The Caillaux Drama

t 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 Fre

nceau. Monsieur Clemenceau had been a supporter of Monsieur Poincaré's rival, Monsieur Pams, and resented deeply the [Pg 103] election of the man whom he had not backed. Soo

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 matter

e first battle, overthrowing the Barthou Cabinet, and securing the return to power of Monsieur Caillaux, while Monsieur Briand, by hi

as Minister of Marine were the two twin rulers in the new Governmen

ing 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 [Pg 106] 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

ingly, 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 [Pg 109] 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

-hour later the same day when I submitted what I had written to Monsieur Caillaux before sending it to London, in order that the

llaux spoke that afternoon with ebullient freedom of expression about the British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Francis Bertie. He declared that Sir Fran

he British Ambassador. I quote them now merely for the [Pg 111] 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

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. A

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

e also accused Monsieur Caillaux of favouring Rochette's escape and interfering with the co

c man's life within the four walls of his home. Monsieur Caillaux's excited declaration to the President of the Republic, his excitement in the motor car, when, driving with Madame Caillaux he declared that he would go down to the Figaro and chastise Monsieur Calmette, show the man's state of mind, and show us very clearly how that state of mind is likely to have reacted on his wife. I repeat that this book is in no sense an apology for Madame Caillaux's act of