public opinion seemed to have two issues only. Either an ultimatum in
reply to the French Government’s refusal to submit, or the acceptance
in principle of a rectification of the Congo-Cameroon frontier and the
granting to France of sufficient authority to cope with the threat of
anarchy in Morocco. An ultimatum would have meant war, and Germany
would have appeared to be the aggressor. The abandonment of her claims
was an awkward step to take.
It seems, however, likely that Germany would have taken it, if she had
not believed that secret negotiations with prominent men in France
were possible. The conduct of these secret negotiations without the
knowledge of Monsieur de Selves is the reason which induced Monsieur
Clemenceau to say later that Monsieur Caillaux ought to be impeached
by the high court for high treason. It is very difficult to state with
absolute precision exactly what these negotiations were. According to
Monsieur Caillaux the first mention of the Belgian Congo was made by
Monsieur von Lancken, but there seems to be every reason to believe
that Monsieur Caillaux lost his head a little and introduced the
question himself. If this be so Monsieur Caillaux committed a grave
fault in tactics, and it appears certain that the German Government
considered Monsieur Caillaux an easier person to deal with in these
matters than his Foreign Minister. Monsieur Caillaux’s opinions on the
value to France of British help were certainly very well known—too
well known in fact—in the German Embassy in Paris. Monsieur Caillaux
was believed by the German Foreign Office to put no faith in eventual
help in France’s need from the British army. This anxiety on the part
Monsieur Caillaux, and the knowledge of this anxiety in German official
quarters, enabled the Wilhelmstrasse to exercise indirect pressure.
It is not known exactly, and I do not suppose ever will be known
exactly, what negotiations were carried on with Herr von Gwinner of the
Deutsche Bank and with or through Sir Ernest Cassel. But on July 28,
the German Government was convinced that Monsieur Caillaux was ready
to treat. On that date, when Monsieur Jules Cambon asked the German
Foreign Minister whether Germany were not ready to find some means of
transaction other than the mutilation of the French Congo, Herr von
Kiderlen Waechter replied: “No, the question is no longer what it was.”
This reply is noted in the French Yellow Book.
Monsieur Caillaux’s personal interference in the negotiations
undoubtedly allowed the German Foreign Office time to breathe, and the
Cabinet of Berlin took care to fix her claims on the Congo in such a
way as not to justify British alarm, and to offer with one hand what it
withdrew with the other, in Morocco. These negotiations lasted fully
three months, during which time it is not too much to say that France
and Germany, or better still France, Germany and Europe generally, were
on the very verge of war more than once.
Rumour has been busy with sidelights on the negotiations which took
place, and not the least interesting of these sidelights is afforded
by the telegram which is said to have passed between Berlin and Paris,
between the Wilhelmstrasse and the German Embassy: “Do not waste
time in discussion with De Selves or Cambon. We can get more out of
Caillaux.” I do not know whether these are the exact words of the
famous telegram, but they are certainly the gist of its meaning. It
may be taken as certain that the telegram was sent and received,
that Monsieur de Selves obtained possession of it, and that Monsieur
Calmette would have published it in the _Figaro_ in the course of
his campaign against Monsieur Caillaux if he had not been induced to
refrain from so doing on patriotic grounds. Several people have seen
and read this telegram. After the death of Gaston Calmette it was found
in his pocket book with a bullet-hole through it, and handed over, by
the brothers of the dead man, to Monsieur Raymond Poincaré in person,
for safe keeping. It is the telegram which is currently known as “the
green document” because of the paper on which it was transcribed. The
French Foreign Office was in possession at this time of the cipher
which was used for telegraphic communications between Paris and Berlin
by the Wilhelmstrasse and the German Embassy in Paris. Monsieur de
Selves knew therefore that “the green document” had been sent, knew its
contents, and had a very stormy interview with Monsieur Caillaux, his
Prime Minister, in consequence.
The interview was a dramatic one. Monsieur de Selves when he learned of
“the green document” consulted Monsieur Clemenceau and Monsieur Briand.
