Part 13

The next witness after the Monis interlude, in March 1912, was the presiding judge of the Chamber of Correctional Appeal, Monsieur Bidault de L’Isle. He too declared that he was “rather surprised” at having been called before the Commission of Inquiry, he too explained that deference for the Commission had been the sole reason of his coming. He had received a letter from Maître Maurice Bernard, he said, in which Rochette’s defending lawyer asked him to have the case postponed. Maître Bernard said he was very busy, that he had several important cases coming on, that his doctor told him that he would be ill if he went on working so hard, and that he really couldn’t plead the Rochette case for some months. “We never refuse an appeal of this kind from a member of the Bar,” said Judge Bidault de L’Isle, “so I wrote to Maître Maurice Bernard that the postponement would be granted. _I wish to affirm in the most formal way_,” said Judge Bidault de L’Isle, “_that the question of politics played no part whatever in the decision of postponement._” Monsieur Jaurès tried very hard, and other members of the Commission helped as best they could to get the truth from Judge Bidault de L’Isle, but he repeated the statement quoted above “on his soul and on his conscience.” On March 20, 1914, exactly two years after this statement, Monsieur Bidault de L’Isle, who had denied two years before that Monsieur Fabre, the Procureur Général, had told him that the Rochette case must be postponed for political reasons, who in March 1912 had declared that the only reason for the adjournment was that Maître Bernard had asked for it, ate his words without enjoyment, as Monsieur Monis and Monsieur Fabre had eaten theirs. Three men, a Prime Minister of France, the judge of one of the highest courts in the country, and the Public Prosecutor, lied, and admitted under pressure, when further denial was impossible, that they had trifled, deliberately, with the truth.

Of these three men who lied and were forced to admit it, the most pitiful figure is that of the Procureur Général, Monsieur Victor Fabre, for he was the victim of a system. Professional secrecy in France has become such a fetish that it has developed, from a means of preventing doctors, lawyers, and professional men generally from revealing unduly the secrets of those who have confided in them, into a kind of Mumbo-Jumbo idol which protects and cloaks untruth. Now that we know that Monsieur Victor Fabre told a deliberate lie and made a misleading half-disclosure of the truth to the Parliamentary Commission which examined him in 1912, we can only be sorry for the man and amazed at the system which made such juggling with the truth seem justifiable to him. In March 1911 Monsieur Fabre, under pressure from the Prime Minister, Monsieur Monis, had ordered Judge Bidault de L’Isle to postpone the trial of Rochette. In 1912 either just before or just after his examination by the Parliamentary Commission, Monsieur Victor Fabre had handed to the Minister of Justice, who was then Monsieur Aristide Briand, the written statement which Monsieur Barthou read in the Chamber of Deputies immediately after the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette in 1914. This statement told the truth which he concealed from the Commission of Inquiry two years before. Monsieur Fabre had written his statement immediately after political pressure was brought to bear on him; he knew, of course, of its existence when he was examined in 1912. And this is how he spoke of it when he was re-examined in 1914. “I was surprised and afflicted when I learned that a journalist, two years after I had handed my statement to Monsieur Briand, had boasted of its possession and proposed to publish it. I didn’t believe this. I thought that it was quite impossible that he should be in possession of my statement, that he could publish it, because I did not even know Monsieur Calmette by sight, because I had not given it to him, because I considered the fact that the Minister of Justice had this statement in his possession rendered it inviolable. MY CONVICTION ON THIS POINT WAS SO STRONG THAT WHENEVER THIS DOCUMENT WAS MENTIONED TO ME I INVARIABLY STATED THAT IT DID NOT EXIST, AND THAT THERE WAS NO FEAR OF ITS PUBLICATION.” In plain English, Monsieur Victor Fabre admitted that he had suppressed the truth, because he was convinced that the truth would not be known. “I made this declaration to Monsieur Caillaux, who appeared very uneasy at the thought that this document might be published. I consider that I HAVE THE RIGHT AND THAT IT WAS MY DUTY TO SAY WHAT I DID. I CONSIDER THAT I HAD NO RIGHT TO GIVE UP MY SECRET, FOR THIS DOCUMENT WAS MINE, I COULD DO WHAT I LIKED WITH IT, I COULD SUPPRESS IT OR TEAR IT UP. TO EVERYBODY BUT MYSELF THE DOCUMENT WAS NONEXISTENT.”

After this pitiful confession Monsieur Fabre, as a weak man will, accused everybody he could think of of breaking faith with him. “Unfortunately,” he said, “everybody had not the same reserve (this is an exquisite word to have chosen) that I had. I do not know how my statement passed from Monsieur Briand’s hands into other hands. I do know that the use which was made of it was a deplorable abuse.” It was indeed.

