur Calmette’s large fortune than would otherwise have been hers. Gaston Calmette was of course a very rich man, for some years ago Monsieur Chauchard, the founder and principal shareholder of the Magasins du Louvre had left him a large slice of his great wealth. Paris gossip had, as I have said, been busy linking the names of Messieurs Calmette and Caillaux, and this is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that Monsieur Calmette was on the point of being divorced, that Monsieur Caillaux had been divorced once from Madame Gueydan-Caillaux, the divorced wife of Monsieur Dupré, and that his present wife was the divorced wife of another man. Monsieur Caillaux in his evidence to Monsieur Boucard declared, however, that the stories of a disunion in his married life were absolute nonsense, and that it was so absurd to say that there was any disunion between him and his present wife that the two of them used to laugh at the gossip to which I have referred. He added that there was no reason for any personal animosity towards himself on Monsieur Calmette’s part, and that he had never given him any reason for such animosity. “On several occasions,” he said, “during the last few months I was asked to start a campaign against Monsieur Calmette personally, and papers to support it were brought to me. I always refused these offers.” Monsieur Caillaux then spoke of the other documents in Monsieur Calmette’s possession. These were of course the letter written by the Procureur Général, Monsieur Victor Fabre, which Monsieur Barthou read in the Chamber of Deputies on March 17, and other documents which are known as “the green papers.” These were telegrams and copies of telegrams referring to the incident of Agadir. They were of so grave a nature that Monsieur Calmette had been asked not to publish them for diplomatic reasons. “I should like to point out” (said Monsieur Caillaux), “that I could have no possible fear personally of the publication of these documents. On the contrary I should as far as I am myself concerned have been glad to see them published. A day will come when time has smoothed over old sores, and I shall be able to speak freely. I have written a book on Agadir, and it will be seen when that can be published that the documents, the letters, and the telegrams in this book will convince all Frenchmen, not only of my patriotism, but of my political clearness of vision.” Monsieur Caillaux declared that he knew exactly what was going on in the Figaro office, and that he knew that Monsieur Calmette would make use of any weapons in his power to cause his overthrow. He then referred to a conversation in the street under a gas lamp between Monsieur Barthou and Madame Gueydan, his, Monsieur Caillaux’s, former wife. During this conversation, he said, Madame Gueydan had read extracts from letters to Monsieur Barthou, and Monsieur Caillaux declared that he had understood from Monsieur Barthou that these letters were the two private letters which had been stolen from him. The examining magistrate confronted Monsieur Barthou and Monsieur Caillaux at this point, and Monsieur Barthou stated that Monsieur Caillaux must have been mistaken. It was true that he had had a conversation with Madame Gueydan, but the letters she read to him were the Fabre letter and the “Ton Jo” letter, and it was to them that Monsieur Barthou had alluded afterwards in his conversation with Monsieur Caillaux. When the “Ton Jo” letter appeared in the Figaro on March 13 Monsieur Caillaux was greatly upset, although the more personal portions of the letter had been cut. On the next day, Saturday the 14th, he stated, he received an anonymous letter saying that the Figaro was going to publish the other two letters, and the same day he received from other sources confirmation of this. “I had told my wife all about these things,” he said. “She was entirely in my confidence, and she expected these stolen letters to be published. Their publication would have affected me comparatively little, but would have wounded my wife in her dignity as a woman, and distressed her more than I can say.” Monsieur Caillaux then told the examining magistrate the events of the day of the murder as he knew them, beginning with the statement that his wife’s nerves were shattered, and that she was and had been for some time, in a state of considerable over-excitement. She read the Figaro every morning, her general health was bad, and the campaign had overpowered her. “At nine o’clock on the morning of March 16 my wife walked into my dressing-room with the Figaro in her hand,” said Monsieur Caillaux. “She showed me the paper with a headline ‘Intermède Comique—Ton Jo.’ ‘Presently,’ she said, ‘we shall see your pet name for me in the public Press like this,’ and she threw the paper angrily on a chair. ‘Can’t you put a stop to this campaign?’ she asked me. And we decided to consult Monsieur Monier the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine.”

