The Caillaux Drama

by John N. Raphael

In almost every newspaper article which I have read on the Caillaux drama one sentence has invariably amused me. “The question of Agadir,” we read, in French and English papers both, “is too fresh in the reader’s mind for any exhaustive reference to it here to be necessary.” But memories are short in these fast-living days, and though the history of Agadir is recent history, no story of the Caillaux drama can be complete without recalling it at length. For one of the accusations against Monsieur Caillaux as a politician which the Figaro made constantly is that Monsieur Caillaux made mistake on mistake, and was misled by his hatred of the Ministers who had been instrumental in the original and comparative settlement of the Moroccan difficulties, to do grave wrong to France over the Agadir matter.

His hatred of his parliamentary opponents, it was said at the time, was very nearly instrumental in creating serious international complications. Further imprudence was shown by his endeavour to palliate the effect of his first ill-considered act, and he was finally forced to consent to concessions on behalf of France which France need not have made at all if Monsieur Caillaux had been more prudent from the beginning.

This, stripped of all vituperation, is the accusation which Monsieur Caillaux has to answer before the tribunal of history. Let us look into it. In order to do so we must go back to the Act of Algeciras. It will be remembered that the Act of Algeciras gave France the right of policing Morocco because of its neighbourhood to Algiers. Three years after the Act of Algeciras French troops were in occupation of certain portions of Moroccan territory, and the jingo party, the Pan-Germanists, in Germany were protesting with heat against this military occupation.

The peace party in Germany, however, had other views. There was a feeling that an understanding on the basis of the act of Algeciras between France and Germany might lead to a weakening of the Entente between France and Great Britain, and be useful economically to German enterprise.

On February 8, 1909, when Monsieur Clemenceau was at the head of the French Government with Monsieur Stephen Pichon as his Foreign Minister, Germany recognized, more freely than it had recognized before, the interests of France in Morocco for the maintenance of order, and promised collaboration economically. A secret letter changed hands, confirming this agreement, and admitting that Germany should remain disinterested in the politics of Morocco. In this same letter it was admitted also that the economic interests of France in Morocco were more important than the economic interests of Germany. The importance of this letter rested of course on the fact that it practically entailed the suppression of immediate friction between the two countries.

The Clemenceau Cabinet worked hard to carry the good work further still, so that the spirit of this Franco-German understanding should be extended to the Congo. The French representative of the bondholders of the Moroccan debt, Monsieur Guiot, who had been in the French Foreign Office, paid a visit to Berlin, and the result of his negotiations with the German Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse was a memorandum dated June 2, 1909, by which it was decided to create a Franco-German Company for the purpose of exploiting certain concessions. On June 5 the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Pichon, took counsel with the French Colonial Minister, Monsieur Milliés-Lacroix, on the advantages and disadvantages of this Franco-German collaboration.

At the end of July 1909, the Clemenceau Cabinet fell. Monsieur Briand became Prime Minister and retained Monsieur Pichon at the Quai d’Orsay, but Monsieur Clemenceau dropped out of the Cabinet and Monsieur Caillaux was no longer Minister of Finance.

It is not too much to say that the Clemenceau-Caillaux alliance dates from this little upheaval in French internal politics, and it was at this point that Monsieur Caillaux’s enmity to Monsieur Briand and Monsieur Pichon first led him astray.

On August 2, 1909, the N’Goko Sanga Company, in reply to a letter from the Minister for Foreign Affairs offered to give up, against a substantial indemnity, a portion of the territory for which it held concessions. A commission was formed to discuss terms, but it was not till April 29, 1910, that the amount of the indemnity was definitely stated. The indemnity was to be F2,393,000 or £95,720.

On February 17, 1910, after the French and German Governments had signified in October of the year before their approval of the provisional agreement between Monsieur Guiot and the Wilhelmstrasse, the Moroccan Company of Public Works was formed. It had a capital of F2,000,000, fifty per cent. of which was in French hands, twenty-six per cent. in German hands, and the remaining twenty-four per cent. in the hands of the other Powers who had signed the Act of Algeciras. Then parliamentary politics in France had their say in the matter, and the Radicals, Socialists and Radical-Socialists in France, with Monsieur Caillaux in the foreground of debate, made use of the question of the N’Goko Sanga indemnity as a weapon in Parliament against Monsieur Briand.