THE " MELINITE SCANDAL."
THE "melinite scandal," as it is called, indicates either a great deal of corruption in the French military and naval departments, or, which is much more probable, a most unsound and dangerous condition of French opinion. The reorganisers of the French Army say that they have crushed out the indiscipline which was so prevalent in 1870, and that every officer, however high his rank, now obeys orders implicitly ; but they certainly have not got rid of the angry suspiciousness which induced the soldiers, whenever a disaster occurred, to cry out, " We are betrayed " and which hampered every officer connected with the supply departments so greatly, that in some places most necessary indents were not sent in, for fear the officers sending them should be accused of com- plicity with contractors. So far as we can understand accounts and speeches made obscure by the desperate efforts to maintain secrecy, the facts of the melinite case are these. The French Government has been for some time in possession of a new explosive called melinite, from which it expected great things, and the composition of which it therefore desired to keep as a strict State secret. A clever experimenter, however, M. Turpin, discovered for himself how to make melinite, the chief constituent of which, it appears, is picric acid, and, so to speak, put his knowledge up to auction between his own Government and foreign manufacturers of explosives. If his Government would pay him well, he would remain silent, but if not, he would. tell foreigners for a price how to make an explosive as good as melinite. The French Government offered him ..e10,000 to hold his tongue for ten months, and, it is alleged, he agreed to take it, but still tried to obtain money from the foreign firms. The latter at first hung back, being accustomed to magnificent discoveries which come to nothing, and M. Turpin, to quicken their zeal, obtained from a Captain Tripon6—or, at least, so says M. do Freycinet in the Chamber—proof that his picric acid was really the closely guarded official secret of melinite. Then the foreign manufacturers, who thought all the while—accurately, so far as we see—that they were dealing with an independent discoverer, made their offers.
M. Turpin, was, however, in a great rage. For a reason which we fail to trace in any of the narratives we have seen, he had quarrelled with Captain Tripon4 ; had brought him before the Army Commission, which, after an inquiry with closed doors, acquitted him; and at last, in his irritation, accused him publicly in a book of dealing with the foreigner. Public opinion, and especially military opinion, was aroused, and the War Minister, M. de Freycinet, who seems to have thought that all the complaints formed part of a plan to extort excessive payments for secrecy as to the discovery, at last found himself compelled to send M. Turpin, Captain Tripon6, and two other officers of minor consequence, for trial under the laws against the revelation of military secrets. The Court, as is legal in such cases, heard the evidence with closed doors, and pronounced a judgment of extraordinary severity. Alleging that M. Turpin had contracted with the War Office to hold his tongue, and that Captain Tripon6 had betrayed the trust implied in his official position, it condemned the former to five years' imprisonment, a fine of £80, and five years' interdiction of civil rights ; and the latter to the same penalties, plus forty more pounds of fine and ten years of exile from his country. These sentences are at least sufficient for the justice of the case, but they did not in the least calm public indignation. An opinion sprang up that the Commission which had acquitted Captain Tripond must have been corrupt, suspicion pointing in particular at an officer in high command, and that M. de Freycinet himself, the popular Minister, though per- sonally honest, had been trying to screen officers so important that to bring them to justice would discredit the Army and scandalise all Europe. M. de Freycinet was therefore interpellated on Tuesday, and though his ex- planation was accepted by the Chamber by 338 to 137, the wording of the vote of confidence was not of the strongest kind. It scarcely acquitted him of injudicious hesitations, though it expressed a certainty that the Minister of War would in future "ensure the national security." M. de Freycinet's position is, it is said, most insecure, and he himself so bitterly disgusted that he lost all his usual self-command in debate, and only waits an opportunity to resign ; while the Army Commis- sion intends to ask the Chambers for a much stricter law, inflicting in certain specified cases of betraying secrets, imprisonment for life, and in others even the capital penalty.
Now, what does all this strange scene mean ? It seems to us that there can be but two explanations, either of them ominous for France. One of them is that corruption really does exist among the higher officers of the Army, of such a kind that M. de Freycinet, whom nobody suspects, and who used to possess a revolutionary energy, is positively afraid to shock the nation by revealing, even in Courts sitting with closed doors, what he believes ; the other is that the French public is incurably suspicious of its own greatest servants, the men it must depend on in war, and actually believes that they would betray the State for hard cash. There is not a, particle of evidence for the first suggestion—and remember, the condemned men would hardly have remained reticent—except this. There was, it seems evident—indeed, M. de Freycinet almost admits as much—considerable hesitation in bringing the amused to justice ; but that is susceptible of a perfectly satisfactory explanation. The belief in the national value of scientific secrets rises very high in France, where it is almost a crime to reveal the mechanism of a, rifle about to be distri- buted to the whole Army, and where it is imagined that a chemical result known to have been attained can remain undiscovered by equally able foreign chemists who are watching with all their eyes, and on whom the smallest hint produces the effect of full enlighten- ment. M. de Freycinet and his advisers may therefore very well have hesitated, not for fear of any scandal or any provocation to public opinion, but for fear that the pro- ceedings must end. in a clear revelation of their cherished secret of melinite. In fact, it did so end, for every manufacturer of explosives now knows that M. Turpin's picric acid and the Government's secret for making melinite are identical things. If a General thought he had the power of blowing down the walls of Jericho by a, sound from his trumpets, he would to the last moment avoid a cross-examination of anybody who affirmed that he also knew the shattering tune. There is no proof of the guilt of anybody in that hesita- tion, and we incline to the second explanation. There is no confidence between the nation, and especially the mili- tary part of the nation, and its great officers. It died away under the Empire, when no doubt, to judge from the endless complaints at the outbreak of the war, there must either have been hopeless inefficiency in the supply departments, or very grave corruption, and though a generation has elapsed, it has not revived yet. That is a terrible fact, if it is true, for France. It is simply impossible for great departmental officers to act with energy when under such suspicions, to accept re- sponsibility, or to consent to pass heavy accounts without checks which of themselves are almost fatal to rapid obedience to orders. The requisitions for a large army are often on a, colossal scale, in the supply of which for- tunes may be made ; they may often be of the most furiously emergent character ; and if the responsible officers simply dare not comply with them until minute formalities have been observed, an army may be left during the supreme twenty-four hours without the stores essential to secure a victory. The Army of Austria was so left, it was said at the time, just before the Battle of Villa- franca, and its soldiers were therefore obliged to go into action after a twenty-four hours' fast. Heaping up punish- ments, as the Army Commission suggest, only increases the official timidity, without in the least securing official honesty, for the men who, in hope of a fortune, will risk social ostracism, will risk almost any statutory sentence. There must in great campaigns be some confidence reposed in the departments, or everything will go wrong ; and apparently the. French will repose none. They will suspect anybody, from a 'president downward, and the order of a Commander-in-Chief in the field for biscuits or powder will not be held sufficient to justify the supply. The Commander-in-Chief may be swelling contracts to increase his share in them ! We do not see, if a spirit like that grows rampant, how efficiency can be secured, except when time is of no importance ; and that is not the case when great armies are employed against other great armies in the field. The scandal itself is of bad omen for France, but the method of its reception by the public is a far more ominous one.
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