“It was my intention to go and see him that day at half-past one, but I forgot that he would be busy at the Palace of Justice at that time. I had to go to the meeting of the Cabinet at the Elysée, and when Monsieur Monier called at half-past ten my wife received him alone.” Monsieur Caillaux then repeated his conversation with his wife when she called for him before luncheon at the Ministère de Finances. His evidence on this point and the evidence of Madame Caillaux are identical. From the examining magistrate’s report of the evidence given by Monsieur Caillaux he appears to have said nothing to his wife of his own conversation with the President of the Republic. Monsieur Caillaux confirms his wife’s statement that he said to her, “I shall go and smash Calmette’s face.” Their car was in the Rue Royale when Madame Caillaux asked him whether he intended to do so that day. “I answered,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “No, not to-day. I shall choose my own time, but the time is not far off.”

After luncheon, as Monsieur Caillaux was leaving the house, Madame Caillaux told him that she was afraid she would not be able to dine at the Italian Embassy. “She certainly looked ill and worn out,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “and I asked her to send my servant to the Ministry of Finance with my evening clothes. I understand that my wife sent a telephone message to the Italian Embassy a little later to say that I should go to the dinner without her. This, I would like to point out, shows that she had no idea at that time of what was going to happen, for if she had made up her mind then, she would either have said that neither of us was going to the Italian Embassy or she would have said nothing. I left my wife without any apprehensions, except that I was uneasy at her weakness and the condition of her nerves. At about three o’clock that afternoon I met Monsieur Ceccaldi at the Senate, and told him how uneasy I felt. When I returned to the Ministry of Finance I learned what had happened, and went to the police-station at once. My wife’s first words to me when I got there and saw her were, ‘I do hope that I haven’t killed him. I merely wanted to give him a lesson. ’”

This was the end of Monsieur Caillaux’s evidence in the examining magistrate’s room at the Palace of Justice on April 8, 1914. Monsieur Privat-Deschanel was called and confirmed that portion of it which referred to the burning of the Gueydan-Caillaux letters, and the declaration by Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife that she had kept no copies or photographs of them. “The scene,” said Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, “was such a moving one, and impressed me so deeply, that though it happened four years ago everything that was done and every word that was spoken have remained graven on my memory.”

V
THE CAMPAIGN OF THE “FIGARO”

In order to understand the details of the Caillaux drama, it is necessary to search for the reasons which contributed to the bitter campaign in the Figaro against Madame Caillaux’s husband, the Minister of Finance. In order to understand these reasons fully it will be necessary to go some way back into the history of French politics, when some insight will be possible into the inner meaning of the campaign, into the interests which lay behind it, and the reason of its bitterness. When Monsieur Raymond Poincaré was elected President of the French Republic, his election gave great offence to that breaker of Cabinets, the veteran statesman Georges Clemenceau. Monsieur Clemenceau had been a supporter of Monsieur Poincaré’s rival, Monsieur Pams, and resented deeply the election of the man whom he had not backed. Soon after the presidential election the new President of the Republic gave another cause for offence to Monsieur Clemenceau by choosing Monsieur Louis Barthou as Prime Minister.

Monsieur Clemenceau vowed revenge, and true to his invariable system of playing the Eminence Grise in French politics, he buried the hatchet with Monsieur Caillaux, whom during the Agadir crisis he had openly declared to be liable to a trial before the high court for high treason, and with Monsieur Briand’s help did everything possible to make matters uncomfortable for Monsieur Barthou and his Cabinet, and for the man whose policy that Cabinet represented, the new President of the French Republic, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré.

The campaign was almost a French War of the Roses. It was conducted with bitterness on either side, and the Clemenceau faction won the first battle, overthrowing the Barthou Cabinet, and securing the return to power of Monsieur Caillaux, while Monsieur Briand, by his own choice stood aside. Nominally the new Cabinet was under the leadership of the Prime Minister, Monsieur Gaston Doumergue.

Actually Monsieur Caillaux as Minister of Finance and Monsieur Monis as Minister of Marine were the two twin rulers in the new Government of France with Monsieur Clemenceau behind them as general adviser.