He spoke of it, I believe, in other quarters also, and eventually
he asked President Fallières to confront him with Monsieur Caillaux
so that the discussion on Monsieur Caillaux’s interference with the
negotiations between the French and German Foreign Offices should
take place in the presence of the President of the Republic. Monsieur
Caillaux, in a fury of indignation, declared to Monsieur Fallières
that there was no truth in the insinuation contained in the message,
and went straight to the German Embassy to ask what they meant there
by the assertion made in “the green document.” The obvious answer to
this ill-considered step was an immediate change in the Wilhelmstrasse
cipher. Monsieur Caillaux, by his fit of anger and his imprudence, had
lost to his Government a valuable source of information.
There is no need here to give the details of the agreement with Germany
which was concluded not very long after the events just mentioned.
There can be little doubt, I think, that France might have made a much
better bargain if Monsieur Caillaux had been a little cooler and shown
less unwisdom. On November 6 Monsieur Caillaux in a speech to his
constituents at Saint Calais defended his policy. A week after this
speech the German treaty was discussed for a full week in the Chamber,
and accepted on November 21. During this week’s debate Monsieur
Caillaux was attacked with some vivacity, and Monsieur de Selves’
attitude gave cause for much excitement. On January 9, 1912, the Senate
sitting in committee discussed the Franco-German treaty. In the course
of this discussion Monsieur Caillaux, the Prime Minister, explained the
conditions under which the negotiations for Franco-German collaboration
in the N’Goko Sanga Company and the Congo Cameroon Railway had fallen
through, and made this declaration: “An attempt has been made in the
Press and elsewhere to establish the story that negotiations with
Germany were carried on outside the negotiations of the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs. _I give my word of honour that there were never any
such negotiations beyond those carried on through diplomatic channels._”
This declaration was listened to in deep silence, which Monsieur
Clemenceau broke. “Will the Minister for Foreign Affairs,” said
Monsieur Clemenceau, “state whether documents are in existence showing
that our Ambassador in Berlin complained of the intrusion of certain
people into the diplomatic negotiations between France and Germany?”
The members of the senatorial commission all turned to Monsieur de
Selves, but Monsieur de Selves remained silent. Monsieur Caillaux,
who had sat down, jumped up again, but Monsieur Clemenceau prevented
him from speaking. “I am not addressing myself to you, Monsieur le
President du Conseil,” he said. “I put this question to the Minister
for Foreign Affairs.”
Monsieur de Selves, who showed considerable emotion and some
hesitation, rose from his seat and said, “Gentlemen, I am divided
between the wish to speak the truth and the responsibilities of my
situation as Minister for Foreign Affairs. I ask the permission of
the commission to remain silent and to give no answer to the question
Monsieur Clemenceau has just asked.” “Your reply,” said Monsieur
Clemenceau, “may be perfectly satisfactory to my colleagues, but it
cannot be satisfactory to me. I maintain that your reply cannot and
does not give satisfaction to the man to whom you have already given
your confidence. I am that man, and I will add that you gave me your
confidence unsolicited.”
There was a moment of extreme tension, of extreme uneasiness, almost
of stupor. Monsieur Clemenceau had spoken with great emphasis. His
meaning was self-evident. The situation was a painfully dramatic one,
for the statement of Monsieur Caillaux, the Prime Minister, that there
had been no negotiations carried on without the knowledge of the
Minister for Foreign Affairs appeared to be in flagrant contradiction
with Monsieur de Selves’ reticence, and the statement was given the lie
direct by Monsieur Clemenceau. The emotion was such that the session
of the senatorial commission broke up there and then, and the senators
dispersed after adjourning to another day.
That afternoon there was a confidential interview between Messrs.
Caillaux, Clemenceau and De Selves, and the same evening the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Monsieur de Selves, handed in his resignation to
the President of the Republic in the following letter, dated Paris
January 9. “Monsieur le Président,” he wrote, “After the painful
incident which occurred to-day at the session of the senatorial
commission, I have the honour to ask you to accept my resignation
as Minister for Foreign Affairs. It would be impossible for me to
undertake any longer the responsibility of a foreign policy for which
unity of views and unity of action are withheld from me in the Cabinet.
