Part 8

On the first of February Monsieur Caillaux visited his constituency of Mamers. The _Figaro_ on that day published a long and bitter article describing the misdeeds of the Minister of Finance since his entry into politics. On the 2nd it published two columns more containing a sarcastic appreciation of Monsieur Caillaux’s visit to Mamers. On February 5, Monsieur Caillaux was accused in the _Figaro_ of postponing the French loan and so inducing French investors to place their money elsewhere, notably in Italy. On February 7 the _Figaro_ accuses Monsieur Caillaux, of “continuing to earn the gratitude of the Triple Alliance.” After adjourning the French loan and so facilitating the success of one Prussian loan, and the preparation of a second, “Monsieur Caillaux,” he is told by the _Figaro_, “has enabled the Hungarian Government to contract a loan of twenty millions sterling.” “When all our enemies have filled their Treasuries,” says the _Figaro_ of February 7, “perhaps Monsieur Caillaux will make up his mind to reveal the great plans and schemes to which he has subordinated the eventual issue of a French loan.“ On Sunday February 8 the _Figaro_ contented itself with publishing a photograph of Monsieur Caillaux, and making fun of it, but day by day no number of the paper appeared without an attack on him of one kind or another. On February 11, announcing the Finance Minister’s resignation from the board of the Crédit Foncier Argentin, Monsieur Calmette comments on it in these words: “Monsieur Henri Poirier, an intimate friend of Monsieur Spitzer, has taken his, Monsieur Caillaux’s, place provisionally. When Monsieur Caillaux wishes to return to the board there is no doubt that Monsieur Poirier will make way for him.” On February 19, commenting on the statement in the Senate of Monsieur Caillaux, two days before, that he had never said in 1901 that a Minister of Finance would never consent to interfere with all the taxes, the _Figaro_ gives him the lie direct, quotes the speech he made on July 4, 1901, and declares that it is a complete condemnation of his whole fiscal policy at the present time. On the 20th Monsieur Calmette returns to the charge, compares several speeches of Monsieur Caillaux made at different dates, and comments on them in these words: “Monsieur Caillaux modifies his declarations and his financial programme according to whether he is a Minister in power or anxious to become one, according to whether he is speaking so as to remain in office or speaking against the Ministry so as to overthrow it.” On February 25 Monsieur Gaston Calmette returns to “the secret combinations of Monsieur Caillaux,” and the big fine of £325,000, “which was imposed but never collected,” and ends his article by the accusation that Monsieur Caillaux, for private reasons, authorized a loan issued by a South American bank after the authorization had been refused three times by his predecessor Monsieur Pichon. On Thursday, February 26, the _Figaro_ returns to the attack on the same subject. On March 2, 1914, Monsieur Calmette published a letter written on December 19, 1908, by Monsieur Caillaux, who was then Minister of Finance, to Monsieur Clemenceau, who was then Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. In this letter Monsieur Caillaux protests against the publication in the _Journal Officiel_ of advertisements of foreign lottery bonds. “Six months after the date of this letter,” says Monsieur Calmette, “the Clemenceau Cabinet fell, and Monsieur Caillaux in the following autumn became President of the board of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien. He remained President of that board till January 1914, even while he was a member of the Cabinet again from March 2, 1911, till January 10, 1912. In December 1908 while Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance and was not yet on the board of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien he had refused the introduction on the Paris market of 800,000 lottery bonds. In 1912 he authorized their introduction.” “Our plutocratic demagogue,” writes Monsieur Calmette, “had found in the interval between 1908 and 1912, 100,000 good reasons for suppressing his refusal of 1908 to give these bonds a market.”

This article is of course a deliberate accusation of financial and political dishonesty. On March 3, Monsieur Calmette returns to the question of the South Atlantic Shipping Company. On the 4th, Monsieur Calmette warns the public against a loan which is to be issued by this company, and suggests that Monsieur Caillaux’s reasons for encouraging it are reasons of party policy, and anything but straightforward. On March 5 the _Figaro_, over the signature of Monsieur Gaston Calmette, accuses Monsieur Caillaux publicly of facilitating a Stock Exchange _coup_ by enabling his friends to gamble, with a certainty of success, in the price of French Rentes on the Paris Bourse.