Now Monsieur Briand, though Monsieur Clemenceau’s sworn friend, politically, was no real friend politically of Monsieur Caillaux. The two men represented different factions, for in the neighbourhood of 1913 Monsieur Caillaux had founded the radical unified party, the programme of which he announced in a great meeting at Pau that year, and Monsieur Briand very shortly afterwards founded the Federation of the Left, a form of moderate Socialism which combated the extreme radicalism of Monsieur Caillaux’s party on many points. Then Monsieur Caillaux began to make mistakes, most of which were largely due to his impulsiveness, his ill-temper in the wrong places, and his natural gift for making enemies. Monsieur Barthou set to work to fight Monsieur Caillaux and called Monsieur Calmette to help him. Public rumour added that there was personal animosity and personal rivalry between these two men, but whether this be true or not their political rivalry was undoubted, and the reasons for such political rivalry are plain. Both were rich men, but while Monsieur Caillaux represented reforms for the lower middle class at the expense of the rich, Monsieur Calmette representing the party of property, the party which we in England should describe as that of men having a stake in the country, fought these reforms with all the influence at his command as editor and director of a great newspaper. He set out to pull Caillaux down from his position, and his task was a comparatively easy one owing to the unreasoned outbursts of temper with which Monsieur Caillaux exposed the weak points in his armour on many occasions, the number of mistakes impulse had caused him to make in the past, and his growing unpopularity. From the beginning of January 1914 until his death on March 16, hardly a day passed without an article of a column or more, and sometimes much more, by Monsieur Calmette in the Figaro attacking Monsieur Caillaux, Monsieur Caillaux’s past, and Monsieur Caillaux’s policy. He was attacked as a politician, as a man, and as a financier, and his silence under attack made the attacks which followed more bitter instead of putting an end to them. Six years ago the Rochette affair had, directly and indirectly, been the cause of more than one storm in the French political tea-cup. It had brought the fierce light of publicity to bear on many public men, and politicians feared publication of the details of the case as much, almost, as the side issues of the Dreyfus case were feared some years before, and as, before that, the Panama and other scandals had been feared. During the Agadir trouble Monsieur Caillaux had laid himself open to a great deal of criticism, and the Figaro did not hesitate to disinter both these affairs and use them as a weapon against Monsieur Caillaux. Another affair of lesser importance in which Monsieur Caillaux’s name was mentioned in the Figaro campaign was the affair of the Prieu inheritance. In this connexion the Figaro did not hesitate to accuse Monsieur Caillaux of dishonourable conduct, and to base on it his unfitness for the post of a Minister of France. It is almost impossible in the space at my command to give all the details of a newspaper campaign such as this against a Minister in power. The campaign lasted nearly three months, and it was so many-sided that I should need another volume if I were to attempt to set down its details fully. But I may resume the broad lines of the Figaro campaign against Monsieur Caillaux and the reason which the Figaro itself gave to its readers for that campaign. Monsieur Calmette from the first declared that he considered the return to power of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux after his downfall in 1911 as a veritable misfortune to France. He considered that the presence of Monsieur Caillaux in the Cabinet was of real peril to French interests, and, as I have explained, it was undoubtedly a peril to the interests of the rich men’s party which the Figaro represented, for Monsieur Caillaux was determined to carry through his tax on accumulated property, and the general idea of this tax was decidedly popular. There is nothing Frenchmen love so much as making a rich man pay. Monsieur Caillaux with political astuteness saw the vote-catching possibilities of his measure, was doing everything in his power to maintain the Doumergue Ministry, of which he was the leading member, at the helm of public affairs until this year’s elections, and would undoubtedly have succeeded.

Monsieur Calmette, with the help of Monsieur Caillaux’s political enemies, was working hard for the overthrow of the Cabinet, or rather for the overthrow of Monsieur Caillaux, for, as the Figaro wrote, it was Caillaux alone, Caillaux the Minister, Caillaux the politician, whom Calmette the politician wished to pull headlong. Day by day in the Figaro he put his adversary in the pillory. He stigmatized his conduct of the Franco-German negotiations in 1911, he recalled in stinging terms the general indignation which had wrecked the Caillaux Ministry after the resignation of Monsieur De Selves, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He recalled the work and the report of the Commission of Inquiry, over which Monsieur Raymond Poincaré (who was of course not President of the Republic then) presided, and wrote scathingly, fiercely almost, of Monsieur Caillaux’s difficulties and quarrels with the Spanish Ambassador and with his Majesty’s Ambassador Sir Francis Bertie. He recalled words used by Monsieur Caillaux which almost suggested that France under a Caillaux régime cared very little for the entente cordiale, and reproduced a threat, which rumour had reported, of undiplomatic reprisals towards Spain. Some months ago, to be precise on December 18, 1913, Monsieur Caillaux made a counter declaration to me personally in reply to the rumours that he had spoken against the entente cordiale. This declaration was made three weeks before the beginning of the daily campaign in the Figaro, and Monsieur Caillaux said for publication in the Daily Express, of which paper I was at that time the Paris correspondent, “I defy anyone to find in any word that I have spoken publicly, to find in any act of my public life, any ground for an assertion that I am not a whole-hearted partisan of the entente cordiale.” Monsieur Caillaux added that he had relatives in England, that he was a great admirer of England and of Englishmen, and said: “I am convinced that the entente cordiale is an asset for the peace of Europe, and while as a Frenchman and a servant of France, I point out that France expects to reap equally with her partner the benefits of the entente cordiale, I am sure that England in her inherent fairness understands this, and is as anxious both to give and to take as France can be. I wish to express my amazement and my sorrow that even for a moment Englishmen should have thought me anything but their friend.”

