No such fateful issue as that involved in Caillaux’s arrest hung upon the result of the trial of Bolo Pasha. But Bolo’s whole career was a tragical farce, to which even Alphonse Daudet could scarcely have done full justice. Bolo was a Frenchman of the Midi: a Tartarin with the tendencies of a financial Vautrin: a fine specimen of the flamboyant and unscrupulous international adventurer. His first experience in the domain of extraction was as a dentist in the country of his birth. A handsome, blond young man of fine appearance and manners and methods of address attractive to women, he soon found that the drawing of teeth and other less skilled professions led to the receipt of no emoluments worthy of his talents. To take in a well-to-do partner and decamp with his wife and the firm’s cash-box was more in the way of business.
So satisfactory was this first adventure that he extended his field of operations, and several ladies had the advantage of paying for his attentions in the shape of all the money of which they chanced to be possessed. Somehow or other he found himself in the Champagne country during the wine-growers’ riots, and continued to have a good time in the district while they were going on. But in 1905 the claret region proved more lucrative. For in Bordeaux the charm of his disposition produced so great an effect upon the widow of a rich merchant of that city that she succumbed to his attractions and married him. This provided Bolo with the means for setting on foot all sorts of financial enterprises in Europe and America. He thus became a promoter of the open-hearted and sanguine type, found his way into “society” of the kind which opens its arms to such men, had sufficient influence to become a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and by 1914 had lost all his wife’s money and more into the bargain—was, in fact, in very serious financial straits from which he saw no way of extricating himself. Certain Egyptian friends he had made, who later obtained for him his title of Pasha from the Khedive, were not then in a position to help him.
But Bolo without money meant a German agent in search of a job. It proved easy to get it. He notified the Germans through the Egyptians that he could do good service in France if only he were provided with plenty of funds. He was so furnished with hundreds of thousands of pounds. L’Homme Libre said of him that he revelled in the prestige of having money, to such an extent that he believed that money was everything. Rather, perhaps, he had become so accustomed to indulge in pleasures and political and financial intrigues of every sort that he would run any risk rather than give up the game. So it was that he carried on the dangerous policy, if such it could be called, sketched above.
About his guilt there could be no doubt. That he had been closely connected with people in high places as well as in low, and possessed considerable personal magnetism, was clear. All this came out in court, where persons of every grade, from Ministers and Senators to Levantine rogues and Parisian courtesans, passed in and passed out like figures on a cinema film. Bolo, of course, denied every charge, and posed as a financier of high degree, but he was condemned to death, and his appeal against the sentence was fruitless, though he pretended he could make harrowing disclosures. He met his death bravely on April 10th. His fate was a heavy blow to other spies and conspirators.
There was an interpellation on the Bolo trial, a month before his execution that led to a powerful speech by Clemenceau, in which he declared that he was first for liberty, next for war, and finally for the sacrifice of everything to secure victory. He then made a vigorous appeal to the Socialists to join with the rest of the country in supporting his Government in a supreme effort to free France from the invader. “It is a great misfortune that my administration should be denounced by Renaudel”—then editor of L’Humanité—“as a danger to the workers. My hands are to the full as hardened by toil as those of Renaudel and Albert Thomas, good bourgeois citizens as they are, like myself. I have in my pocket a paper in which Renaudel is stigmatised as Clemenceau’s orderly; nay, adding insult to injury, he is held up to public obloquy as Monsieur Renaudel.” Then, addressing the Socialist group, he declared with vehemence: “We have done you no harm, but my methods are not yours. You will not defeat Prussian Junkerdom by baa-ing around about peace.” The appeal was quite bootless. On a division confidence in the Clemenceau Government was voted by 400 to 75. The Socialists were the 75. The vote was a direct outcome of the sordid and gruesome Bolo case.
Summary of Events Relating to Treachery in Paris,
July, 1917, to July, 1918.
July, 1917.—Clemenceau attacks M. Malvy, then Minister of the Interior, for ruinous weakness towards traitors.
Assails the Ribot Ministry as responsible for the propaganda of the pro-German journal Le Bonnet Rouge.
It was shown later that this newspaper had received State support to the extent of £4,000 a year.
August, 1917.—M. Almereyda (alias Vigo), connected with Bolo Pasha, M. Caillaux and the Bonnet Rouge, arrested and dies in prison.
M. Malvy “explains” the Almereyda affair.
September, 1917.—M. Malvy resigns.
October, 1917.—Debate in Chamber upon M. Léon Daudet’s charge of treason against Malvy.
Captain Bouchardon begins investigation.
Proprietors of Bonnet Rouge arrested.
November, 1917.—Revelations by Clemenceau in l’Homme Enchâiné, which had been going on for a twelvemonth, take effect on public.
Bonnet Rouge trial.
Revelations concerning M. Paix-Séailles’s document about French troops at Salonika to have been published in Bonnet Rouge. Paix-Séailles in M. Painlevé’s entourage.
Clemenceau exposes Caillaux’s intrigues with Almereyda, the Bonnet Rouge, the defeatists in Italy, and comments on the large subsidies to the Bonnet Rouge which enabled it to become a daily instead of a weekly sheet.
Clemenceau forms Ministry.
December, 1917.—Clemenceau examined before Committee of Senate on Caillaux affair.
Clemenceau declares if Parliament would not sanction prosecution of Caillaux his Ministry would resign.
Caillaux’s immunity as deputy suspended by vote.
January, 1918.—Captain Bouchardon’s report on Bolo Pasha published.
Traces Bolo’s career from 1914, his intrigues with Germany through ex-Khedive of Egypt and other Egyptians. Receipt by Bolo of £400,000 from Deutsche Bank.
Bolo buys shares in Journal, and tries to buy shares also in the Figaro and the Temps.
M. Caillaux arrested.
His private safe brought from Florence containing strange papers relating, among other things, to a suggested coup d’état.
United States agent at Buenos Aires reveals series of negotiations between M. Caillaux and the German representative, Count Luxburg, having for object the conclusion of a German peace.
M. Malvy arraigned before the High Court of the Senate.
February, 1918.—Trial of Bolo begun. Caillaux, Humbert and others incriminated.
U.S.A. secret service shows that large sums passed from Count Bernstorff, German Ambassador in Washington, to Bolo for the purposes of German propaganda.
Bolo found guilty and condemned to be shot on February 16th.
M. Malvy’s case before the High Court extended.
March, 1918.—Bolo appeals.
Bolo case discussed in Chamber. Socialists attack Clemenceau. Vote of confidence in Clemenceau’s Ministry 400 to 75.
Terrible military disasters at Cambrai and St. Quentin due to heavy German attack on positions weakened by withdrawal of British troops.
April, 1918.—Bolo shot.
Caillaux in gaol.
Malvy trial continued.
May, 1918.—Caillaux “explains” his connection with Le Bonnet Rouge.
June, 1918.—Committee report on M. Malvy’s case and fix date of trial.
July, 1918.—M. Malvy found guilty of undue laxity towards traitors and condemned to exile from France.
French Socialists infuriated at M. Malvy’s expulsion.