THE ENEMY WITHIN
During the whole of the war, as for many years before the Germans
began their great campaign of aggression, every country with which the
Fatherland might in any way be concerned was permeated with German
agents and German spies. Great Britain was one of the nations specially
favoured in this respect. The ramifications of their systematic
interpenetration of the social, political, financial, commercial
and even journalistic departments of our public life have never yet
been fully exposed; nor, certainly, have the very important personages
who conducted this sinister propaganda been dealt with. Even when the
Defence of the Realm Act is ended and the Censorship is abrogated, it
is doubtful if the full truth will ever be generally known, so powerful
are the influences directly interested in its suppression.
In the United States of America, where similar work was done upon an
enormous scale and at vast expense, under circumstances still more
favourable to success than in this island, the American Government
acted with a decision and a vigour that are not yet understood. Even
so, the amount of mischief done was very great, and, for the first two
years of the war at least, the German efforts were largely successful.
That a duly accredited Ambassador to a friendly power should have been
at the head of this vast conspiracy in America, as Count Bernstorff
unquestionably was, introduces a new and most dangerous precedent into
the comity of international relations. Italy, in like manner, suffered
very seriously from German intrigues. The history of the carefully
organised disaster upon the Isonzo has yet to be written. That it was
the result of well-arranged collaboration between clerical organisers
of treachery, inspired by Austria, German agents, with unlimited
financial backing, who had sympathisers in high place, and honest
and dishonest fanatics of the pacifist persuasion, does not admit of
question. Certain it is that in this one case alone German underground
machinations were responsible for the crushing defeat of an army of
500,000 men, holding a position where 50,000 good troops could have
held a million at bay.[C]
But if Great Britain, the United States, and Italy were thus
honeycombed with secret service agents from Germany, the nation which
the Kaiser, his Chief of Staff and the Junkers were most anxious to
crush down beyond the possibility of recovery was still more imperilled
by astute German infiltration. Up to the crisis of Agadir in 1911,
French finance was, to an ever increasing extent, manipulated by German
Jews, who made it their special business to become more Parisian than
the Parisians themselves. They were consequently regarded with favour
by people whose patriotism was beyond question. Scarcely a great
French finance institution but had close relations in some form with
Germans, whose continuous attention to business and excellent general
information rendered them valuable coadjutors for the French, who, as
a rule, are not very exactly informed on foreign matters. Very few saw
any danger in this. It seemed, indeed, a natural result of the great
growth of German trade, as well as of the position which Germans had
acquired as capable managers of the growing French factory industry in
the North-Eastern provinces.
This latter point is of importance. So long as any industry remains in
the old form, where individual skill, meticulous attention to detail,
and close observance of quality are the rule, the French are second
to none in their methods. But when the next stage is reached, and
machine production reigns on a very large scale, with its concomitant
standardisation of output, then the French seem to fail for lack of
the thorough organising faculty of the German or the American. Hence
in many directions the highly educated, methodical, progressive
foreigner from across the frontier had begun to take the place of the
more conservative Frenchman. This process could be observed in the
department of motor-cars, where the French, who were undoubtedly the
pioneers, had begun to fall behind upon the world market in the time
just anterior to the war. Not only the Americans, but the Germans, and
even Italy, showed more capacity to gauge the necessities of the coming
period than France in their output of cars.
But, in addition to this, Frenchmen, the most thrifty people in the
world, are disinclined to use their savings in the development of their
own country. In literature, in science, in art, they display great
faculties of initiative. In the matter of investment they prefer to
rely upon others. Even the underground railways of their metropolis
were started by a foreigner: the French investors only coming in to buy
the debentures of companies which they might just as well have started
themselves. They complained that the Germans were making vast profits
out of "their own" iron mines of Lorraine which had been taken from
France in an undeveloped state in 1871; yet they failed to exploit the
still richer deposits in Briey, of which the Germans were so envious
that the desire to possess them was one of the minor causes of the war.
Similar instances of neglected opportunities could be pointed out in
many districts.
This indifference of the thrifty French investors to the possibility
of enriching their own country by the use at home of the money capital
obtained from their own savings, and the profits derived from visitors,
astonished lookers-on. Clemenceau denounced the folly of financial wars
of conquest in semi-civilised countries when France needed her own
resources for the improvement of her own soil and what underlay it, as
well as to make adequate preparation for war. But the loans to foreign
nations and foreign banks were economically as prejudicial to her real
interests as the injurious colonial policy. That was proved only too
clearly, even in the field of military preparation when, in August and
September, 1914, tens of thousands of men, unsupplied with clothing and
equipment, were to be seen in and around Paris. England had to provide
them with what they required.