On the occasion of this interview, which was a long one, lasting a full hour at the beginning of the afternoon, and another half-hour later the same day when I submitted what I had written to Monsieur Caillaux before sending it to London, in order that there should be no discussion possible afterwards as to what he had really said, a good deal passed which I did not put into print.

In the interview as printed appeared an allusion by Monsieur Caillaux to the undue interference by Englishmen in France’s home affairs. Monsieur Caillaux spoke that afternoon with ebullient freedom of expression about the British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Francis Bertie. He declared that Sir Francis went out of his way to make trouble and that he had worked against him (Monsieur Caillaux) in London for the sheer pleasure of stirring up strife.

I thought it quite unnecessary to say these things aloud in an English newspaper, especially as, after saying them, Monsieur Caillaux asked me not to include them in the interview as he had no wish for a newspaper discussion with the British Ambassador. I quote them now merely for the purpose of showing the peculiar and unstatesmanlike quarrelsomeness of Monsieur Caillaux’s temper. The man has very little self-restraint, and while many of his public acts and public sayings prove this, few of them prove it so conclusively as his outburst in his room at the Ministry of Finance, in the presence of the representative of an English newspaper, against the British Ambassador in Paris.

Following up these attacks on his personality the Figaro impugned Monsieur Caillaux’s honour. It did this with the outspokenness which is a peculiarity of French newspaperdom, and which would be magnificent if it were not so frequently misused. Monsieur Caillaux was accused of changing his policy half a dozen times with the one pre-occupation of retaining his portfolio, was twitted with self-contradiction with regard to the income-tax law, and the immunity from taxation of French Rentes, and was openly taxed with encouraging dishonourable and dishonest speculation, if not of indulging in it himself. According to the Figaro Monsieur Caillaux made deliberate arrangements to allow friends of his to speculate and make large sums of money on the Paris Bourse, tuning his public statements to time with the deals of the speculators, and in answer to these accusations Monsieur Caillaux said nothing.

“The income-tax was Monsieur Caillaux’s hobby horse. He has stated frequently that he has always been in favour of it,” wrote the Figaro one day. “For many years the income-tax was the principal item of Monsieur Caillaux’s political programme, and he told his constituents at Mamers that his political programme had never changed in its main lines.” Then the Figaro reproduced in facsimile Monsieur Caillaux’s letter to the first Madame Caillaux in which the words occurred: “I crushed the income-tax while pretending to defend it.”

But these attacks on Monsieur Caillaux were by no means the only ones, and Monsieur Calmette also accused Monsieur Caillaux of favouring Rochette’s escape and interfering with the course of justice. These are the broad lines of the Figaro campaign against Monsieur Caillaux.

That some of the attacks were justifiable is undoubtedly the fact. That the manner of them was a worthy one is more open to discussion. Politicians must of course expect to be attacked by newspapers which oppose them, but there is little doubt that the bitterness and the persistence of this newspaper campaign worked its victim up to a state of frenzy, and the calm observer knows what effect daily attacks on a public man are likely to have on that public man’s life within the four walls of his home. Monsieur Caillaux’s excited declaration to the President of the Republic, his excitement in the motor car, when, driving with Madame Caillaux he declared that he would go down to the Figaro and chastise Monsieur Calmette, show the man’s state of mind, and show us very clearly how that state of mind is likely to have reacted on his wife. I repeat that this book is in no sense an apology for Madame Caillaux’s act of murder. I repeat that I do not wish to defend either Monsieur Caillaux or his wife. But in common fairness I cannot do otherwise than present as faithfully as possible the effect of the Figaro campaign against him, on Monsieur Caillaux and on his constant companion. Nor do I hesitate to say that while the bitterness of the Figaro campaign in no way excuses the murder of its editor by Madame Caillaux, no one can deny, I think, that it explains it.

