Annexe. [This was not read in the Chamber.]
Le jour même de la réunion, pendant la suspension d’audience, des conseillers qui siégeaient à côté de M. Bidault de L’Isle se sont élevés en termes véhéments contre la forfaiture qu’on venait de lui imposer.
Pourquoi ne les a-t-on pas entendus à la commission d’enquête?
On aurait pu, par exemple, interroger M. Francois-Poncet qui n’a dissimulé à personne, ni son indignation ni son dégoût pour les manœuvres inqualifiables imposées par le président du Conseil au Procureur Général.
Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris
M. VICTOR FABRE, THE PROCUREUR GÉNÉRAL
For English readers to realize the full importance of this document I must explain that the Public Prosecutor or Procureur Général ranks as a Government official, and holds almost the same position as a judge holds in England, with the difference that he does not judge but prosecutes. For influence to be brought to bear on such an official by members of the Government is much the same thing as though Cabinet Ministers in England had ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions and the judge who was to try Mr. Jabez Balfour to adjourn the trial for six or seven months for political reasons. Supposing such a thing to have been possible, and Jabez Balfour to have disappeared from England so that he never came up for trial at all, one can imagine the outcry which would have been raised. Here in plain English, as plain and as simple English as I can summon to my help, is the translation of Monsieur Fabre’s accusing document:
On Wednesday March 2, 1911, I was summoned by Monsieur Monis, the Prime Minister. He wished to talk to me about the Rochette affair. He told me that the Government did not wish the case to come before the courts on April 27, which date had been fixed a long time ago. He told me that it might create trouble for the Minister of Finance at a moment when he had already on hand the liquidation of the religious congregations, the Crédit Foncier case, and others of the same kind. The Prime Minister ordered me to induce the President of the Correctional Court (Judge Bidault de L’Isle) to adjourn this affair till the end of the legal vacation August-September. I protested with energy. I pointed out how painful it was for me to carry out such a mission. I begged (the Premier) to allow the Rochette case to follow its normal course. The Premier adhered to his order, and told me to see him again and give him news of my mission. I was deeply hurt and indignant. I had no doubt that Rochette’s friends had organized this incredible coup. On Friday March 24 Mr. M. B. ... (Rochette’s lawyer, Maître Maurice Bernard) came to my office. He stated that, yielding to the solicitations of his friend the Minister of Finance, (Monsieur Caillaux) he was going to plead illness and asked for the adjournment of his friend Rochette’s trial. I replied to that, that he looked perfectly well, but that it was no part of my duty to question a plea of personal ill-health made by a lawyer, and that I should simply refer the matter to the wisdom of the judge. He wrote to the judge. Judge Bidault de L’Isle, whom I had not seen and did not want to see, met his request with a refusal. Maître Maurice Bernard showed great irritation at this refusal. He called on me again, used recriminatory language, and made me understand by means of thinly veiled allusions that he was perfectly informed of everything. What could I do? After much self-communion, after a veritable crisis of mental agony of which the witness, in fact the only witness, was my friend and deputy, Bloch-Laroque, I decided that I must obey the moral pressure which had been brought to bear on me. I sent for Judge Bidault de L’Isle. I laid before him, with emotion, the situation in which I had been placed. Eventually Judge Bidault de L’Isle consented from affection for me to the adjournment which had been demanded. That same evening, that is to say, Thursday, March 30, I went to the Prime Minister and told him what I had done. He appeared very pleased. I was much less pleased. In the ante-chamber I had seen Monsieur Du Mesnil, the managing editor of the Rappel, a newspaper which was favourable to Rochette and was in the habit of attacking me frequently. He had come, no doubt, to ask the Prime Minister whether I had allowed myself to be coerced. I have never undergone such humiliation before.