This accusation needs a few words of explanation. The budget proposals contained one item of supreme interest to French investors. This was the taxation of stocks. On March 4 at five o’clock it became “known” in the lobbies of the Chamber and in the newspaper offices of Paris that Monsieur Caillaux intended to omit French Rentes from his scheme of taxation. Naturally this expected immunity of French Rentes from taxation was the reason of a rise of French Rentes. On the Thursday, March 5, Monsieur Caillaux contradicted the rumour of the afternoon before, and declared that he intended to propose the taxation of French Rentes. At twenty minutes to twelve on that morning, when the sworn brokers of the Paris Bourse fixed the opening price, the official contradiction had not reached them. At twelve o’clock, when the opening price was published on the Bourse, Rentes were up to 88.80, the highest price which had been reached since the declaration of war in the Balkans. A large amount of stock changed hands at this high price. Seven minutes later Monsieur Caillaux’s _communiqué_ was generally known, and Rentes fell forty centimes in a few minutes, entailing heavy losses.

Monsieur Barthou made a cynical and characteristic comment on this Bourse operation. “The money was not lost to everybody,” he said. On March 8 Monsieur Gaston Calmette stigmatizes Monsieur Caillaux’s behaviour with reference to the immunity and taxation of French Rentes as “a double pirouette, a looping-the-loop act which allowed certain friends of the Minister of Finance, of whom he was very fond and whom he kept very well informed, to execute a most audacious Stock Exchange _coup_.”

Monsieur Calmette follows this up by a personal attack on Monsieur Caillaux, who, he declared, stated through the Agence Havas on December 28 that he had resigned his position on the board of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien and the Crédit Foncier Argentin, that Monsieur Caillaux had mis-stated the truth, and that he was still a member of these boards and drawing a large sum for his services. On March 10 Monsieur Calmette attacked Monsieur Caillaux in an article which occupied nearly three columns of the front page of the _Figaro_, on his behaviour in the Rochette case.

This article was of course written with the knowledge that the letter of Monsieur Victor Fabre, the Procureur Général, which appears earlier in this volume, would, if published, support the charges made by Monsieur Gaston Calmette against Monsieur Caillaux, and Monsieur Monis. It marks the last stage of this long series of personal attacks in the _Figaro_, far too many of which attacks appear to be only too well deserved.

“For Rochette to escape from legal punishment for his crime against the investing public it was necessary that his case should not come on for trial on April 27, 1911,” wrote Monsieur Calmette in the _Figaro_ on March 10, 1914. The meaning of this is that by French law a prosecution which has not been followed by execution within three years falls to the ground and becomes null and void. Rochette would be a free man if he remained unsentenced three years after his first prosecution in 1908. On March 2, 1911, wrote Monsieur Calmette, “Monsieur Caillaux became Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of which Monsieur Monis was Prime Minister, and Monsieur Perrier Minister of Justice. Rochette had been arrested on March 20, 1908. On May 8 he was released provisionally. He was tried on July 27, 1910, sentenced to prison, appealed, and was able to continue his inroads on the private fortunes of France in all tranquillity. Rochette in 1908 continued to speculate and continued to empty France’s woollen stocking. He got seventy-two million francs of small investors’ money before his arrest, he got sixty-eight million francs more out of it afterwards. If his case did not come on before the three years were up he would be a free man.”