We know now how Monsieur Fabre’s written statement came to be read in the Chamber of Deputies, and we can guess how Monsieur Calmette and other journalists knew of its existence, and of its contents. Monsieur Briand had kept the damning document while he was Minister of Justice. When he resigned, Monsieur Briand, as his duty was, passed the document on to the new Minister of Justice, Monsieur Barthou. Monsieur Barthou, realizing what a political weapon the statement might become, kept it and used it. Whether he showed it to journalists, I do not know, but we know from the evidence of Monsieur Fabre as far as faith can be placed in this evidence after his own confession, that only two copies of the document were in existence. The one Monsieur Fabre kept in his own possession until he handed it over on March 20, 1914, to the President of the Commission of Inquiry, the other, on which he wrote “Copy for the Minister of Justice,” he copied out in his own handwriting and handed over to Monsieur Briand. With regard to the contents of the document nobody now denies that they were true.

On March 20, 1914, Monsieur Fabre no longer pleaded professional secrecy, no longer hesitated, but made this direct statement: “It is perfectly correct that I received an order from the Prime Minister, Monsieur Monis, to secure the postponement of the Rochette case until after the holidays. It is perfectly true that I insisted on Judge Bidault de L’Isle postponing the case. It is perfectly true that I told him why. If I had gone to Judge Bidault de L’Isle and said, ‘Maître Maurice Bernard is not very well. Put the case off for a year,’ Judge Bidault de L’Isle would have told me that there was insufficient reason for the postponement. I sent for Judge Bidault de L’Isle, I told him of the interview which I had had with the Prime Minister, and of the order which had been given me. I explained the situation to him, I adjured him if he had any affection for me to grant what I asked. He ended by giving way.” Then this unfortunate man, whose chief fault is weakness, who trembled for his position, and who allowed the Prime Minister to dictate to him in consequence, attempted to explain his act away. He said that even if the case were postponed, even if, as duly happened, all legal procedure against Rochette were cancelled, Rochette would not enjoy impunity. At present he is certainly enjoying it, and he has answered this statement of poor Monsieur Fabre more simply and conclusively than anybody else can do. Monsieur Fabre had instructions and carried them out against his own wish, he said. He believed, and he believes now, that he was obliged to obey them. Under examination he was asked why he took the Prime Minister’s orders, why he did not go to his direct superior, the Minister of Justice, Monsieur Perrier. His answer shows the curiously direct influence of personality in the government of France. It shows that Monsieur Fabre considered that the Prime Minister’s order overrode anything that the Minister of Justice might or might not find to say. And as we know now that Monsieur Monis gave this order for the postponement of the Rochette trial because Monsieur Caillaux told him to, as we know that Monsieur Caillaux told him to give it because Rochette’s lawyer, Maître Bernard, might say things in court which would be disagreeable to the Government, might make disclosures which would get the Government, and more especially Monsieur Caillaux himself, into trouble, we realize that the real ruler of France on March 2, 1911, was Henri Rochette, who fled the country under sentence for fraud.

Monsieur Caillaux himself had an interview, or rather two interviews, with Monsieur Fabre, who called on him on January 14, 1914, at seven o’clock in the evening. They spoke of the Rochette affair, and (this was the second interview) Monsieur Caillaux mentioned the order which Monsieur Fabre had received. “He asked me,” Monsieur Fabre said to the Commission of Inquiry (and he had asked me the same question on the occasion of my former visit), “whether it were true that a copy of my statement of my interview with Monsieur Monis existed and could be published. _I replied in the negative._ He insisted. He told me that he had information that a journalist was in possession of this document, and that he was afraid that it would be published. I told him that this was not possible, _that he need not be afraid of the publication of a document which did not exist_. I said this because I was convinced, as I was convinced up to the last minute, that this document would never be published and could not be published. I preferred not to reveal my secret so as not to upset Monsieur Caillaux (‘_ne pas attrister d’avantage_ Monsieur Caillaux’), who was quite upset enough by the campaign against him. I had the right to speak as I did because this document was my property, and because it was useless for me to reveal its existence as it was not to be published.”