VI
CALMETTE v. CAILLAUX

Whenever an official in the French Colonial Office had to refuse the application of a subordinate for leave, he would tone down his refusal with the metaphor, “We’ll try and give you leave at all events before the affaire Prieu is decided finally.” For many years l’affaire Prieu had been the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case of the French Colonial Office, and it was almost forgotten when Monsieur Caillaux and the Figaro brought it back at a bound into the domain of actuality. The case was forgotten so thoroughly that when the Figaro mentioned it under the title of “Monsieur Caillaux’s Secret Combinations” in an article signed by Monsieur Gaston Calmette on January 8, 1914, the name Prieu was misspelled “Priou”.

The case in itself was one of concessions in Brazil. In the early years of the Third Republic a French merchant named Prieu died in France after a long life spent in Brazil. He had been a rich man and with the help of the French Consul in Rio de Janeiro had secured certain profitable concessions. At his death the French Government considered that these concessions lapsed to the State, and sold them. Monsieur Prieu’s heirs claimed from the State a considerable sum, something between £120,000 and £160,000, of which their lawyers contended that the Government of France had frustrated them. The case dragged on for many years, and in 1909, when Monsieur Cochery was Finance Minister and Monsieur Renoult Under Secretary of State for Finance (Monsieur Renoult is Minister of the Interior in the Doumergue Cabinet), the case was practically shelved.

At that time the heirs of Monsieur Prieu, after getting a refusal to their offer to abandon their entire claim against the French Government in return for a cash payment of £20,000, were inclined to drop the whole case, the legal expenses of which were becoming embarrassing. They had put matters in the hands of a man of affairs, but he and they had little hope of any result, when, according to the Figaro, Monsieur Caillaux, on January 5, 1914, sent for their representative. The Figaro declared on the 8th, over the signature of Monsieur Gaston Calmette, that Monsieur Caillaux had stated to this gentleman that the claim of the Prieu family appeared to him to be justified, that the French Government would probably have to pay from £200,000 to £240,000 including compound interest on the debt, and that a transaction might be possible if the Prieu heirs were inclined to hand over a considerable percentage on the money paid them to the French Government for political needs. Obviously if Monsieur Caillaux really did make such an offer, did really offer to settle a case which had been in litigation for years and was about to lapse, provided the claimants would agree to pay a large percentage of the money back for party needs, he made an offer which he would find it difficult to defend in Parliament or elsewhere.

The Figaro was most assertive. Monsieur Calmette declared that Monsieur Caillaux had said: “If you get this money we must get some of it. The Government has its duties, and its needs.” Monsieur Calmette went on to declare that a second interview had taken place at the Ministry of Finance the next day, the Tuesday, when Monsieur Caillaux had demanded 80 per cent. of the debt for the party coffers, and that on the Wednesday, the day before the Figaro article appeared, the representative of Monsieur Prieu’s heirs and the Finance Minister had come to an agreement on terms somewhat less onerous than the 80 per cent. mentioned at first.

The disclosure of these curious proceedings created a storm in the political world of Paris, and although Monsieur Caillaux published a denial, in general terms his contradictions were not considered very satisfactory. The article in the Figaro had of course one result. Any settlement of the Prieu case on the lines above mentioned became quite impossible. One is inclined to wonder, now, whether the claimants will proceed against the French Government, prosecute their claim again, and call Monsieur Caillaux as a witness to declare in court that he considers the claim justifiable. It was rumoured at the time that Monsieur Calmette had offered to compensate the Prieu claimants for the loss which the publication in the Figaro of their dealings or attempt at dealing with Monsieur Caillaux would entail.

