VII
THE “TON JO” LETTER
SENAT.
With the best will in the world it was impossible for me to write to you yesterday. I had to take my part in two terribly tiring sessions of the Chamber, one in the morning; at nine o’clock, which finished at midday, the other at two o’clock, from which I only got away at eight o’clock in the evening, dead beat. However, I secured a magnificent success. I crushed[2] the income-tax while appearing to defend it, I received an ovation from the Centre and from the Right, and I managed not to make the Left too discontented. I succeeded in giving the wheel a turn towards the Right which was quite indispensable. To-day I had another morning session at the Chamber which only finished at a quarter to one. I am now at the Senate where I am going to have the law on the contributions directes voted, and this evening, no doubt, the session will be over. I shall be dead tired, stupid, ill almost, but I shall have done a real service to my country.
Ton Jo.
That is the “Ton Jo” letter. That is the document which, printed in big black type in the centre of the front page of the Figaro on Friday, March 13, 1914, and re-printed in facsimile lower down on the same page, was followed on the 16th by the revolver shots which killed Monsieur Gaston Calmette. The letter was written by Monsieur Caillaux on July 5, 1901—thirteen years before it was published in the Figaro. When he wrote it Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, and apart from the tragic event which followed close on its publication, the letter is a curious and upsetting confession of political duplicity. The income-tax has been Monsieur Joseph Caillaux’s hobby horse for many years. It is an uncomfortable sensation to read, over his own signature, this confession, in his own handwriting, that while appearing to fight for the tax he was really doing his best to crush it out of sight. The natural deduction was of course that Monsieur Caillaux was now, in 1914, pursuing the same tactics which he pursued thirteen years ago.
La véritable déclaration de M. Caillaux relative à l’impôt sur le revenu
THE “TON JO” LETTER FROM THE FIGARO