My anxiety to obtain a satisfactory result in official negotiations
of difficulty and to obtain the approval of Parliament on my efforts
has been responsible for my remaining in office so long. But the
double anxiety I have endured neither to withhold the truth, nor to
fail in my duty to my colleagues, makes it impossible for me to remain
in the Cabinet. I shall always remember the forbearance and kindness
with which you have honoured me in delicate circumstances which it
is impossible for me to forget. I beg you to receive, Monsieur le
Président, the assurance of my profound respect.”
We know now that Monsieur Clemenceau alluded to the “document vert”
when he made the accusation against Monsieur Caillaux to which I
have already referred. The President of the Republic accepted the
resignation of Monsieur de Selves on the evening of January 9, and on
January 10, 1912, the Caillaux Cabinet was forced to resign office.
IX
L’AFFAIRE ROCHETTE
In the first chapter of this book is reproduced _in extenso_ the
statement of Monsieur Victor Fabre, Procureur Général, a legal official
of judge’s rank, whose position somewhat resembles that of the Public
Prosecutor in England. Monsieur Fabre, the gravity of whose statement
caused the downfall of the Monis-Caillaux Cabinet, declared that
pressure had been brought to bear on him to postpone or adjourn the
trial of a financier named Rochette, who, since the postponement of his
trial has escaped abroad, and is abroad still.
The bearing of this statement on the Caillaux drama will be seen in
a moment by the perusal of the examination on March 20, 1914, of
Monsieur Monis and of Monsieur Caillaux by the parliamentary commission
appointed after the storm caused by Monsieur Barthou’s reading of
Monsieur Fabre’s statement to inquire again into the facts of the
postponement of Rochette’s trial. I quote the details from the official
records transcribed from the shorthand notes of the parliamentary
inquiry which are in my possession. The inquiry was voted by the
Chamber of Deputies on March 17. I may add here that Monsieur Fabre,
whose written statement made it necessary, was punished for making
that statement, or, rather, for allowing himself to be coerced by the
Prime Minister and Monsieur Caillaux, and now occupies a position
of lower rank with a smaller salary, at Aix instead of Paris. His
successor as Procureur Général, Monsieur Herbaux, will probably act as
public prosecutor when Madame Caillaux is tried. On March 20, 1914,
at half-past nine in the morning, Monsieur Monis, who was by then no
longer Prime Minister, was introduced before the Commission of Inquiry,
consisting of Monsieur Jaurès, who presided, and thirty-two other
deputies. “Early in the month of March 1911,” said Monsieur Monis,
“when my Cabinet was barely a fortnight old, I received the visit of
the Minister of Finance, Monsieur Caillaux. Monsieur Caillaux told me
that he was anxious to oblige the lawyer, Maître Maurice Bernard,
who had represented him in his divorce proceedings against his first
wife (Madame Gueydan Dupré), and that Maître Bernard had asked for a
postponement of the Rochette affair.”
“Monsieur Caillaux,” Monsieur Monis said, “pointed out that apart
from his own wish to oblige Maître Bernard it might be dangerous, for
political reasons, to refuse his request for the postponement of the
Rochette trial.” “Maître Bernard,” he said, “is a very vehement man, and
a lawyer of great gifts. If the trial takes place now he is certain to
point out the number of issues of bonds and shares which have been made
in recent years on the Bourse, and authorized by the Government, which
have dwindled in value, which have caused heavy loss to investors,
which issues of stock have never, for all that, resulted in the taking
of legal proceedings. An outcry is sure to be raised round a speech of
this kind in the Law Courts, and the outcry is sure to have political
results. One of the first of these will surely be a number of questions
in the Chamber of Deputies. The Government has troubles enough of its
own just now without adding to them in this way. It will be much wiser
to grant Maître Bernard’s request and postpone the trial.”
