Part 6

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.