But enough was done to show the great danger which would have resulted to the community, had a newspaper trust been successfully created on the scale contemplated, but fortunately never carried out, by the infamous Bolo Pasha and his associates. Their own journal, Le Bonnet Rouge, even when increased during the war from a weekly to a daily issue, was not by any means sufficient for their needs, although that traitorous sheet alone was able to do a great deal of mischief. But their control was extended to the Journal, a paper, prior to the war, of considerable circulation and influence. Their attempts to expand further were in full swing when, thanks to the work of MM. Léon Daudet and Barrès in the Action Française, and still more to that of their bitter opponent Clemenceau in l’Homme Enchaîné and in the Senate, the French Government was forced to arrest the proprietors of the Bonnet Rouge and put them on their trial as traitors. It was known that M. Caillaux and M. Paix-Séailles—the latter connected with M. Painlevé’s Cabinet and the repository of anti-French confidences—had contributed considerable sums to the support of the incriminated paper.
When M. Almereyda, one of the most important persons connected with the Bonnet Rouge (to whose columns a leading Socialist was a contributor) died suddenly in prison, the editor of that journal telegraphed to M. Caillaux concerning the lamentable departure of “our friend.” As these facts were accompanied by other revelations still more compromising, public opinion became greatly excited. There could be no doubt that the conspiracy was more than a mere anti-patriotic newspaper intrigue of financial origin, or an attempt of discredited politicians to float themselves back into office on the wave of discouragement and defeatism: it was an endeavour, supported throughout by German funds, to destroy French confidence in order to ensure French destruction. A complete exposure of the whole plot, in which M. Caillaux and Bolo Pasha were alleged to be the leading figures, was threatened in the course of the Bonnet Rouge trial. Eleven members of the Army Committee of the Senate were appointed to consider M. Caillaux’s connection with M. Almereyda and the Bonnet Rouge.
M. Caillaux has been by far the most formidable advocate of a German peace from the first. That an ex-Premier of France should take up such a position would seem almost incredible, but that Signor Giolitti in Italy and Lord Lansdowne in England have pursued the same course in a less objectionable way. The political relations between Clemenceau and M. Caillaux in the years prior to the war had not been unfriendly. M. Caillaux had been Finance Minister in Clemenceau’s Cabinet in 1907, and they had both worked together for M. Pams against M. Poincaré in the contest for the Presidency. But two more different personalities it would be difficult to find.
M. Caillaux is a financier of financiers. His whole career has been associated with the dexterous manipulation and acquisition of money in all its forms. Clemenceau never had anything to do with finance in his fife, and wealth is the last thing anybody could accuse him of possessing. Clemenceau, though no sentimentalist, makes an exception in his view of life where Frenchmen, France and Paris are concerned. With Caillaux audacious cynicism in everything is the key-note of his character all through. Moreover, the one is very simple in his habits, and the other is devoted to ostentation and display. Caillaux’s cynicism is as remarkable as that of Henry Labouchere, though more malignant. When he carried the Income Tax through the Assembly and was upbraided for having made himself the champion of such a measure, he claimed that, though he had obtained for his measure a majority in the Assembly, he had used such arguments as would destroy it in the country.
Whatever may be the truth of that story, it is certain that the result has been as predicted. So in the course of the Agadir affair. M. Caillaux, as Prime Minister during the whole of the proceedings, was reluctant, and perhaps rightly so, to assert the claims of France with vigour. He was, in fact, quite lukewarm on behalf of his country, the representatives of other nations doing more for France, it is said, than she, or her Premier, did for herself. No sooner, however, was the business settled than M. Caillaux, the judicious but unavowed anti-expansionist, claimed that he had secured Morocco for France! However this may be, M. Caillaux has always favoured a close political and financial understanding with Germany, as by far the more advantageous policy for France, in opposition to a similar entente with England: a view which, of course, he was quite entitled to take and act upon, though its success in practice must have reduced France to the position of a mere satellite of the Fatherland. Before the war it was possibly a justifiable, though scarcely a far-seeing, policy.