Whether this offer was actually made or not will probably be shown at the trial of Madame Caillaux, for the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard, has questioned the parties concerned. As I have said, the Prieu case is an old one. It has been discussed in the Chamber of Deputies at intervals during the last thirty years, and the first interpellation on it goes back thirty-three years to July 8, 1881. Pierre Marcel Prieu was a candidate for Parliament in 1876 and in 1877. He died in 1899, in France, in poverty. To his last day he had protested against what he called “the theft” of his concessions by the French Government, and he had protested with such violence that he had been imprisoned for some months because of his protests. His claim was that the Brazilian Government had on August 30, and on September 6, 1879, paid the French Minister for Foreign Affairs in two cheques, one for £200,000 and one for £400,000, as a settlement of his concessions. These cheques were, he declared, made payable to the firm of Baring Brothers in London, and on January 4, 1880, the money—£600,000—was paid over by the Baring firm to the Paris bankers Hottinguer and Co. Pierre Marcel Prieu declared that the payment of this money was compensation by the Brazilian Government due to him personally for the unjustifiable seizure of thirteen merchant ships with merchandise by the Brazilian Customs. After Prieu’s death his heir, Monsieur D’Ariste, did not care to fight the case and made over his rights in it—whether with or without a quid pro quo does not appear—to relatives and friends of Prieu, who formed a syndicate for the purpose of recovering the debt or part of it from the French Government. The principal members of the little syndicate were Monsieur A. Boileau and Monsieur Prosper Sauvage. Their lawyer is Monsieur Antoine De Fonvielle, and they put their claims in the hands of a man of affairs, Monsieur Auguste Schneider. It is this gentleman who, according to the Figaro and Monsieur Gaston Calmette, called by appointment on Monday January 5, Tuesday the 6th, and Wednesday the 7th, 1914, at the Ministry of Finance, and agreed with Monsieur Caillaux to a settlement on the terms already stated.

According to Monsieur Calmette, Monsieur Caillaux bound himself to see that the full amount of the claim should be paid, and Monsieur Schneider was to sign an agreement on Saturday, January 10, by which he handed a large proportion of the money over to the party funds. Whether such an agreement was ever come to or not is the affair of the law courts. It must resolve itself into a case of hard swearing, for the contradictory assertions of both parties will be, in all probability, somewhat difficult of proof. The disclosures of these matters in the Figaro naturally enough put an end to all negotiations if such negotiations really took place.

On January 10 Monsieur Antoine de Fonvielle wrote a letter to Monsieur Calmette which I subjoin in full. It was printed in the Figaro on January 12. It is dated from Paris, where Monsieur de Fonvielle has a flat at 77 Rue du Rocher. “Monsieur le Directeur,” he writes, “I was informed at about twelve o’clock on Friday last, January 8, of the campaign in the Figaro on the Prieu affair, of which I knew all the details. There are certain mistakes in the Figaro article, and it struck me as advisable to put the people interested in direct touch with the Figaro. I went therefore, on the evening of January 8, at about half-past ten, to see Monsieur Schneider, who lives at 57 Boulevard Beauséjour at Auteuil. Two people went with me and waited for me in a taxicab at the door of the house. I went to see Monsieur Schneider because he has for several years been the mandatory of the claimants in the Prieu affair. Monsieur Schneider has taken all the necessary steps to press the claims of the Prieu heirs with the French Foreign Office both in France and abroad, in England, and in Brazil.

“Monsieur Schneider, who was very surprised at my visit, introduced me to a journalist, Monsieur Vidal, who was with him. I asked Monsieur Schneider to go with me and see Monsieur Calmette at the Figaro office. Monsieur Schneider replied, ‘There is no reason why I should put myself out for Monsieur Calmette. He has interfered quite enough already (Il m’a assez mis des bâtons dans les roues). If it had not been for his interference, the affair would have been settled by now.’ I then told Monsieur Schneider that Monsieur Calmette had not sent me to ask him to come, but that I thought that in his own interests and in those of the heirs, he would do well to go to the Figaro office without delay, and tell the truth and all that he knew about this business. Monsieur Vidal got up from his seat, and said to Monsieur Schneider, ‘Sir, I do not advise you to go. You must know what has been agreed.’ I insisted, and Madame Schneider, who was putting her baby to bed in a room next door, came brusquely into the room and said to her husband, ‘Do what Monsieur Vidal tells you, and do not go with Monsieur de Fonvielle.’ I insisted again that he ought to go to the Rue Drouot with me, and Madame Schneider, who showed some excitement, told her husband to do what she suggested, adding, ‘You can’t do any good by going. Besides, you know what you promised Monsieur Caillaux.’ I then thought it best to go. When I got downstairs I told the two people with me what had happened. One of them has material interests in the affair. (Signed) Antoine de Fonvielle.”

