March 31, 1911.
V. Fabre.
Annexe.
On the day of the meeting during a suspension the councillors (that is to say the two judges) who sat on the bench with Judge Bidault de L’Isle expressed themselves very vehemently against the pressure which had been brought to bear on them. Why were they not heard by the Commission of Inquiry? For instance it would have been easy to question Monsieur François-Poncet, who had taken no pains to conceal either his indignation or his disgust at the unqualifiable manœuvres which the Prime Minister had forced on the Public Prosecutor.
Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris
THE FUNERAL OF M. CALMETTE
The reading of this statement from the rostrum of the Chamber was followed within forty-eight hours by the resignation of Monsieur Monis from the Cabinet, and its immediate result was the resumption of the work of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry which had sat on the Rochette case. This commission (over which of course Monsieur Jaurès presided, as he had presided over the others) conducted the inquiry, as all such inquiries invariably are conducted in France, on political lines. The sessions of the commission did not pass off without the resignation of some of its members, the public was inclined to shrug its shoulders at the leniency of its examination of past Ministers of the State, and the wording of its verdict when delivered was a farce, not altogether unworthy of the date on which the Paris morning papers published it, the first of April. The Parliamentary Commission could find no stronger words to stigmatize the situation described in Monsieur Fabre’s statement, which description the inquiry proved to be true, than “a deplorable abuse of influence.” The phrase has become a joke in Paris now, and is in popular use on the boulevards. The Chamber of Deputies, however, before the close of the Parliamentary session, found other words to express the nation’s displeasure, and after a session which lasted from two o’clock in the afternoon of April 3 till two o’clock in the morning of April 4, the Chamber of Deputies adjourned for the Easter holidays, having voted the following order of the day:
The Chamber,