In such a state of affairs, where neglect of consideration as to the
purposes of loans was the rule, so long as the interest seemed quite
secure, German banks could and did act with great advantage. They
borrowed French savings at a low rate and employed them for profitable
objects, or for their own more complete war preparations on economical
terms. After the shock of Agadir, when war at one period seemed
certain, the French called in most of their loans and thenceforward
were rather more cautious. But, in the meantime, and even afterwards,
France's savings had been used to strengthen her bitterest enemy.
And this was the end the Germans kept constantly in view when they
borrowed. France, in fact, built up German credit against herself, at
the same time that Germany was able to estimate exactly the economic
power of her destined victim, and to investigate, without appearing to
do so, the weak points in French preparation for defence. The German
banks and their French friends played together the same game, in a
different way, that the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank did in
London and the Banca Commerciale in Italy. The whole formed part of the
vast economic octopus scheme, in finance and in industry, which went
hand in hand with the co-ordination of military effort destined for
attack.
It is easy to discern how all this peaceful financial manipulation
played into the hands of the German Government and fostered German
influence in Paris and in France. There was nothing which could be
reasonably objected to, under the conditions of to-day, if Holland, or
Belgium, had been the nation concerned. But with Germany it was quite
different.
Not only was French money being used on German account, but, under
cover of quite legitimate finance and apparently genuine newspaper
enterprise, most nefarious schemes were hatched in peace whose full
utility to the enemy would only be disclosed in war. Taking no account
even of the actual operations of bribery, which we now know were
carried on upon a very large scale, everybody who was directly or
indirectly interested in the various forms of parasitical Franco-German
finance had personally excellent reasons for pooh-poohing distrust of
the friendly nation on the other side of the frontier. Thus the most
pressing warnings addressed to the French Government might be rendered
almost useless--as, in fact, they were--by influence brought to bear
from quarters that were pecuniarily above suspicion. An atmosphere
favourable to German propaganda was created which covered up and
favoured the sinister plans of men and women who were actually in
German pay. This went on long before the war, and was continued in
still more dangerous shape after the war had begun.
Then there were the honest pacifists, who regarded all war, even
defensive war, as disastrous to the workers. Whether Germany won or
France won in any conflict, the capitalists and the capitalists alone
were the real enemy. Two such different men as Edouard Vaillant and
Gustave Hervé held this opinion; and both at great international
Socialist congresses declared that every effort should be made to
prevent France from coming to an actual struggle with Germany, no
matter what the provocation might be. When, however, they saw what
the policy of the Kaiser and his Junker militarists really meant they
changed their minds. So, in the early days of the war, did the majority
of French Socialists; and several of their principal men, including
Jules Guesde, the leader of the Marxists, and Albert Thomas, joined M.
Briand's Cabinet.
But there was always an active section left which in all good faith
stood to their views that under the capitalist system nothing could
justify the workers of one country in killing the workers of another.
They had no interest in their own nation which was worth defending
in the field. The past of France was for them a record of class
oppression, the present of France the continuance of chattel slavery in
disguise, the future of France no better than the permanence of penal
servitude for life as wage-slaves to the bourgeoisie. German domination
could be no worse for them than the economic tyranny of their own
capitalist countrymen.
This form of social fanaticism now exists in every European nation.
It is as bitter and, given the opportunity, as unscrupulous and cruel
as any form of religious intolerance that ever exercised control.
Economic theory entirely obscures history and facts with such men.
Not even the awful horrors of the German invasion, horrors quite
unprecedented in modern warfare and systematically practised in
order to engender terror, and destroy the means of creating wealth,
could convert Socialists of this school. As a Socialist I understand
their fanaticism, though I despise their judgment. Capitalism under
the control of home employers and financiers is bad, but it can be
controlled by educated workers. Capitalism in victorious alliance with
foreign Junkerdom would have made France uninhabitable for Frenchmen,
and would have thrown back democratic Socialism for at least two
generations throughout Europe.
