The Caillaux Drama. John N. Raphael
Celui-ci, que je n’avais pas vu et que je ne voulais pas voir, lui répondit par un refus.
Me Maurice Bernard s’en montra fort irrité. Il vint récriminer auprès de moi et me fit comprendre, par des allusions à peine voilées, qu’il était au courant de tout.
Que devais-je faire?
Après un violent combat intérieur, après une véritable crise dont fut témoin, seul témoin d’ailleurs, mon ami et substitut Bloch-Laroque, je me suis décidé, contraint par la violence morale exercée sur moi, à obéir.
J’ai fait venir Monsieur le président Bidault de L’Isle.
Je lui ai exposé avec émotion la situation où je me trouvais. Finalement, M. Bidault de L’Isle consentit, par affection pour moi, à la remise demandée.
Le soir même, c’est-à-dire le jeudi 30 mars, je suis allé chez M. le président du Conseil et lui ai dit ce que j’avais fait.
Il a paru fort content.
Je l’étais beaucoup moins.
Dans l’antichambre j’avais vu M. du Mesnil, directeur du Rappel, journal favorable à Rochette et m’outrageant fréquemment. Il venait, sans doute, demander si je m’étais soumis.
Jamais je n’ai subi une telle humiliation.
Ce 31 mars 1911.
V. Fabre.
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.
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,
Takes note of the statements and findings of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry.
Disapproves and reprehends