Whenever an official in the French Colonial Office had to refuse the application of a subordinate for leave, he would tone down his refusal with the metaphor, “We’ll try and give you leave at all events before the affaire Prieu is decided finally.” For many years l’affaire Prieu had been the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case of the French Colonial Office, and it was almost forgotten when Monsieur Caillaux and the Figaro brought it back at a bound into the domain of actuality. The case was forgotten so thoroughly that when the Figaro mentioned it under the title of “Monsieur Caillaux’s Secret Combinations” in an article signed by Monsieur Gaston Calmette on January 8, 1914, the name Prieu was misspelled “Priou”. The case in itself was one of concessions in Brazil. In the early years of the Third Republic a French merchant named Prieu died in France At that time the heirs of Monsieur Prieu, after getting a refusal to their offer to abandon their entire claim against the French Government in return for a cash payment of £20,000, were inclined to drop the whole case, the legal expenses of which were becoming embarrassing. They had put matters in the hands of a man of affairs, but he and they had little hope of any result, when, according to the Figaro, Monsieur Caillaux, on January 5, 1914, sent for their representative. The Figaro was most assertive. Monsieur Calmette declared that Monsieur Caillaux had said: “If you get this money we must get some of it. The Government has its duties, and its needs.” Monsieur Calmette went on to declare that a second interview had taken place at the The disclosure of these curious proceedings created a storm in the political world of Paris, and although Monsieur Caillaux published a denial, in general terms his contradictions were not considered very satisfactory. The article in the Figaro had of course one result. Any settlement of the Prieu case on the lines above mentioned became quite impossible. One is inclined to wonder, now, whether the claimants will proceed against the French Government, prosecute their claim again, and call Monsieur Caillaux as a witness to declare in court that he considers the claim justifiable. It was rumoured at the time that Monsieur Calmette had offered to compensate the Prieu claimants for the loss which the publication in the Figaro of their dealings or attempt at dealing with Monsieur Caillaux would entail. Whether this offer was actually made or not will probably be shown at the trial of Madame Caillaux, for the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard, has questioned the parties concerned. As I have said, the Prieu case is an old one. It has been discussed in the Chamber of Deputies at intervals during the last thirty years, and the first interpellation on it goes back thirty-three years to July 8, 1881. Pierre Marcel Prieu was a candidate for Parliament in 1876 and in 1877. He died in 1899, in France, in poverty. To his last day he had protested against what he called “the theft” of his concessions by the French Government, and he had protested with such violence that he had been imprisoned for some months because of his protests. His claim was that the Brazilian Government had on August 30, and on September 6, 1879, paid the French Minister for Foreign Affairs in two cheques, one for £200,000 and one for £400,000, as a settlement of his concessions. These cheques were, he declared, made payable to the firm of Baring Brothers in London, and on January 4, 1880, the money—£600,000—was According to Monsieur Calmette, Monsieur Caillaux bound himself to see that the full amount of the claim should be paid, and Monsieur Schneider was to sign an agreement on Saturday, January 10, by which he handed a large proportion of the money over to the party funds. Whether such an agreement was ever come to or not is the affair of the law courts. It must resolve itself into a case of hard swearing, for the contradictory assertions of both parties will be, in all probability, somewhat difficult of proof. The disclosures of these matters in the Figaro naturally enough put an end to all negotiations if such negotiations really took place. On January 10 Monsieur Antoine de Fonvielle wrote a letter to Monsieur Calmette which I subjoin in full. It was printed in the Figaro on January 12. It is dated from Paris, where Monsieur de Fonvielle has a flat at 77 Rue du Rocher. “Monsieur le Directeur,” he writes, “I was informed at about twelve o’clock on Friday last, January 8, of the campaign in the Figaro on the Prieu affair, of which I knew all the details. There are certain mistakes in the Figaro article, and it “Monsieur Schneider, who was very surprised at my visit, introduced me to a journalist, Monsieur Vidal, who was with him. I asked Monsieur Schneider to go with me and see Monsieur Calmette at the Figaro office. Monsieur Schneider replied, ‘There is no reason why I should put myself out for Monsieur Calmette. He has interfered quite enough already (Il m’a assez mis des bÂtons dans les roues). If it had not been for his interference, the affair would have been settled by now.’ I then told Monsieur Schneider that Monsieur Calmette had not sent me Immediately under Monsieur de Fonvielle’s letter, Monsieur Calmette published in the Figaro of January 12 letters from two members of the Prieu syndicate, Monsieur Boileau and Monsieur Prosper Sauvage. Monsieur Boileau made the following declaration: “As the papers had spoken of the Prieu affair, a meeting was called to hear what Monsieur Schneider had to say. Monsieur Schneider declared: ‘I was very much surprised at the fuss made in the papers. The affair was going to be settled, and I had an appointment to-morrow, Saturday, January 10 (the meeting was at half-past eleven on the evening of the Friday), to receive a definite proposal.’ I left the meeting with Monsieur Schneider, and as we went away together he made this remark to me: ‘If the affair succeeds we shall have to leave a good many feathers behind us.’” The third letter published by the Figaro was from another member of the Prieu syndicate, Monsieur Prosper Sauvage: “I was present at the meeting which was called to discuss the situation created by the articles in the Figaro,” he wrote. “I was one of the first to arrive, and met Messieurs Monniot, Mazars, and Boileau. Naturally the These letters appeared in the Figaro on January 12. The same day Monsieur Calmette accused Monsieur Caillaux of having extorted £16,000 from the Comptoir d’Escompte for the party funds. Monsieur Calmette wrote that Monsieur Ulmann, of the Comptoir d’Escompte, had been received at five o’clock one afternoon by Monsieur Caillaux, and that some days afterwards the £16,000 had been placed at the disposition of the Minister of Finance. Everybody concerned contradicted these statements very flatly, and as they have no bearing on the Caillaux drama other than to show the bitterness and personal nature of the attacks in the Figaro against Monsieur Caillaux we may leave them on one side. Three days later, on January 15, Monsieur Francois Lebon published in L’Œuvre, a little weekly paper which has been in bitter opposition to the present Government, an article on the scandals of the week, in which he referred to the Prieu affair, and to the affair of the Comptoir d’Escompte. In this article, which is the more worth quoting because it attacks not only Monsieur Caillaux but the present parliamentary rÉgime in France as well, Monsieur Lebon exclaims against the outcry which many people raise against such revelations as those made by the Figaro, that “they tarnish the good name of the Republic.” “The republican rÉgime,” writes Monsieur Lebon, “is settling down in the mud. We may consider it permissible to think that a few more stains will not be much more visible. When a man is drowning it is perhaps an excess of precaution to refrain from throwing him a rope for fear of splashing him with a few drops of water. One of these days it will become perceptible that if the Third Republic fell so low, it was because the Third Republic was ‘la RÉpublique des camarades. This is severe language from a Frenchman about France, but unfortunately there is much in the political history of recent years to support this charge of graft and of corruption. Charges of corruption in the N’Goko Tanga affair, charges which were not altogether denied satisfactorily, were brought by Monsieur Ceccaldi when the colonial Budget came up for discussion, and the fact that Monsieur Ceccaldi has since become a close friend and supporter of the Caillaux Government makes these charges all the more significant now. Each Government in France has a secret fund of £44,000; £24,000 of this fund are used comparatively openly. The little balance of £20,000 is not nearly enough for the funds needed by the Government at the general elections, and it is a well-known fact that a great deal more is spent. The question as to where this money comes from is hardly a mystery. The Mascuraud committee, an association of parliamentarians and commercial men, has been generous with money in the past. This year it is said to Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris. MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S FRIEND, M. CECCALDI. On January 15 another long article over Monsieur Calmette’s signature in the Figaro dealt severely with Monsieur Caillaux’s relations with financial men in Paris. The suggestion made was that Monsieur Caillaux, who was a member of the board of the Argentine CrÉdit Foncier, the Egyptian CrÉdit Foncier and other enterprises of international finance, was for personal and pecuniary reasons unable to resist the pressure brought to bear on him by his colleagues among the directors of these financial boards, and was obliged to do what they told him to do, irrespective of his own political convictions or of the higher interests of the country, which interests he as a Minister of the State should have considered first. According to the Figaro, a Monsieur Arthur Spitzer, an Austrian by birth, a Frenchman by naturalization, and one of the most influential directors of the big French bank, the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale, had gained his position there owing to the influence and recommendation of Sir Ernest Cassel. “Since 1911,” said the Figaro, “the French Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers had successively expressed their opinions that Monsieur Spitzer took too large a share in every sense of the word of the big loans which were launched on the Paris market. In consequence Monsieur Spitzer’s re-election to the board of the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale in 1913 was indirectly opposed by the Government. Monsieur Spitzer, in deference to the expression of this opinion which was conveyed to the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale by a permanent official of the Ministry of Finance, resigned his position on the board of the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale, but he remained on the board of the CrÉdit Foncier Argentin and on the board of the CrÉdit Foncier Egyptien, of which two boards of directors Monsieur Caillaux was a member. The intermediary between the Government and the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale in the secret and delicate negotiations which resulted in the resignation of Monsieur Spitzer had been Monsieur There is no need to go into the details of the quarrel between the South Atlantic Company and the Compagnie Transatlantique. Suffice it to On January 26, Monsieur Gaston Calmette called Monsieur Caillaux to account in the Figaro on the question of a heavy fine of £325,000 which had been inflicted on a Paris bank (the Banque Perrier) for the non-observance of certain formalities in connexion with an emission of two million pounds sterling of Ottoman bonds. Monsieur Gaston Calmette returned the next day to the question, twitting Monsieur Caillaux somewhat cruelly with his inability to give a satisfactory reply. On Wednesday, January 28, he returned to the charge again and at some In this article Monsieur Calmette deliberately accused Monsieur Caillaux of allowing quantities of South American bonds and shares an official quotation on the Paris Bourse because Monsieur Spitzer, Monsieur Ullmann and others of his financial friends were interested in placing these bonds in France. Monsieur Calmette declared that during the six months of Monsieur Caillaux’s tenure of office as Finance Minister in 1911, that is to say from February to June of that year, South American bonds and shares to the amount of forty million pounds sterling received an official quotation on the Paris Bourse, and he drew up and published a Table showing the prices at which the quotations had been given, and the depreciation of these stocks and shares during the three years which followed. The depreciation is about twenty-five per cent. In other words, according to the Figaro, Naturally enough Monsieur Caillaux replied through the official Havas agency, and in reply to his communiquÉ Monsieur Calmette on January 30 returned to the charge, emphasising his original accusations. 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 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, 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 “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 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 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. |