Monsieur Calmette then tells the story of the pressure which was brought to bear by Monsieur Monis and Monsieur Caillaux on Monsieur Fabre and on Judge Bidault de L’Isle, which story we know in all its details now, and he comments on it in these words: “Rochette was saved. All he had to do was to wait for the previous procedure to be proclaimed null and void, and this was done on February 2, 1912. When, to his amazement, a new suit was commenced under the Cabinet of which Monsieur Poincaré was Prime Minister, Rochette took flight. He is a free man to-day, freer and better protected than all of us. He will smile as he reads this indiscreet account of his troubles which are over, and in his gratitude he will send from overseas a gracious greeting to the Minister of Finance, his saviour and his friend. Monsieur Caillaux it was who demanded, who obtained, who insisted on, the various postponements which allowed Rochette to thieve with impunity. Monsieur Caillaux it was who allowed Rochette to proceed during the long legal procedure with the systematic spoliation of the public purse for which he had been arrested, tried, and sentenced once. The protector, the accomplice, of this shady financier is Monsieur Caillaux. Monsieur Caillaux it was who _in exchange for subventions of money to the newspapers which supported him and his policy_ facilitated, prolonged, and increased the strength of the influence of this Stock Exchange adventurer on the public whom he was ruining.

“There you have the plutocratic demagogue! There you have the man of the Congo, the man who nearly made us quarrel with England and with Spain, the man of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien lottery bonds, the man who drew money for serving on financial boards and for services rendered, the man who indulged in secret machinations and criminal intervention, the Finance Minister of the Doumergue Cabinet! Neither the Commission of Inquiry nor Monsieur Jaurès ever really understood the Rochette affair. They guessed something about it, they felt what it meant, instinctively, and they stopped their inquiry, frightened by so much illegality, disgusted at so many crimes. Now you know the truth of it all. Here it stands revealed in all its nakedness to the public whose savings have been stolen. It can be resumed in one word—infamy! It can be resumed in one name—Caillaux!”

On March 11, Monsieur Calmette pointed out that Monsieur Caillaux had issued no official contradiction to the terrible accusations in the _Figaro_ of the day before. On Thursday, March 12, he called public attention again to Monsieur Caillaux’s silence, and in heavy black type in the very centre of the front page of his paper appeared these three lines, which were, so soon, to be fraught with tragic consequence.

“WE SHALL PUBLISH TO-MORROW A CURIOUS AUTOGRAPH DEDICATED BY MONSIEUR JOSEPH CAILLAUX TO HIS ELECTORS.”

On Friday, March 13, 1914—those of my readers who are superstitious will take note that it was a Friday and a thirteenth of the month—the “Ton Jo” letter appeared on the front page of the _Figaro_.

VII

THE “TON JO” LETTER

SENAT.

With the best will in the world it was impossible for me to write to you yesterday. I had to take my part in two terribly tiring sessions of the Chamber, one in the morning at nine o’clock, which finished at midday, the other at two o’clock, from which I only got away at eight o’clock in the evening, dead beat.

However, I secured a magnificent success. I =crushed=[2] the income-tax while appearing to defend it, I received an ovation from the Centre and from the Right, and I managed not to make the Left too discontented. I succeeded in giving the wheel a turn towards the Right which was quite indispensable.

To-day I had another morning session at the Chamber which only finished at a quarter to one.

I am now at the Senate where I am going to have the law on the contributions directes voted, and this evening, no doubt, the session will be over. I shall be dead tired, stupid, ill almost, but I shall have done a real service to my country.

Ton Jo.

[2] The word crushed is underlined in the original text.

That is the “Ton Jo” letter. That is the document which, printed in big black type in the centre of the front page of the _Figaro_ on Friday, March 13, 1914, and re-printed in facsimile lower down on the same page, was followed on the 16th by the revolver shots which killed Monsieur Gaston Calmette. The letter was written by Monsieur Caillaux on July 5, 1901—thirteen years before it was published in the _Figaro_. When he wrote it Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, and apart from the tragic event which followed close on its publication, the letter is a curious and upsetting confession of political duplicity. The income-tax has been Monsieur Joseph Caillaux’s hobby horse for many years. It is an uncomfortable sensation to read, over his own signature, this confession, in his own handwriting, that while appearing to fight for the tax he was really doing his best to crush it out of sight. The natural deduction was of course that Monsieur Caillaux was now, in 1914, pursuing the same tactics which he pursued thirteen years ago.

