I have been reading this week some of the comments
passed by the Paris newspapers upon the confusion which arose. "Lava!," writes Libiration, "has been condemned to death ; and France feels ashamed. It was not Laval alone who suffered from the sordid argument which took place ; it was Justice herself which was dis- honoured. A crime which was firmly established, a case in which there could have been no dubiety of judgement, was obscured and sullied by those who should have given an example of dignity. A judge who was incapable of controlling either the course of the trial or his own emotions, a public prosecutor who became frenzied with passion, a jury which lost all sense of 'dignity—allowed themselves to be out-manoeuvred by a crafty individual who sought to save his skin by bringing further shame upon his country." "A French court of justice," writes Combat, "failed during four days to get the better of a man against whom the whole of France has fought for four years. They only secured his condemnation after surrendering themselves to his will." Leon Blum in the Populaire goes so far as to advocate that the "cruel scandal" pf the Laval trial necessitates a revision of the whole constitutional position of the French judica- ture; and M. Emile Bore, that fine veteran, claims in POrdre that if the 1875 constitution had been observed the scandal of the Laval trial would have been avoided, and it would have been the Senate who, sitting as a Supreme Court, would themselves have tried the former Prime Minister on the charge of High Treason. These criti- cisms preclude us from making any comment ourselves. Yet it must remain a mystery to foreign observers that the French autho- rities, who had good cause to know the nature of Laval's protean genius, should not have foreseen that he would twist and turn, changing himself into fire and then into water and finally dissolving into air. They must have foreseen that his amazing opportunism would, if given the slightest chance, compel admiration by its very virtuosity.
Previous page