Immediately under Monsieur de Fonvielle’s letter, Monsieur Calmette published in the Figaro of January 12 letters from two members of the Prieu syndicate, Monsieur Boileau and Monsieur Prosper Sauvage. Monsieur Boileau made the following declaration: “As the papers had spoken of the Prieu affair, a meeting was called to hear what Monsieur Schneider had to say. Monsieur Schneider declared: ‘I was very much surprised at the fuss made in the papers. The affair was going to be settled, and I had an appointment to-morrow, Saturday, January 10 (the meeting was at half-past eleven on the evening of the Friday), to receive a definite proposal.’ I left the meeting with Monsieur Schneider, and as we went away together he made this remark to me: ‘If the affair succeeds we shall have to leave a good many feathers behind us.’”

The third letter published by the Figaro was from another member of the Prieu syndicate, Monsieur Prosper Sauvage: “I was present at the meeting which was called to discuss the situation created by the articles in the Figaro,” he wrote. “I was one of the first to arrive, and met Messieurs Monniot, Mazars, and Boileau. Naturally the conversation bore on the incidents of the day, and when I expressed my astonishment and my indignation at the proposal that the Government should take 80 per cent. for its electoral needs while the heirs received only 20 per cent. of the money, Monsieur Monniot declared that Monsieur Schneider had told him about the interview which he had had, and had confirmed these figures. He added that Monsieur Schneider had found the rate excessively high, and quite unacceptable. (Signed) Prosper Sauvage.”

These letters appeared in the Figaro on January 12. The same day Monsieur Calmette accused Monsieur Caillaux of having extorted £16,000 from the Comptoir d’Escompte for the party funds. Monsieur Calmette wrote that Monsieur Ulmann, of the Comptoir d’Escompte, had been received at five o’clock one afternoon by Monsieur Caillaux, and that some days afterwards the £16,000 had been placed at the disposition of the Minister of Finance. Everybody concerned contradicted these statements very flatly, and as they have no bearing on the Caillaux drama other than to show the bitterness and personal nature of the attacks in the Figaro against Monsieur Caillaux we may leave them on one side.

Three days later, on January 15, Monsieur Francois Lebon published in L’Œuvre, a little weekly paper which has been in bitter opposition to the present Government, an article on the scandals of the week, in which he referred to the Prieu affair, and to the affair of the Comptoir d’Escompte. In this article, which is the more worth quoting because it attacks not only Monsieur Caillaux but the present parliamentary régime in France as well, Monsieur Lebon exclaims against the outcry which many people raise against such revelations as those made by the Figaro, that “they tarnish the good name of the Republic.”

“The republican régime,” writes Monsieur Lebon, “is settling down in the mud. We may consider it permissible to think that a few more stains will not be much more visible. When a man is drowning it is perhaps an excess of precaution to refrain from throwing him a rope for fear of splashing him with a few drops of water. One of these days it will become perceptible that if the Third Republic fell so low, it was because the Third Republic was ‘la République des camarades. ’”

This is severe language from a Frenchman about France, but unfortunately there is much in the political history of recent years to support this charge of graft and of corruption. Charges of corruption in the N’Goko Tanga affair, charges which were not altogether denied satisfactorily, were brought by Monsieur Ceccaldi when the colonial Budget came up for discussion, and the fact that Monsieur Ceccaldi has since become a close friend and supporter of the Caillaux Government makes these charges all the more significant now. Each Government in France has a secret fund of £44,000; £24,000 of this fund are used comparatively openly. The little balance of £20,000 is not nearly enough for the funds needed by the Government at the general elections, and it is a well-known fact that a great deal more is spent.

The question as to where this money comes from is hardly a mystery. The Mascuraud committee, an association of parliamentarians and commercial men, has been generous with money in the past. This year it is said to have withheld a large proportion of its usual subsidy, and the Figaro and other Opposition papers declare that Monsieur Caillaux did what he did for the purpose of ensuring at the coming elections the election of Government candidates for the Chamber of Deputies.