It was as a result of this conversation between Monsieur Monis, the
Prime Minister, and his colleague the Minister of Finance, Monsieur
Caillaux, that the trial of Rochette was postponed. Even without going
into any details now, though I am afraid that it will be necessary
to go into a good many details presently, the verbatim report of
this interview throws a curious light on the close connexion in
France between the Government of the country and the country’s legal
procedure. Monsieur Caillaux’s reference to Rochette’s power, or rather
the power of Rochette’s lawyer, of causing the Government serious
inconvenience by an exposure of the number of losses to which French
investors have been subjected recently, points very clearly to a none
too heavily veiled attempt on the part of Rochette to blackmail the
Minister of Finance, and not only points to such an attempt, but looks
very much as though it had succeeded, for the blackmailer’s object in
this case was not money but time, and he was given time to escape doing
it. But perhaps the best way to realize what this man Rochette was and
is, and how he obtained the power of forcing the French Government to
take so strange a step as to order a judge and the Public Prosecutor to
postpone his trial and so secure his impunity and his escape from all
further worry, is to look into the history of Monsieur Rochette himself
from the beginning.
Rochette was the son of country farmers, or field labourers—people
at all events in poor circumstances. His early years are wrapped in
mystery, for although it is currently believed that he was an errand
boy and afterwards a waiter in a small café in a little town near
Fontainebleau, Rochette himself has always denied this. What is certain
about him is that in 1903 or 1904, nine or ten years ago, Rochette,
who had just finished his military service and who was therefore
twenty-three or twenty-four years old at the most, came to Paris and
became a bank clerk. He had a little money even then, which he himself
says he inherited and which was £2000 or £2500 at the most. He used
this money to launch several financial enterprises, and succeeded in
obtaining an incredible amount of credit for them with incredible
rapidity.
This young man, whether he be a swindler or not, and even now that is
an open question, is undoubtedly a financial genius with a wonderful
charm of manner. He made use of these two assets to start several
companies, the first of which were the Banque Franco-Espagnole, the
Crédit Minier, the Société des Mines de la Nerva, the Laviana, the Val
d’Aran, the Paral Mexico, the Union Franco-Belge, the Syndicat Minier,
the Mines de Liat, the Buisson Hella and the Manchon Hella.
The flotation of nearly all these companies of different kinds, for
the exploitation of banks, mines, electric lamps and incandescent gas
mantles, was an immediate success, and hundreds of thousands of pounds
flowed into the coffers of this young financier. The Crédit Minier
in Paris, which was his headquarters, employed an enormous staff of
clerks, had gorgeous offices, and very shortly after its foundation
bore the appearance of a prosperous bank doing an enormous business. As
a matter of fact the Crédit Minier and Rochette really did an enormous
business, for not only from Paris, but from the provinces, where he had
branches everywhere, Rochette reaped a harvest of gold which flowed in
like Pactolus from the pockets of small investors who believed in him.
At the very beginning their belief was well justified, for everything
Rochette touched turned to gold.
Very soon after his establishment in Paris Rochette was said to be
worth somewhere between three and four million pounds sterling. Of
course most of this money was employed in his financial enterprises,
but these were successful beyond the dreams of avarice, and the prices
of shares in the Rochette flotations rose and rose continuously. To
mention one only among the number, shares of the Hella Gas Mantle
Company which had been issued at £4 a share ran up in the course of a
very few months to nearly £21 (518 frcs. was the exact figure) a share.
Some idea may be formed of the confidence inspired by Rochette from the
fact that when, in 1908, five years after his first appearance on the
Paris market, the financier was arrested, ten thousand shareholders of
his companies signed a petition for his immediate release, and sent it
to the Chamber of Deputies.