Once again his speeches have shown him as a partisan of the income-tax, and a partisan of the taxation of French Rentes. The “Ton Jo” letter leaves us uncertain whether this partisanship is not merely a political move, and whether Monsieur Caillaux may not again be “crushing the income-tax while appearing to defend it.” His own letter is a terrible comment on his policy, and it is difficult to exaggerate the shock which the publication of this letter caused in Parliament and among the supporters of the Minister of Finance and of the present Government.

Needless to say, Monsieur Gaston Calmette made the most of it. He embodied the letter in a long article in which he repeated his former accusations against Monsieur Caillaux, accused him of conniving at the escape of Rochette from justice because Rochette’s money was useful to his personal policy, accused him of deliberate lying in the announcement he made of his resignation from the board of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien, accused him openly of felony in connexion with the Bourse _coup_ and the tax.

The “Ton Jo” letter was not published in its entirety. Monsieur Calmette wrote that he suppressed the end of it because that referred to a subject which had nothing to do with fiscal questions. The name of the person to whom it was written was also suppressed, but every one in Paris knew very soon that the letter had been written to Madame Gueydan-Dupré, who afterwards—five years after the letter’s date, when she was divorced—became the wife of Monsieur Caillaux. When the letter was written in these intimate terms Madame Gueydan-Dupré, whom Monsieur Caillaux addressed with the familiar “tu” which means so much in French, his note to whom he signed “Ton Jo,” was the wife of another man. When that letter was published, the woman, to whom it had been written thirteen years before, had been the wife of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux for five years and had ceased to be his wife, had been divorced from him for two years.

It is easy to imagine the feelings of the present Madame Caillaux, of the successor of Madame Gueydan in Monsieur Caillaux’s affections, when she saw this letter reproduced in facsimile on the front page of the _Figaro_, and realized that all France was reading between the lines. It can have mattered very little to her that Monsieur Calmette had suppressed the last few lines of this letter. The mere fact that the first part of it was published, that in his article he made it clear that he knew how it had begun and ended, and made clear to others to whom it had been written, was all-sufficient for the woman who now bears Monsieur Caillaux’s name. That woman knew that there had been other letters in existence. She knew that Monsieur Caillaux had written letters to her which had been at one time in the possession of the woman to whom this “Ton Jo” letter was addressed, and these letters contained, as she well knew, the same mixture of love and politics as the document published on that Friday, March 14.

Her own married life before she became Monsieur Caillaux’s wife had not been happy. She knew and dreaded the power and the will to injure of a woman scorned. She knew of course of the dramatic scene which had occurred before she married Monsieur Caillaux, between her husband and his first wife, Madame Gueydan. She knew that the letters which she dreaded had been destroyed on that occasion, but she knew, too, that their destruction had been obtained at the price of a reconciliation between Monsieur Caillaux and his first wife, and she knew, no woman better, that Monsieur Caillaux had not kept to the spirit of the bargain, had obtained a divorce from his first wife, shortly after the destruction of these letters, and immediately after his divorce had become her own husband. She was not sure that there were no copies of the letters in existence.

One shudders to visualize that interview between husband and wife on the morning of Friday, March 13. One can realize the fears which were expressed, the mud of past years which was stirred. And that morning, we may be fairly certain, the first thought of desperation was born in Madame Caillaux’s brain. Can you not see this woman thinking, pondering, murmuring to herself, “This must be stopped”? Can you not see her snatching at her copy of the _Figaro_ next morning, skipping with an impatient shrug of the shoulders her husband’s _communiqué_ to the Agence Havas, and reading down the page with anxious eyes to see whether the revelation of the letters which she feared would follow? One shudders at the mental picture of the lives of Monsieur and of Madame Caillaux, of this man and this woman, during the days which followed the publication of the “Ton Jo” letter. And when she saw, on Monday, March 16, that Monsieur Calmette had not stopped his campaign against her husband although three days before, on the 13th, he had said “My task is finished” one can realize her anguish—the anguish of fear.