The war itself rather strengthened than weakened his tendency in this direction. Having comfortably recovered from the unpleasing effect of the murder of M. Calmette of the Figaro, for which crime his wife was acquitted, he used all his influence, in and out of France, to bring about a peace with Germany, which could with difficulty be distinguished from complete surrender, as soon as possible. This while the German armies were in actual occupation of more than a fifth of his devastated country, that fifth being the richest part of France. His interviews with Signer Giolitti, a vehement partisan of Germany, and certain strange intrigues in Rome and elsewhere, could only be regarded as the more suspicious from the fact that he travelled with a passport made out in a fictitious name. Altogether M. Caillaux’s proceedings at home and abroad, in Europe and in South America, gave the impression that he was pursuing a policy of his own which was diametrically opposed to the welfare of his countrymen.
Some who have watched closely M. Caillaux’s career from his youth up are of opinion that the man is mad. But there is certainly method in his madness. Whatever the defects to which the high priests of international financial brotherhood may plead guilty, they never admit lunatics into their Teutono-Hebraic Holy of Holies. Access to the interior of that sanctuary is reserved for the very elect of the artists in pecuniary conveyance. But it is precisely within this innermost circle of glorified Mammon that M. Joseph Caillaux is most at home and most influential. And these people, so ensconced in their golden temple, were the ones most anxious to bring the war to an end no matter what became of France. This, as has been well said, was a civil war for Jews; but for the Jews of the great international of Mammon it was civil war and hari-kari at one and the same time. So there was weeping and wail in Frankfurt-am-Main, there was wringing of hands in Berlin on the Spree, and the Parisian devotees of the golden calf were not less profuse in their lamentations.
As a matter of fact, international finance was, and is, the most pacifist of all the Internationals, and M. Joseph Caillaux as director of the Société Générale, a portion of the great Banque de Paris et Pays Bas, represented its view perfectly. But that he is not devoid of political as well as financial astuteness is apparent from the extraordinary success he has achieved in securing close intimacy and friendship with the French Socialists. This has assured him the support not only of Jean Longuet and his friends, with whom he was specially bound up, but also of L’Humanité, with Renaudel, Sembat, Thomas and others connected with that useful journal. It has, indeed, been very difficult to understand the bitter hatred which the Socialists of France have manifested towards the thoroughgoing patriot Clemenceau, and their persistent championship of pro-Germans such as Caillaux and Malvy. But the dry-rot of pro-Germanic pacifism has infected a large proportion of the younger school of international Socialists in every country. With Socialism, as with commerce and finance, the German policy of unscrupulous penetration has been pursued with great success. Honest fanatics as well as self-seeking intriguers have fallen victims to their wiles. Caillaux was equally fortunate in capturing both sections. Even the rougher type of German agents, such as Bolo and Duval, were not without their friends in the Socialist camp.
The investigation of his conduct before the Army Committee of the Senate was, in effect, an informal trial of M. Caillaux, M. Malvy’s case having already been remitted by the same body for definite adjudication by the High Court. Naturally, M. Caillaux and his friends strained every nerve, first to prevent Clemenceau from being forced into office by public opinion; and then, when his assumption of the Premiership became inevitable, to upset his Ministry while its members were scarcely warm in their seats. The French Socialist Party, unfortunately, aided M. Caillaux and his friends in their attacks, after having declined the Premier’s offer of seats in his Cabinet. Shortly afterwards Clemenceau himself was summoned to appear as a witness before the Committee of the Senate on this serious indictment. It is difficult for us to imagine the sensation which this produced. Here was M. Caillaux, who had been Prime Minister of France only a few short years before, who had previously been Clemenceau’s intimate colleague, openly charged with the despicable crime of trading France away to the enemy.
No wonder a great many thoroughly patriotic Frenchmen could not believe, even in the face of the evidence, that a statesman of M. Caillaux’s ability, with a great future before him after the war, could be guilty of such actions as those which were imputed to him. But his old colleague who had just taken office was in possession of documents which threw an ugly shadow upon all M. Caillaux’s recent proceedings. As usual Clemenceau went straight to the point. The Government had not furnished the members of the Committee with mere surmises or doubts cast upon the general conduct of the incriminated person. There were printed statements already at their disposal of the gravest character. With three notorious persons M. Caillaux had intimate connections. One of them, when arrested, had died suspiciously in prison: the two others were still under arrest upon most serious charges. If this were the case of a common citizen he would have been brought at once before a magistrate. The whole country was crying out for the truth in this Caillaux case as well as in the Malvy affair.