Nevertheless, this furious minority, in conjunction with Socialists of
political intrigue, among whom Jean Longuet (son of Charles Longuet
the member of the Commune and grandson of Karl Marx) was the leader,
became eventually the majority, owing to the weakness of the heads of
the patriotic section. This success laid the French Socialist Party
open to the charge of being not only anti-patriotic but definitely
pro-German. It led to the retirement of forty-one Deputies from the
"unified" combination. The violent animosity of the main body to
Clemenceau at the time when he was forced into office, and the refusal
of Socialists to accept portfolios in his Cabinet, when the cause of
the Allies was at its lowest point, from November, 1917, to July,
1918, looked to outsiders a miserable policy for the party, not to be
explained by the devotion of its members to MM. Malvy and Caillaux.[D]
Personal malevolence and political pusillanimity together were the
imputations made against those who thus declined to serve France in
her utmost need. Happily for Europe, their strength was not equal to
their ill-will, and Clemenceau, after his first month of power, was
able to treat them as a negligible quantity. So they remain to-day.
A very great opportunity of serving the workers of their country has
been missed: that the bitterest enemy of France and of freedom has not
been greatly helped in her war for universal domination is no fault of
theirs.
During the first three years and more of the war, however, a conspiracy
was being conducted which, aided unfortunately by much of apathy and
ineptitude on the part of successive French Governments, and supported
unintentionally or intentionally by one of the leading statesmen of
France, went near to wrecking the fortunes of the Republic. That this
fateful plot failed to achieve the full success which the Germans
anticipated from it is due to Clemenceau. Sordid monetary sympathy with
the enemy is difficult to forgive: Socialist fanaticism and Socialist
intrigues which must tell to the disadvantage of the nation are hard
to reconcile with common honesty; but downright infamous treachery,
bribery, corruption, and wholesale attempts to organise defeat put all
who are guilty of them outside the law. Yet matters had come to such a
pass that all these various forms of treason to France, to the Allies,
and to soldiers at the front could be carried on with impunity.
Though the guilty persons were well known and their German plots were
scarcely concealed, none of the Ministers responsible for the public
safety dared arrest them. Journals that were obviously published in the
interest of the enemy were allowed to spread false information as they
pleased, and to attack all statesmen and politicians who were honestly
trying to serve France with vitriolic misrepresentation. Day after
day this went on. Day after day, as the situation without grew more
precarious, the chiefs of this criminal endeavour to bring France to
ruin grew bolder in their well-paid treachery. The people of Paris and
the soldiery in the trenches, whose minds also German agents strove to
debauch with plausible lies, were becoming hopeless of justice being
done. Ministry succeeded Ministry and still the traitors were treated
with consideration by the Minister of the Interior, M. Malvy, and other
men in high place.
Beyond question the man officially responsible for all this shameful
laxity, at one of the most trying crises of the whole war, was M.
Malvy, who enjoyed the whole-souled support of the Socialist Party,
on account of creditable behaviour towards the workers, altogether
outside of questions arising from the war. But his conduct in regard
to traitors and pro-Germans had become so weak as to be capable of the
worst interpretation.
On July 24th, 1917, Clemenceau declared that he utterly distrusted
M. Malvy. It was known even thus early that this Minister had shown
deplorable incapacity in his dealings with men who are known to have
been actual traitors. He had, in fact, decided not to arrest persons
enumerated in what was called "List B," that is to say, men and women
more than suspected of criminal intrigue against France. Had not
Almereyda himself assured M. Malvy, as Minister of the Interior, that
he and all other Anarchists and anti-patriotic agitators would really
desist from their sinister proceedings? This was enough. Without
taking any steps against them, or even obtaining any security for the
fulfilment of this promise in the air, M. Malvy left these miscreants
alone to do what they pleased. So things went on as before; though, as
has since been proved, several of these active agitators for peace,
disaffection and surrender were paid agents of the German Government.
When, therefore, a resolution of confidence in M. Ribot's
Administration was proposed in the Senate, Clemenceau voted for the
resolution, but made special exception in the case of M. Malvy, in whom
he declared he had no confidence whatever. Later, Clemenceau boldly
accused M. Ribot and his whole Administration of being themselves
all responsible for the existence of the treacherous German Bonnet
Rouge and Bolo conspiracy. Most unfortunately, notwithstanding the
universal distrust thus awakened and spreading from Paris throughout
France, Republican Ministers, who ought to have been the first to move
to safeguard the interests of France and her Republic, against the
dangerous plots of men known to be immersed in abominable dealings with
the enemy, failed altogether in their duty. They left it to avowed
Royalists and reactionaries to lead the attack upon persons guilty of
these crimes. What, consequently, ought to have been done at once,
legally and thoroughly, by men who had received political power by vote
of the French people, and were trustees for the defence of the country,
against the foreign enemy from without and the domestic enemy within,
was left largely to be accomplished by M. Léon Daudet and M. Barrès.
