Whenever anything sensational occurs to disturb the serenity of daily life in Paris, the vortex of politics promptly sucks it in. The Parisians—Frenchmen in general, in fact—are insatiable politicians, and no matter what the happening, discussion of it becomes immediately a party matter. It is of little consequence whether the item which is talked about in clubs, in cafés, in the newspapers, in the theatre lobbies, at dinner-parties, and at supper after the theatre is green hair, the Caillaux Drama, or a new play, the people who discuss it usually take sides in accordance with their political views. You may laugh at the idea that green hair or a non-political play has any bearing on politics, but in Paris this is curiously true. Green hair, for instance, became a dogma of the Opposition. It was adopted by [Pg 65] ladies of the aristocracy, therefore Socialists and Radicals jeered at it. The sensible man who ventured to laugh at green hair was immediately stigmatized by those who upheld the new fashion as a supporter of the parliamentary system and the bloc, not because parliamentary Radicals and green hair have any real connexion, not because Monsieur Jaurès prevents the ladies of his family from wearing it, but because the Duchesse de Y. and the Comtesse de Z., who are “bien pensants,” have become votaries of the fashion. A new play is judged not so much on its merits as on political grounds. If the author be of aristocratic sympathies, Monsieur Lavedan, for instance, the anti-aristocrats promptly run down his play, and if he be one of the class from which Dreyfusards were drawn during the Dreyfus case and afterwards, the reactionaries have no good word to say for his work. How curiously true this is in Paris, and how difficult it is for any foreigner who has not lived many years in Paris to understand it, was proved by the tumult and bloodshed over a play of Monsieur Henry Bernstein’s which was produced some years ago at the Comédie Fran?aise. [Pg 66] The reactionary party actually contrived to wreck the play because they disliked Monsieur Bernstein, because he was a Jew, and because his play was produced in the national theatre. The principal difficulty for a foreigner in understanding the extraordinary hold of politics in France on matters which appear and which are really entirely outside the scope of politics is increased by the Frenchman’s attitude in argument. When a foreigner disagrees with a Frenchman on any question whatsoever, the Frenchman, should he happen to be getting the worse of the discussion, puts an end to it by remarking, smilingly and politely, “But you are a foreigner, my friend, and therefore cannot possibly understand this matter, which is essentially French.” There is no answer to such a statement. Frenchmen believe, quaintly enough, that the hand of every foreigner is always against them. The national conceit in France, an excellent asset, of course, for the nation, but singularly aggravating sometimes, is enormous, unfathomable, and entirely impervious to argument or logic. The greatest praise for anything in France is that [Pg 67] it is French. The greatest praise for anything in Paris is that it is very Parisian, and so peculiar is this national conceit that it finds an outlet in the inevitable claim which is invariably made for French initiative in any invention, scientific or otherwise, which has made its mark in the world, for any novelty of medical science, for anything inspired at all. The origin of anything worth having in the world is French. This is dogma, and quite indisputable. Your Frenchman will admit the marvels of Marconi, but he will always add that Branly, a Frenchman, was the real inventor of wireless telegraphy, and will ignore Hertz as far as he dares. There was an argument in the French Press, not long ago, for instance, to prove that Columbus was a Frenchman. I do not know whether his famous egg was also a French egg, and I do not remember exactly how Columbus was proved to be French. I do know, however, that Frenchmen are quite sure that, although Edison and Bell had something to do with the invention of the telephone, a Frenchman was the real inventor of it, and quite recently, when Mr. Westinghouse died, the newspapers proved, to their own satisfaction, that a Frenchman was the inventor of the Westinghouse brake.