But the further evidence of Monsieur Victor Fabre, when, in March 1914, he told the whole truth at last, shows that the orders he received really did come from Rochette and came almost directly from him. After his interview with Monsieur Monis, the Procureur-Général had a conversation with his assistant, Monsieur Bloch-Laroque, whose title (Substitut) does not exist in England. Monsieur Bloch-Laroque and Monsieur Fabre talked over the fact that Monsieur Maurice Bernard had deliberately threatened Monsieur Fabre, that he had said, before leaving the room and banging the door behind him, that “if Monsieur Fabre did not obey, it would be the worse for him.” It is surely unheard of, that Rochette’s lawyer should be able to have terrorized the French Procureur-Général with such language, but Monsieur le Procureur-Général Victor Fabre told the Commission of Inquiry, “I was well aware of the influence and knew the friends of Maître Maurice Bernard, and I knew that he did not say what he said without knowing that his words would receive sanction in high places.” Maître Maurice Bernard is an intimate friend of Monsieur Caillaux, and was his lawyer in his divorce case.

We may resume this inner history of a series of disgraceful happenings in the history of France in comparatively few words. Rochette has made enormous sums of money in a very few years, and the French authorities believe that he has swindled and is swindling the public. There are difficulties in the way of proving this immediately. The authorities connive at the substitution of a man of straw for a proper prosecutor so as not to allow Rochette to slip through their fingers, and he is arrested. By every means in his power, and the French legal code gives him many opportunities, Rochette drags the case against him from court to court, and succeeds in avoiding final judgment for over two years and six months. Then, when a definite trial appears inevitable, the Prime Minister, acting under advice from the Minister of Finance, who has allowed himself to be terrorized by Rochette—to put the mildest possible construction on the reason for his conduct—brings influence to bear on the magistrature, and postpones the trial again. Rochette in the meanwhile has left France, and has continued to prosecute his financial schemes. There we have the Rochette case in a nutshell. There also we have its intimate connexion with the Caillaux drama, for the Minister of Finance who, for more or less personal reasons, persuaded the Prime Minister to order the postponement of the trial, was Monsieur Joseph Caillaux.

How personal were Monsieur Caillaux’s reasons for advising Monsieur Monis to secure the postponement of the Rochette trial were shown in a letter from Rochette himself, which he sent to the President of the Commission of Inquiry on March 27, 1914. The letter was a very long one. In it Monsieur Rochette told the story of how he had terrorized the Minister of Finance, Monsieur Caillaux, into working for him. Rochette had compiled a volume of 120 pages on the history of financial issues made in France and floated on the market from 1890 to 1910. In these tables it was shown that French investors had had heavy losses amounting in all to four hundred million pounds sterling. The book was likely to create very serious difficulties for Monsieur Caillaux, the Finance Minister, who had been responsible for permitting many of these issues of stock, and it was Rochette’s determination that his lawyer should read these figures in court on the plea of showing that if some of his issues had brought losses to the French investor other issues under higher authority than his own had done the same thing on a larger scale. The importance which Monsieur Caillaux attributed to this book is proved by the fact that he spoke of it to Monsieur Monis as a political reason for doing what Rochette wished, and postponing the trial. It is interesting to note that there are actually thirty-eight prosecutions waiting Rochette’s return to France.

The history of the Rochette case shows unfortunately that Madame Caillaux’s revolver shot was not the only crime in the full story of the Caillaux drama. There is another criminal whom a higher court must try than the Paris Court of Assizes, there is another victim besides Gaston Calmette. The criminal is expediency, expediency which allows men in the positions of Prime Minister, of judge, of Public Prosecutor to tamper with fact, to mislead and to lie in the belief that they “have the right” to do so. The victim whom they murdered is The Truth.

XI

ABOUT FRENCH POLITICS

Perhaps the most difficult part of the life of France for an Englishman to understand is her politics. To give with any thoroughness at all even a slight idea of the French political parties and the opinions for which these parties fight, would require another volume quite as big as this one. But the object of this chapter is not an essay on the intricacies of party politics in France, nor do I propose to attempt a detailed explanation of the differences of opinion which divide the parties. My object is rather to give the reader some insight into the clockwork as it were of the inner political life of France, so as to throw more light, within the measure of my power with the lamp, on the Caillaux drama, which is such a salad of passion, politics, and finance.

It is, as I have said, extremely difficult for an English reader to realize what French political life really is, for it is so very different from political life at home, and though it might more easily be compared perhaps to the political life of the United States it differs in many ways and in many essentials from that also. But French political life does resemble the political life of America in one way, in contrast to the political life of England. Its very foundation is familiarity, and the French politician is not generally respected by his compatriots as one who knows more than themselves. He is admired as one who has more cunning. The French used to take pride in the familiarity with which they treat their politicians, for familiarity such as is the mainspring of France’s politics used to be called _Egalité_, and is still one of the words, in this disguise, with which the French politician loves to conjure, and succeeds in conjuring, votes out of an empty hat.

