THE MURDER OF M. CALMETTE. N O one who knows French
history will need to be told that political crises frequently arise in France out of incidents that seem to have no direct connexion with politics. A duel caused by a personal quarrel, a murder, a swindle in commercial life, a case of alleged treachery in the Army, is found suddenly to have involved the Govern- ment of the moinent, and what appears to be purely a case for a Criminal Court abases or raises a political party, and diverts the whole course of politics, it may be, for months, or even years. Such a process seems highly illogical to foreign onlookers, and yet " illogical " is the wrong word to use. Rather the process is an extension to the point of morbidity of the primary French quality of logic. The ultimate responsibility of the Government for everything that happens is insisted on so intricately and ingeniously that superficially demonstrable motives and connivances (which would entirely escape the attention of persons less disposed by nature to this form of deduction) are almost invariably discovered to relate the men in office to the scandal of the moment. If a well- known editor had been murdered in England by the wife of a Minister, the political results, though they might be serious owing to the resignation of the Minister and the necessary rearrangement of the Government, could be more or less definitely foreseen. The Minister would disappear, for a time at all events, but he would carry a good deal of sympathy with him, for he would be regarded as a victim, not as the accomplice in his wife's mad act ; and the whole affair would be dissociated from politics. In France it is quite otherwise. M. Caillaux is being abused as though he himself had murdered M. Calmette. He is pursued in the streets by cries of "Assassin !" and the effects of his wife's crime recoil in a political shape on the whole Government of which he was a member. The convulsion of feeling which starts a new political rumour every hour of the day in Paris is as great now as when M. Carnet was assassinated, or when M. Felix Faure died with mysterious suddenness, or when Boulanger nearly seized the reins of government, or when Zola accused the accusers of Dreyfus, or when the Panama Canal affair was exposed. French journalists "work up" the topic of the day with a resourcefulness and a talent for dramatic effects that are possibly unmatched in any country. We are accustomed to think of American journalists as the consummate purveyors of " sensation " ; but they are rather like conjurers who We a great deal of apparatus ; the French journalist is the master of the art a connecting effects with causes by a process of what may be called dramatic ratiocination for which he depends on his imagination. It is perhaps worth while to say this, since an upheaval that seems about to humiliate or cripple France always owes a large part of its power of terrifying to the peculiar talents of French journalists. If the Ulster danger—to take an example—were described day by day by French journalists, foreign observers of English politics would long before this have come to the conclusion, not merely that civil war was certain, but that the whole Empire had already been betrayed and ruined. The crime of Mme. Caillaux has added not a word to the charges which M. Calmette had made in the Figaro against M. Caillaux. It ought not, therefore, to deflect one vote in the next elections, for it has little or nothing to do with politics. But the crime has happened in France, and it will change votes, and not only votes, but perhaps entire party programmes, and will bringdown other men than M. Caillaux.
The attacks of M. Gaston Calmette on Di. Caillaux in the Figaro had been going on for some time. M. Caillaux was accused of secret negotiations with Germany about the Congo—there was nothing new in that ; of resorting to a kind of blackmail, and forcing a private person who had found himself financially at the mercy of the Govern- ment to subscribe large sums to the funds of M. Caillaux's political party ; of having entered, as Finance Minister, into numerous corrupt bargains ; and of having intrigued against the Income Tax while pretending to be one a its ardent supporters. How much actual proof M. Calmette had of all that he wrote we have no means of knowing. Of course he wrote as a partisan, and like all partisans be no doubt greatly exaggerated. M. Caillaux and his wife were much harassed by these accusations, of an Englishman's political creed must be that he which, however, were not much worse than the run of such political blackenings in French newspapers. And here we may notice the ease with which French news- papers can always lay their hands on political documents for the purpose of a personal campaign. There is little secrecy in the Government Departments. Sometimes the documents quoted in a personal campaign are used as evidence of something to which they actually make no reference. But the important thing, apparently, is to be able to quote a hitherto unpublished official document, the genuineness of which cannot be denied; it looks con- vincing; and it is not difficult for an ingenious mind to describe a situation into which the document fits in some highly sinister manner. One document which M. Calmette published was a private letter written several years ago by M. Caillaux to his former wife. In this letter M. Caillaux had declared that he was torpedoing, as Mr. Lloyd George would say, the Income Tax Bill, while ostensibly speaking in its favour. Finally, it became known that M. Calmette was about to publish a statement of the Procurator-. General (or Public Prosecutor) to the effect that M. Caillaux had procured the postponement of the trial of Rochette, the notorious swindler, the implication, of course, being that M. Caillaux could not afford to let his own dealings with Rochette become public.
At this point Mine. Caillaux consulted a Magistrate as to how M. Calmette could be prevented from publishing more charges. She proposed an action against him. The Magistrate advised her strongly against it. She decided thereupon to take the law into her own hands. On Mon- day evening she called at the Figaro office. When her name was sent up, M. Calmette was astonished at her coming, but remarked to M. Paul Bourget : "She is a woman. I suppose I cannot refuse to see her." The lights were turned on as Mme. Caillaux came into the room, and she immediately shot M. Calmette five times with a Browning revolver. He died a few hours afterwards, and it was dis- covered that in his pocket-book, torn by the passage of one of the bullets, was the statement I/ the Procurator. General which he had intended to publish. M. Caillaux's resignation of the portfolio of Finance was accepted the next day. On the same day in the Chamber M. Monis, speaking for the Government, said that no such statement as rumour attributed to the Procurator-General about the Rochette trial could be found. Thereupon M. Barthou produced a copy of the statement out of his pocket, and read it amid great excitement.
The result of this revelation was prompt and drastic. The Committee which is inquiring into the Rochette affair was given the powers of a Jugs d'Instruction by the Chamber, although the decision of the Senate has not yet been announced. A French Parliamentary Committee has never before been granted the searching judicial functions and powers of compulsion which belong to an examining Magistrate. Even in the Panama scandal, as the Times correspondent says, these powers were withheld. But the Government have probably taken a wise step. It would be outrageous not to investigate to the bottom so flagrant a scandal. ki.Monis, who was Prime Minister when the trial was suddenly and unexpectedly postponed, and who has resigned his portfolio, is implicated quite as much as hi. Caillaux himself. And M. Barthou will also have some questions to answer—how, for instance, he abstracted the document from the Ministry of Justice. The results of the inquiry, whatever they may be, are bound definitely to weaken or strengthen the friends of M. Caillaux and M. Doumergue in their struggle at the coming elections with the new Briandist Party. French politics tend to merge the former numerous groups into two main camps. On the one side are the extreme Radicals and the Socialists, who are opposed to three years' service, the traditional indirect taxation, and conciliation towards the Church. On the other side are the followers of M. Briand, who demand stronger defences, three years' service, mixed principles of taxation, and conciliation towards the Church. The pistol-shots of Mme. Caillaux will echo loudly through this approaching controversy.
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