Now the reactionary nationalist party in France makes more noise than all the others put together. The reactionary newspapers are more violent in tone than any of the others, and have a knack of making a statement on Monday, reaffirming it on Tuesday, and alluding to it as an absolute and admitted fact on Wednesday. They have therefore the grip on public opinion which noise and reiteration always secure, and it is very natural that public opinion abroad, which has necessarily less opportunity for discrimination, should finish by accepting the reiterated outcry of the noisiest portion of the French Press as the real French opinion. In a drama like the Caillaux drama, in a case where a respected man, the editor of a flourishing Paris newspaper, has been done to death, it is obvious that those who feel that the woman who has killed him has any claim to sympathy at all will find themselves in the minority. It is no less a fact that unfair methods have been in use ever since the death of Monsieur Calmette to rouse the [Pg 69] opinion of the world against the wretched woman who is in prison for killing him. The law courts will decide how much or how little sympathy is due to her. In the meanwhile the French Press is pursuing its inevitable method of judging the case in advance, and everything is being done for political reasons to increase the public feeling of natural horror for the deed which resulted in the death of the editor of the Figaro. It is difficult to exaggerate the bitter tone of the daily howl for punishment: Already the Action Fran?aise has begun to throw mud at Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, in case his report on the case should be too lenient, and to suggest that he has been bought over. I have not seen in any French paper a suggestion that Madame Caillaux is already being punished by the political downfall of her husband and her own incarceration. There is no sign anywhere in the French newspapers of an attempt to be fair, and the very worst side of the French character has come to the surface in this chorus of bitter cruelty to a woman who is down, on the one side, and libels on the dead man on the other. As much harm is being done to Madame Caillaux’s case [Pg 70] by her friends as by her enemies. While her enemies are clamouring against her, her friends are losing any public sympathy which might have arisen, by attacking the memory of Gaston Calmette. It is quite obvious to any reasonable person who considers the drama calmly and without prejudice that Madame Caillaux did not kill Monsieur Gaston Calmette for the mere pleasure of killing. It is equally obvious that Monsieur Calmette waged his campaign in the Figaro against Monsieur Caillaux because he thought it was the right thing to do, and that he thought the political downfall of Monsieur Caillaux, which he was attempting to bring about, would be a good thing for France. Nothing is to be gained, however, on either side by an attempt to vilify the other. The facts speak for themselves, and can be chronicled in a very few lines. Monsieur Calmette considered the political downfall of Joseph Caillaux a necessity for his country. Monsieur Caillaux, rightly or wrongly, feared that to procure his downfall Monsieur Calmette intended to publish certain private letters. Monsieur Calmette’s daily attacks on Monsieur Caillaux naturally enraged both Monsieur Caillaux [Pg 71] and his wife. The fear of an attack in print on their private lives may or may not have been justified, but it certainly was the direct cause of the murder. This murder is deplored by everybody. Nobody will deny that Madame Caillaux deserves punishment, but if those who are working every day to embitter public feeling against her would only pause to think, and would leave political considerations on one side for a moment, they would realize that their campaign is an insult to their own judges, their own juries, and their own legal system. France boasts of its liberty. Whenever a sensational case occurs, and public feelings are stirred, that liberty is allowed to degenerate into licence, and to disagree with the howl of the reactionary Press is to ask for abuse. Everybody who says a word of pity for Madame Caillaux in France nowadays is accused of trying to make the course of justice deviate. The examining magistrate whose duty it is to try and find the truth out and report on it is insulted if he dares to be impartial. Everybody who dares to suggest that the very bitterness of the Caillaux campaign was largely responsible for its deplorable climax is held up to obloquy as [Pg 72] an enemy of France. I hold no brief either for Madame Caillaux and her husband or for the campaign in the Figaro. Both the murder and the bitterness of the campaign of which it was the climax are to be deplored. The campaign, as I shall show in this book, was a necessary evil. The bitterness and insistency with which it was conducted were perhaps unnecessary evils. The woman has killed, and will undoubtedly be punished. She is being punished already. The man who conducted the bitter campaign has been shot dead. Surely there is nothing to be gained by attempting to sully the dead man’s memory, or by attempting to overwhelm the woman whose victim he was. Madame Caillaux in prison is a victim of the political campaign of the Figaro in exactly the same degree as the editor of the Figaro is the victim of Madame Caillaux. The two will be judged. The wrong of one neither minimises nor magnifies the action of the other. I am as certain that Madame Caillaux believed, she had a right to shoot as I am certain that she was wrong to kill. I am as certain that Monsieur Calmette believed in the justice of his campaign as I am certain that Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed that it was being conducted unjustly. [Pg 73]

What neither of them or Monsieur Calmette realized was the harm that all three would do to the country which I am certain all three loved.

The terrible, the brutal fact remains that Gaston Calmette is in his coffin and that Madame Caillaux killed him. Unhappily, there is no doubt that if Monsieur Calmette had been wounded merely, the outcry of the anti-Caillaux party would have been nearly as loud, and the dignity of French justice would have been considered as little or less than it is to-day by Monsieur Caillaux and his friends on the one side and Monsieur Calmette and his on the other. If the Caillaux drama had not a death in it the disinclination to allow the courts to judge without interference would have been as great as it is now, in spite of the lesson which the Fabre incident should teach. To the observer, to the lover of France the most deplorable, the most unhappy result of the Caillaux drama is the belittling of France in the eyes of the whole world by the inability of the French nation to put simple faith in its [Pg 74] own administrators of the justice of the country. And most unhappily of all, this want of faith is justified. The story of the Rochette case, like the story of the Dreyfus case, is undoubtedly a blot on France’s fair name, and every man or woman who loves France sincerely must deplore it.

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 [Pg 75] 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, Ma?tre 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 [Pg 76] 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 Débats, which appear at about five o’clock, the Intransigeant and the Presse, which appear just about dinner [Pg 77] time. Of these six papers five are Opposition papers, and only one of these five, the Journal des Débats, 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 [Pg 78] 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 [Pg 79] 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 [Pg 81] 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 [Pg 82] 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 [Pg 83] 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 Ma?tre 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, Ma?tre Maurice Bernard. Ma?tre Maurice Bernard, I said to [Pg 84] 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 Ma?tre Bernard. In reply to that, I told him that Ma?tre 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. Ma?tre Bernard did come early in the afternoon. I told him what Monsieur Caillaux feared, and asked him to make a point of seeing him. Ma?tre 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, [Pg 85] and if need be Monsieur Calmette as well. I heard afterwards that Ma?tre 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 Ma?tre 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. [Pg 86]

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.