These men made no secret of the fact that they were actuated by motives
entirely antagonistic to the democratic policy of the Allies and
hostile to the only form of government possible in France. This did
not render their indictment less crushing when the facts were fully
disclosed, but it certainly weakened the force of the attack. What
is more, it gave a large and, later, apparently the largest section
of the Socialist Party the excuse, which they were eager to grasp,
for supporting M. Malvy, and more particularly their friend M. Joseph
Caillaux, against what they were pleased to denounce as abominable
detraction.
Newspapers to-day are credited, perhaps, with more political influence
than they really possess. But it is clear that if nearly the whole
of the important press of a country can be captured by a particular
faction, and only such news is allowed to be published as suits the
convenience of the Government in power, the people at large have no
means of correcting the false impressions of events thus thrust upon
them. That is an extreme case, which has, so far, been realised, in
practice, in only one country. But the German agents who were so
active in Paris were fully alive to the advantages of such a policy
of purchase and manipulation of the press for their own ends. They
made efforts to secure a control of the majority of the shares in some
of the most influential journals of Paris. How far this process was
surreptitiously carried will never be known: not far enough, certainly,
to affect the tone of the organs they were anxious to manipulate.
But enough was done to show the great danger which would have resulted
to the community, had a newspaper trust been successfully created on
the scale contemplated, but fortunately never carried out, by the
infamous Bolo Pasha and his associates. Their own journal, _Le Bonnet
Rouge_, even when increased during the war from a weekly to a daily
issue, was not by any means sufficient for their needs, although that
traitorous sheet alone was able to do a great deal of mischief. But
their control was extended to the _Journal_, a paper, prior to the
war, of considerable circulation and influence. Their attempts to
expand further were in full swing when, thanks to the work of MM. Léon
Daudet and Barrès in the _Action_ _Française_, and still more to that
of their bitter opponent Clemenceau in _l'Homme Enchaîné_ and in the
Senate, the French Government was forced to arrest the proprietors of
the _Bonnet Rouge_ and put them on their trial as traitors. It was
known that M. Caillaux and M. Paix-Séailles--the latter connected
with M. Painlevé's Cabinet and the repository of anti-French
confidences--had contributed considerable sums to the support of the
incriminated paper.
When M. Almereyda, one of the most important persons connected with the
_Bonnet Rouge_ (to whose columns a leading Socialist was a contributor)
died suddenly in prison, the editor of that journal telegraphed to M.
Caillaux concerning the lamentable departure of "our friend." As these
facts were accompanied by other revelations still more compromising,
public opinion became greatly excited. There could be no doubt that
the conspiracy was more than a mere anti-patriotic newspaper intrigue
of financial origin, or an attempt of discredited politicians to
float themselves back into office on the wave of discouragement and
defeatism: it was an endeavour, supported throughout by German funds,
to destroy French confidence in order to ensure French destruction.
A complete exposure of the whole plot, in which M. Caillaux and Bolo
Pasha were alleged to be the leading figures, was threatened in
the course of the _Bonnet Rouge_ trial. Eleven members of the Army
Committee of the Senate were appointed to consider M. Caillaux's
connection with M. Almereyda and the _Bonnet Rouge_.
M. Caillaux has been by far the most formidable advocate of a German
peace from the first. That an ex-Premier of France should take up such
a position would seem almost incredible, but that Signor Giolitti in
Italy and Lord Lansdowne in England have pursued the same course in a
less objectionable way. The political relations between Clemenceau and
M. Caillaux in the years prior to the war had not been unfriendly. M.
Caillaux had been Finance Minister in Clemenceau's Cabinet in 1907, and
they had both worked together for M. Pams against M. Poincaré in the
contest for the Presidency. But two more different personalities it
would be difficult to find.
M. Caillaux is a financier of financiers. His whole career has been
associated with the dexterous manipulation and acquisition of money
in all its forms. Clemenceau never had anything to do with finance in
his fife, and wealth is the last thing anybody could accuse him of
possessing. Clemenceau, though no sentimentalist, makes an exception
in his view of life where Frenchmen, France and Paris are concerned.
