Does not this letter breathe with surprising clarity humbug of the broadest? Whatever one may think of Monsieur Caillaux, no one has yet accused him of poverty, and his opponent in the Sarthe was quixotic enough to refrain from much mention of the Caillaux drama at election time, so that the campaign of calumny was purely imaginary. And, to top everything, when he did mention it and the Rochette case in a final poster, Monsieur Caillaux challenged him to a duel, for “maligning the electors of Mamers!” The duel was “fought” before journalists, photographers and the cinematograph. The snapshots show that Monsieur Caillaux fired in the air, and his opponent fired into the ground. So everybody laughed, and “honour was satisfied.” But Monsieur Joseph Caillaux is looked upon as a victim in the Sarthe! The peasants there understand nothing and care less about foreign politics. They approve Monsieur Caillaux’s opposition to three years’ military service, because Germany is far away and is only a name to them, and they prefer their sons to be called away from the land for two years instead of three. They approve Monsieur Caillaux’s suggestion of taxing the rich, because they have never troubled to understand it, and it sounds good to them, and most of all, and above all, they approve of Monsieur Caillaux because he is rich, powerful, and generous in his constituency.
It must be understood that I am using Monsieur Caillaux and the Sarthe as an example of the conditions which prevail in many parts of France. The French elector in many of the country districts is decidedly more ignorant than one could believe possible, and in almost all parts of the country he is selfish. Here, again, I may be allowed to quote some of the electioneering literature of the Sarthe to show the kind of benefits which appeal to French electors. Political considerations, benefits to the nation, national defence, big projects—“Tout ça c’est des balivernes”—is the French peasant’s verdict. A candidate who is wise will, if he wants to gain favour in a constituency, tell his constituents as little as possible about political measures and as much as possible of the things concerning them directly which he has done in the past, and which he hopes to do in the future. The drainage of a village will gain more votes than the most important law imaginable for the benefit of France. Monsieur Caillaux, or rather his friends, reminded the people of the Sarthe that Monsieur Caillaux had obtained for them heavy subventions from the Pari-Mutuel for the support of a hospital, that in the last few years he had secured over £4000 for them from the Government for local interests, that all kinds of institutions had been helped, that the nuns had been well treated (oh! Monsieur Caillaux!), that this village had a new pump, and that one a new road, in a word, that owing to the power of Monsieur Caillaux, and the cleverness of Monsieur Caillaux, and the influence of Monsieur Caillaux, the peasants of La Sarthe had obtained, and were likely to obtain, greater advantages than the peasantry of any other part of France as long as he remained their member.
These were the reasons which caused Monsieur Caillaux’s re-election, and these are the reasons which militate above all others in France at election times. The natural result of elections conducted on the narrow-minded basis of selfish advantage is that the deputies, when they are elected, are as selfish as their constituents’ reasons for electing them have been. I suppose every country has the government which it deserves. The French are very certainly governed by a body of men who do not neglect their own interests. I do not mean to imply that they do neglect those of their country, but I do say that the conservation of power and their own welfare take the first place in their minds, and that is so certain that “L’Assiette au Beurre,” which expression we may translate “The Cream Jug” is dipped into very freely by members of all parties who have access to it, in every French Parliament. The principal vice of the government of France, to my mind, is the payment of deputies. The class of man is growing in France who serves his country because his country pays him six hundred pounds a year to do so, and because there are plenty of pickings over and above the annual stipend of £600. A French deputy makes very free use of his right of free travel on all the railways, supplies his family and friends with free stationery, economizes, through his influence, in countless little ways, money which the ordinary citizen has to spend from the fruits of his labours. The French politician is essentially a professional of politics, places party considerations above all others, because these keep him in power and allow him access to the “cream jug,” and is not in the least ashamed of using his influence for personal benefit either directly or indirectly.
I do not think it unfair criticism to point out that it is this mentality which makes for such corruption in French politics as we had to deplore at the time of the Panama scandal, for such corruption as was seriously suspected during the progress of the Rochette case, and for the undue use of influence which is considered quite natural on the part of individual members of the governing bodies of France, by which I mean not the Government alone, but also the Chamber and the Senate, which undue use of influence culminated in the shameful apotheosis of the scene in the room of the Prime Minister which resulted in the postponement, with its consequences, of the trial of the financier Rochette. The inner history of the Caillaux drama differs in details from the inner history of other French scandals, but it differs very little from them in essentials. In every case when one of these unsavoury ulcers on France’s fair name festers and bursts we find the same pus in it. The root of all the evil is the inherent selfishness of the French character, and I am not disinclined to believe that there is a great deal of inherent dishonesty too at the root of the evil. A Frenchman will often refuse to keep a promise in commercial matters because the man to whom he made it can produce no written proof that the promise was given. Business men will refuse business interviews without the presence of a witness. There are severe laws in France compelling, under severe penalties, the restoration to the unknown owner through the police authorities of anything of value found lying about. But ask anybody who has picked up money in the street what he would do with it if nobody saw him pick it up. The Frenchman is frank. He will laugh and will maintain his right to pocket this find, because if he loses anything he knows that the person who finds it will pocket it if he dare. I have seen respectable Frenchmen swindle other respectable Frenchmen out of a halfpenny in a Paris omnibus. It is not the halfpenny that is important, it is the mentality which underlies the theft. It may seem a far cry from the theft of a halfpenny to the Rochette scandal, but you can trace the connexion very easily if you care to think the matter out. And if you think it out with care, you cannot fail to see that this basis of selfishness, permeating upwards through every vein of French private, public, and political life, has been directly responsible for the Caillaux drama and for the results which that drama has had and will have on the life of France in the future.