At the time of his arrest there were many more people than these ten
thousand shareholders who pinned their faith to Rochette and his
enterprises, and who maintain even now that his downfall was due to a
conspiracy against him by financiers who were interested in the fall
of his shares. To a certain extent this contention was true, as we
shall see later on by some of the evidence given on oath before the
Commission of Inquiry. A number of charges were formally made against
Rochette by a number of people who had lost money and considered him
responsible for the loss. These charges became so many that the Public
Prosecutor, after consulting the Minister of Justice sent for Monsieur
Rochette one day, and asked him, in view of the fact that a number of
the actions brought against him had been amicably arranged between the
parties while others of a graver nature charging him with fraud had
resulted in acquittal, whether he would consent to a friendly though
judicial examination of his books. This examination took place, took
place it may be remarked at the expense of Rochette himself, who was
perfectly willing to pay for it, and the accountants’ verdict was by no
means altogether unfavourable to the young financier. Rochette, having
triumphed, continued his issues of companies, and general opinion
began to rank him with the Rothschilds and the other overlords of high
finance.
[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_ ROCHETTE IN COURT
(Rochette is the central figure with the black beard)]
France rejoices, however, in the possession of a succession of more
or less avowedly Socialist Governments which govern or try to govern
the country on fatherly lines, and the French Government on the one
hand, and the judicial authorities on the other, began to look with
suspicion and alarm on Rochette’s increasing prosperity. The Bourse,
too, began to become suspicious of Rochette’s success, and an opinion
began to gain ground that sooner or later his rocket-like flight into
the regions of high finance would be followed by one of those crashing
stick-like falls, by one of those disastrous _krachs_ of which so many
have been chronicled during the last century in all great capitals. It
was towards the end of February or the beginning of March 1908, that
Rochette made his big mistake. He attacked the _Petit Journal_, one
of the biggest and most influential newspapers in France. Rochette
made this attack on the _Petit Journal_ and on its managing director
Monsieur Prevet, a member of the Senate, because he had a very definite
object in view. Rochette’s companies appealed to the imagination and to
the pockets of the small investor, and the small investor in France is
not a regular reader of financial newspapers, which he neither trusts
nor understands.
These small financial newspapers are legion, but although Rochette
undoubtedly had numbers of them at his disposal he realized that a
paper more generally read and appealing more directly to the people he
wanted to touch was necessary to his ambitions, and to the greater and
wider success for which he was working. He made up his mind, therefore,
to obtain control of the _Petit Journal_, a newspaper which is sold
all over France in every town, in every village, and in every hamlet,
and which, though it no longer enjoys the largest circulation of any
newspaper in France, was one of the two newspapers most suitable for
his purpose and the only one of the two which he had any chance at all
of getting. In order to obtain control of the _Petit Journal_, Rochette
set to work with tactics which were characteristic of the astuteness
and the utter lack of scruple of the man. He issued circulars which he
had printed in enormous quantities, forwarded them to every shareholder
of the _Petit Journal_, and scattered them broadcast, elsewhere. In
this circular, which was issued in view of the next general meeting of
the shareholders of the paper, a meeting which was to be held on April
5, 1908, Rochette painted the financial position of the _Petit Journal_
in the blackest possible colours, stating without the slightest
reference to truth, that the paper as a property was in a very bad way,
and advising shareholders to sell their shares.
The managing director of the _Petit Journal_, the powerful member
of the Senate, Monsieur Prevet, was naturally very much annoyed and
somewhat alarmed by these manœuvres, and took legal action to put a
stop to them. He commenced a prosecution against a “person or persons
unknown,” by which euphemism of course Rochette was indicated, for
the purpose of putting a stop to the disloyal manœuvres by which
Monsieur Rochette was rapidly obtaining a large number of shares and
powers of attorney from discontented shareholders.
Monsieur Prevet realized that unless some such immediate action were
taken it was more than possible that at the general meeting of the
_Petit Journal_ Company on April 5, 1908, the discontented shareholders
either in person or by proxy would oust him, Monsieur Prevet, from his
position as managing director of the _Petit Journal_, and would hand
over the control of this newspaper with its enormous influence and
immense phalanx of readers to the financier Rochette. Monsieur Prevet
occupied a very high position. He was not only the managing director of
the _Petit Journal_, he was not only a member of the Senate, but he was
actually, at that time, the “rapporteur” or advisory summariser for the
Senate on the big question of the purchase by the State of the Western
Railway.