With Caillaux audacious cynicism in everything is the key-note of
his character all through. Moreover, the one is very simple in his
habits, and the other is devoted to ostentation and display. Caillaux's
cynicism is as remarkable as that of Henry Labouchere, though more
malignant. When he carried the Income Tax through the Assembly and was
upbraided for having made himself the champion of such a measure, he
claimed that, though he had obtained for his measure a majority in the
Assembly, he had used such arguments as would destroy it in the country.
Whatever may be the truth of that story, it is certain that the
result has been as predicted. So in the course of the Agadir affair.
M. Caillaux, as Prime Minister during the whole of the proceedings,
was reluctant, and perhaps rightly so, to assert the claims of
France with vigour. He was, in fact, quite lukewarm on behalf of his
country, the representatives of other nations doing more for France,
it is said, than she, or her Premier, did for herself. No sooner,
however, was the business settled than M. Caillaux, the judicious but
unavowed anti-expansionist, claimed that he had secured Morocco for
France! However this may be, M. Caillaux has always favoured a close
political and financial understanding with Germany, as by far the more
advantageous policy for France, in opposition to a similar _entente_
with England: a view which, of course, he was quite entitled to take
and act upon, though its success in practice must have reduced France
to the position of a mere satellite of the Fatherland. Before the war
it was possibly a justifiable, though scarcely a far-seeing, policy.
The war itself rather strengthened than weakened his tendency in this
direction. Having comfortably recovered from the unpleasing effect
of the murder of M. Calmette of the _Figaro_, for which crime his
wife was acquitted, he used all his influence, in and out of France,
to bring about a peace with Germany, which could with difficulty be
distinguished from complete surrender, as soon as possible. This while
the German armies were in actual occupation of more than a fifth of his
devastated country, that fifth being the richest part of France. His
interviews with Signer Giolitti, a vehement partisan of Germany, and
certain strange intrigues in Rome and elsewhere, could only be regarded
as the more suspicious from the fact that he travelled with a passport
made out in a fictitious name. Altogether M. Caillaux's proceedings at
home and abroad, in Europe and in South America, gave the impression
that he was pursuing a policy of his own which was diametrically
opposed to the welfare of his countrymen.
Some who have watched closely M. Caillaux's career from his youth up
are of opinion that the man is mad. But there is certainly method
in his madness. Whatever the defects to which the high priests of
international financial brotherhood may plead guilty, they never
admit lunatics into their Teutono-Hebraic Holy of Holies. Access to
the interior of that sanctuary is reserved for the very elect of the
artists in pecuniary conveyance. But it is precisely within this
innermost circle of glorified Mammon that M. Joseph Caillaux is most
at home and most influential. And these people, so ensconced in their
golden temple, were the ones most anxious to bring the war to an end no
matter what became of France. This, as has been well said, was a civil
war for Jews; but for the Jews of the great international of Mammon
it was civil war and hari-kari at one and the same time. So there was
weeping and wail in Frankfurt-am-Main, there was wringing of hands in
Berlin on the Spree, and the Parisian devotees of the golden calf were
not less profuse in their lamentations.
As a matter of fact, international finance was, and is, the most
pacifist of all the Internationals, and M. Joseph Caillaux as director
of the _Société Générale_, a portion of the great _Banque de Paris et
Pays Bas_, represented its view perfectly. But that he is not devoid
of political as well as financial astuteness is apparent from the
extraordinary success he has achieved in securing close intimacy and
friendship with the French Socialists. This has assured him the support
not only of Jean Longuet and his friends, with whom he was specially
bound up, but also of _L'Humanité_, with Renaudel, Sembat, Thomas and
others connected with that useful journal. It has, indeed, been very
difficult to understand the bitter hatred which the Socialists of
France have manifested towards the thoroughgoing patriot Clemenceau,
and their persistent championship of pro-Germans such as Caillaux
and Malvy. But the dry-rot of pro-Germanic pacifism has infected a
large proportion of the younger school of international Socialists
in every country. With Socialism, as with commerce and finance, the
German policy of unscrupulous penetration has been pursued with great
success. Honest fanatics as well as self-seeking intriguers have fallen
victims to their wiles. Caillaux was equally fortunate in capturing
both sections. Even the rougher type of German agents, such as Bolo and
Duval, were not without their friends in the Socialist camp.
The investigation of his conduct before the Army Committee of the
Senate was, in effect, an informal trial of M. Caillaux, M. Malvy's
case having already been remitted by the same body for definite
adjudication by the High Court. Naturally, M. Caillaux and his friends
strained every nerve, first to prevent Clemenceau from being forced
into office by public opinion; and then, when his assumption of
the Premiership became inevitable, to upset his Ministry while its
members were scarcely warm in their seats. The French Socialist Party,
unfortunately, aided M. Caillaux and his friends in their attacks,
after having declined the Premier's offer of seats in his Cabinet.