XII
BEFORE THE LAST ACT OF THE DRAMA
A French criminal trial is in every respect as unlike a criminal trial in England as can well be imagined. To begin with, if the Caillaux drama had been English, if the wife of an English Cabinet Minister were at the present moment in Brixton gaol awaiting her trial because she had walked into Printing House Square and shot the editor of the Times, this book, by the mere fact of its appearance, would send me and the publisher to prison for contempt of court. In France, not only is there no contempt of court in comment on a case sub judice, but the preliminaries of a great criminal trial are conducted in the open. Ever since the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette the Paris papers have contained long daily digests of the evidence collected on the details of the murder, and this evidence has been commented on every day, and with the utmost freedom, by the Paris newspapers. There is a special magistrate known as the juge d’instruction, whose duty it is, if I may put it so, to try the case before it comes into court, and to hand to the judge who presides over the trial his opinion on the prisoner’s innocence or guilt, his full reasons for that opinion, and the evidence in résumé which he has collected to enable him to form it. In other words, directly a crime has been committed, whether the supposed criminal be arrested or not, a juge d’instruction or examining magistrate is appointed, and from the moment of his appointment he takes entire charge of the case. The prisoner is entirely in his hands. That is to say, he disposes of her while she is awaiting trial, under certain rules and regulations of course, as he thinks fit. He may question her as often or as seldom as he wishes, either in his room at the Palace of Justice or in her cell, the only proviso being that he is not allowed to question her without the presence of her lawyer, and that at each interrogatory his sworn clerk, known as the greffier, must be present to take down his questions, and the prisoner’s answers, and at the end of each interrogatory to obtain the prisoner’s signature at their foot. The examining magistrate’s work is of course by no means confined to his examination of the prisoner. As soon as he has digested the first details and circumstances of the crime he has full power to summon and to examine anybody and everybody whom he considers likely to have any evidence to give which may help him in his judgment on the case.
So wide are the powers of an examining magistrate, that he may if he wishes arrest not only presumable accomplices but any unwilling witness. It has happened before now that a witness has preferred to remain away from the room of a French examining magistrate and has been sent for by him and brought under arrest to him to give evidence, and a witness who has signed an untrue statement in the examining magistrate’s office is not unfrequently, when convicted of perjury at the trial, where he has repeated this evidence on oath, arrested in court. It sometimes happens, too, that witnesses contradict in court the evidence which they have given to the examining magistrate. If they do so they enjoy impunity, unless, they are proved to commit perjury in their contradiction, for evidence to a juge d’instruction is not given on oath. It happens very frequently too, in fact it almost always happens, that numbers of people for whom the examining magistrate has never thought of sending write to him that they have evidence to give, and desire to be heard. The prisoner and the prisoner’s lawyer, even the prisoner’s friends, are encouraged also to give the names of any people from whom they wish the examining magistrate to collect evidence. Practically therefore in a French criminal case the criminal is tried twice over, once by the examining magistrate, and a second time in the court of assizes before a jury. And the first trial is the more important of the two, because of the influence of the examining magistrate’s report on the minds of the judge and of the jury, at the assize court trial. The examining magistrate has the right to acquit a prisoner without sending him or her for trial at all if he finds that there is no case.
It happens, however, comparatively rarely in practice, that a non-lieu, as it is called, is pronounced by the examining magistrate, as it is a very bad mark against the name of any juge d’instruction to allow a prisoner to be set at liberty without very conclusive proof of innocence. If there be the slightest doubt the prisoner is always sent for trial. The benefit of the doubt is practically non-existent in the conduct of a French criminal case in its preliminary stages, and it may be taken as a fact that whereas a prisoner in England is considered to be innocent until guilt has been proved, the reverse is the French method, and a prisoner in France is considered to be guilty until conclusive proof of innocence has been given and accepted.