If I were asked to name the most powerful political class in modern France I should plump for the _marchand de vin_. The _marchand de vin_, the keeper of the little wineshop, with the zinc counter and the little tables with their stone tops beyond it, which is the equivalent of the English public house, is quite the most powerful electoral agent existing in France, and he is recognized as such by every French politician. At election times, or for that matter, at any time, no French politician can afford to neglect him, and he controls votes without number in every town, every village, and every district throughout the length and breadth of the country.

So true is this that every Government is obliged to recognize the fact of the _marchand de vin’s_ importance, and each succeeding Government is put in the curious position, as it succeeds the Government before it, of being obliged, on the score of public morality, public health, and public well-being to discourage the consumption of strong drink in words, and to encourage it in act. There are laws in France which permit certain people to make and to sell alcohol. Governments from time to time have endeavoured to remove or to restrict the privileges which these manufacturers of alcohol enjoy, but they have never succeeded because the _bouilleurs du cru_ as they are called, are much too strong for them and much too strongly backed. Each succeeding Government knows, or if it does not recognize the fact at first, the fact is very soon made clear, that everybody connected with the wine and spirit industry must be conciliated if votes are to be obtained, and retained, and although France has for a good many years now called herself a republic she is really a monarchy under the thumb of a despot, whose name is King Marchand de Vin, and who is only nominally under the control of Parliament. Parliament controls the _marchand de vin_ nominally, perhaps, in France, but as the _marchand de vin_ elects the members who form Parliament, as the _marchand de vin_ controls and regulates the votes of the many-headed, the _marchand de vin_ reigns, and will continue to reign supreme, for France will not stop drinking wine till England abjures beer.

To the observer who has the advantage of aloofness as his point of view, the thing which impresses more than anything else as the principal characteristic of French politics is their selfishness. This peculiarity is almost as remarkable, perhaps even more remarkable, than the curious complications of the many political parties. To begin with, in studying the parties the first thing which strikes one in addition to their number is the fact that they are all, with the exception of the Royalists and Imperialists who call themselves Conservatives, as advanced or more advanced than any party at all in either England or in Germany. The German Socialist, for instance, of the reddest type, has tenets which, if he were a Frenchman, would probably make him vote with the very moderate Left, and Monsieur Millerand, who used to be looked upon as such a dangerous Socialist not very long ago is now considered by the Socialists themselves old-fashioned and reactionary, while Monsieur Briand is in French eyes a very moderate reformer, if he be considered a reformer at all.

But here I am beginning the impossible task of attempting to divide French politicians into parties, and explaining the views of these parties in plain language. I must not allow myself to be led away, by the Chinese puzzle fascination French party politics invariably exercise, to attempt this task. I could not succeed, for by the time this book is on the market French parties will no doubt have changed and shaken down again into other and different shapes, for French political combinations hold together as cohesive forces with little more certainty than the bits of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope. Every time a question of the least importance gives a turn to the handle, the parties of the day, the week, or the month before disintegrate and fall into other combinations of infinite shades of colour.

But we may talk of the selfishness of French politics, for this, unfortunately, does not change. In a country where politics are so mixed that the elector understands very little about them, it is not difficult to catch votes by arguments of another kind. Our business just now being with the Caillaux drama, it may not be a bad method of explaining how French politicians gain the authority to govern, by some sidelights on the election at Mamers of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux. Immediately after Madame Caillaux had shot the editor of the _Figaro_ dead her husband resigned office. He was of course obliged to do this. Immediately after his resignation he announced that he intended to retire from public life entirely, and would take no part in politics in the immediate future. He had hardly made this announcement, which I mentioned on page 79, before he changed his mind, and announced that owing to the insistence of his constituents he would be a candidate for re-election when the general election took place, but that he would not canvass, and that his friend Monsieur D’Estournelles de Constant would canvass for him, while he himself would remain in the retirement demanded by the situation of his wife. A very few days after this second change of plans Monsieur Caillaux changed his mind once more and determined to canvass Mamers. He has been re-elected. It is not uninteresting to glance at the reason why.

Any foreigner might have imagined that there was no possible chance for any body of electors to re-elect Monsieur Joseph Caillaux as their representative. The fierce light which played so recently and so unsparingly on his political career had scarcely shown him to be a desirable member of Parliament. It would be difficult, one would think, for Frenchmen to vote for the man who had made such a number of mistakes, and who had been connected, as Monsieur Caillaux was connected, with the negotiations disclosed in the chapters in this volume on Agadir and the _affaire_ Rochette. But the foreigner would not realize, and Monsieur Caillaux realized, very conclusively, that the peasants of the Sarthe district cared little or nothing for the revelations in the Paris Press, and cared a great deal for Monsieur Caillaux’s personality.