Part 5

It is a regrettable thing that Frenchmen find it so difficult, find it, indeed, well nigh impossible to fight fairly. The case of Madame Caillaux is surely bad enough as it stands without the need for unfair comment before it comes on for trial. If you say this to a Frenchman he will probably answer that there is very little hope of a fair trial. This I do not believe, and if I did believe it and were a Frenchman I should hate to say it. I could fill this volume with extracts from the Paris newspapers, of almost any day since Gaston Calmette was killed in his office, to prove how unfair comments have been on the case while it is still _sub judice_. I will not weary my readers with long extracts, however. They would be unpleasant reading, and they would answer no more purpose than this little but characteristic extract from the _Patrie_ of the 8th of April. When Madame Caillaux was first put in prison there was, as I have said, an outcry in the Opposition Press against the “undue favours which were being shown to her in Saint Lazare.” The reports of these undue favours were flatly contradicted by the prison authorities, but the lawyers of another prisoner, a Madame Vitz, were clever enough to take advantage of the outcry to secure the comparative comforts of the _pistole_ for their client. Madame Vitz was already in a weak state of health when she was moved, and she has now gone mad. This is what the _Patrie_ (a reactionary paper) has to say about her case: “Madame Caillaux, who enjoys the little and the great favours of the prison administration, must be satisfied to-day. Another wish which she recently expressed has just been carried out. Calmette’s murderess had a neighbour in the cell next to hers, Madame Vitz. Her counsel, Maître Desbons, obtained, with a great deal of trouble, some alleviation of her fate, and she was put in the _pistole_ class in the cell next door to the one occupied by Madame Caillaux. Owing to her constant annoyance at the extraordinary favours with which Madame Caillaux was treated Madame Vitz has gone mad. In her cell she was always calling out ‘Madame Caillaux! Madame Caillaux!’ and screaming. The wife of the ex-Minister of Finance complained of her neighbourhood. The director of the prison bowed to her wishes, and had Madame Vitz removed to the prison infirmary.” Can anything be more grossly, more stupidly, and childishly unfair than this attempt to alienate sympathy from Madame Vitz’s neighbour? I have quoted it because it is short, but any Paris paper of the _Patrie_ type unfortunately provides more material of the same kind daily than I should care to translate or my readers would care to read. I should not be surprised if many of the comments in the London newspapers suffered considerably and indirectly from the unfairness of many of the newspapers in Paris while the case has been _sub judice_. The reason for this is very simple. In Paris there are six evening papers of any importance. These are the _Patrie_, which appears early in the afternoon, the _Temps_, the _Liberté_, and the _Journal des Débâts_, which appear at about five o’clock, the _Intransigeant_ and the _Presse_, which appear just about dinner time. Of these six papers five are Opposition papers, and only one of these five, the _Journal des Débâts_, makes the slightest attempt to be impartial. The only really impartial evening paper is the _Temps_, which gives the news of the day and comments on it, but comments without bias. The _Patrie_ and the _Presse_ are under the same directorate, the _Intransigeant_, while perhaps not quite so rabid as the _Presse_ and the _Patrie_, is openly unfair whenever politics call for unfairness, as they usually do, and the _Liberté_, while it prints the news, is always invariably and openly in such frank opposition to the Government that nothing done by any member of the Government is ever anything but wrong, and news which has the slightest reference to politics of any kind is invariably coloured. It follows that the local correspondent without a very wide knowledge and experience of French peculiarities and French methods must find it very difficult to form an opinion (in time for transmission to London the same evening) sufficiently without bias to be really valuable. Every journalist in Paris is obliged to read the evening papers; the evening papers, with two honourable exceptions above mentioned, always present the news of the day with the colouring of their political convictions, and the correspondent of an English paper may therefore frequently have found it impossible during the Caillaux drama, as he often found it impossible during the Panama scandal, the Dreyfus case, and other of the periodic convulsions of modern France, to separate the wheat of fact from the chaff of political colouring. In saying this I intend no reflection whatever on the honesty, the brilliance, or the intelligence of the Paris correspondents of the London Press, all of whom are my acquaintances, and most of whom I am proud to number among my personal friends. I feel sure that if any of them happen to read what I have just written they will not only admit its truth, but be inclined to think that I have spoken with even less emphasis than I might.

Whatever may be the result of the trial of Madame Caillaux there is no question of the immediate result of the murder of Monsieur Calmette, on public opinion in France. Men and women alike, all consider that Madame Caillaux should be treated with the utmost severity, and men and women alike, all are anxious to see whatever punishment is possible meted out to her husband. So real is this feeling—and I am talking now of the general public and not of journalists or politicians—that Monsieur Caillaux has found it necessary to go about, when it has been needful for him to show himself in public, with a strong bodyguard of police in plain clothes. He has allowed himself to be persuaded, contrary to his first intention, to remain a candidate for re-election in his constituency, but he is so well aware of the feeling against him everywhere that, although lack of personal courage is certainly not one of the faults of the ex-Minister of Finance, he is conducting his canvass by deputy, and remains in Paris under constant guard.

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.