VIII

AGADIR

In almost every newspaper article which I have read on the Caillaux drama one sentence has invariably amused me. “The question of Agadir,” we read, in French and English papers both, “is too fresh in the reader’s mind for any exhaustive reference to it here to be necessary.” But memories are short in these fast-living days, and though the history of Agadir is recent history, no story of the Caillaux drama can be complete without recalling it at length. For one of the accusations against Monsieur Caillaux as a politician which the _Figaro_ made constantly is that Monsieur Caillaux made mistake on mistake, and was misled by his hatred of the Ministers who had been instrumental in the original and comparative settlement of the Moroccan difficulties, to do grave wrong to France over the Agadir matter.

His hatred of his parliamentary opponents, it was said at the time, was very nearly instrumental in creating serious international complications. Further imprudence was shown by his endeavour to palliate the effect of his first ill-considered act, and he was finally forced to consent to concessions on behalf of France which France need not have made at all if Monsieur Caillaux had been more prudent from the beginning.

This, stripped of all vituperation, is the accusation which Monsieur Caillaux has to answer before the tribunal of history. Let us look into it. In order to do so we must go back to the Act of Algeciras. It will be remembered that the Act of Algeciras gave France the right of policing Morocco because of its neighbourhood to Algiers. Three years after the Act of Algeciras French troops were in occupation of certain portions of Moroccan territory, and the jingo party, the Pan-Germanists, in Germany were protesting with heat against this military occupation.

The peace party in Germany, however, had other views. There was a feeling that an understanding on the basis of the act of Algeciras between France and Germany might lead to a weakening of the Entente between France and Great Britain, and be useful economically to German enterprise.

On February 8, 1909, when Monsieur Clemenceau was at the head of the French Government with Monsieur Stephen Pichon as his Foreign Minister, Germany recognized, more freely than it had recognized before, the interests of France in Morocco for the maintenance of order, and promised collaboration economically. A secret letter changed hands, confirming this agreement, and admitting that Germany should remain disinterested in the politics of Morocco. In this same letter it was admitted also that the economic interests of France in Morocco were more important than the economic interests of Germany. The importance of this letter rested of course on the fact that it practically entailed the suppression of immediate friction between the two countries.

The Clemenceau Cabinet worked hard to carry the good work further still, so that the spirit of this Franco-German understanding should be extended to the Congo. The French representative of the bondholders of the Moroccan debt, Monsieur Guiot, who had been in the French Foreign Office, paid a visit to Berlin, and the result of his negotiations with the German Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse was a memorandum dated June 2, 1909, by which it was decided to create a Franco-German Company for the purpose of exploiting certain concessions. On June 5 the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Pichon, took counsel with the French Colonial Minister, Monsieur Milliés-Lacroix, on the advantages and disadvantages of this Franco-German collaboration.

At the end of July 1909, the Clemenceau Cabinet fell. Monsieur Briand became Prime Minister and retained Monsieur Pichon at the Quai d’Orsay, but Monsieur Clemenceau dropped out of the Cabinet and Monsieur Caillaux was no longer Minister of Finance.

It is not too much to say that the Clemenceau-Caillaux alliance dates from this little upheaval in French internal politics, and it was at this point that Monsieur Caillaux’s enmity to Monsieur Briand and Monsieur Pichon first led him astray.

On August 2, 1909, the N’Goko Sanga Company, in reply to a letter from the Minister for Foreign Affairs offered to give up, against a substantial indemnity, a portion of the territory for which it held concessions. A commission was formed to discuss terms, but it was not till April 29, 1910, that the amount of the indemnity was definitely stated. The indemnity was to be F2,393,000 or £95,720.