Shortly afterwards Clemenceau himself was summoned to appear as a
witness before the Committee of the Senate on this serious indictment.
It is difficult for us to imagine the sensation which this produced.
Here was M. Caillaux, who had been Prime Minister of France only a
few short years before, who had previously been Clemenceau's intimate
colleague, openly charged with the despicable crime of trading France
away to the enemy.
No wonder a great many thoroughly patriotic Frenchmen could not
believe, even in the face of the evidence, that a statesman of M.
Caillaux's ability, with a great future before him after the war, could
be guilty of such actions as those which were imputed to him. But his
old colleague who had just taken office was in possession of documents
which threw an ugly shadow upon all M. Caillaux's recent proceedings.
As usual Clemenceau went straight to the point. The Government had not
furnished the members of the Committee with mere surmises or doubts
cast upon the general conduct of the incriminated person. There were
printed statements already at their disposal of the gravest character.
With three notorious persons M. Caillaux had intimate connections.
One of them, when arrested, had died suspiciously in prison: the two
others were still under arrest upon most serious charges. If this were
the case of a common citizen he would have been brought at once before
a magistrate. The whole country was crying out for the truth in this
Caillaux case as well as in the Malvy affair.
This happened soon after Clemenceau had accepted office. A month later,
M. Caillaux being in the meantime protected against arrest by his
position as deputy, Clemenceau repeated that if all the probabilities
accumulated against Caillaux had been formulated against any private
person his fate would have been practically decided already. "The
Government has undertaken responsibilities. The Chamber must likewise
shoulder responsibilities. If the Chamber refuses to sanction the
prosecution of M. Caillaux, the Government will not remain in office."
M. Caillaux's admitted conferences with well-known defeatists in Italy
were of such a nature that Baron Sonnino, the Italian Minister for
Foreign Affairs, had himself informed the French Government that he
was inclined to expel Caillaux forthwith. No doubt he would have done
so, but for the fact that M. Caillaux had been, and might possibly
still be again, an important personage in French and European affairs.
Throughout, Clemenceau promised that the public should have the full
truth. He kept his word. The delays in bringing M. Caillaux to a
definite judgment have not been due to him. M. Caillaux's immunity as
deputy was suspended. He was arrested and imprisoned on January 15th,
1918. Four days later came the partial disclosure of the documents
found in his private safe in Florence.
That such papers should ever have been left by a man of M. Caillaux's
intelligence where they might quite conceivably be attached, and
that he should have carefully put in writing the names of men whom
he hoped to use for the purpose of furthering a _coup d'état_, do
unquestionably support the theory that he is subject to intermittent
fits of madness. His extraordinary proceedings at Buenos Aires, where,
according to the United States representative in the Argentine capital,
he entered into a series of most compromising negotiations with the
German von Luxburg, were no good evidence of the permanent sanity of
this successful and experienced man of affairs. But "madness in great
ones must not unwatched go." His object was avowed in that remote city:
to make peace with Germany at any price, for the purpose of reviving
international finance. All these statements coming in succession, and
accompanied by the formulation of the cases against M. Malvy, Bolo
Pasha, with Duval and others of the _Bonnet Rouge_ clique, at length
roused furious public indignation, which the actions of M. Humbert, the
senator and owner of the _Journal_, the paper that Bolo had in effect
bought, further inflamed. Who could be regarded as entirely free from
treacherous designs, when such a crushing indictment as that officially
formulated against Caillaux could be accepted as correct?--when a
Minister of the Interior could be publicly charged with criminal
weakness towards persons more than suspected of high treason of
the most sordid type?--and when a man of Bolo Pasha's career and
associations evidently exercised great influence, not to say authority?
The revelations at the trials of the accused persons, and the ugly
evidence submitted not only made matters look worse for M. Caillaux,
but roused general amazement that such deadly intrigues should have
been allowed to go so far under the very eyes of the authorities. The
career of Bolo Pasha, the direct agent-in-chief of the main conspiracy,
was well known. The men with whom he was on terms of close intimacy
were suspected persons, long before any action was taken. The secret
service department was well aware that he had huge sums of money
at his disposal that were very, very far in excess of any that he
could command from his private resources. The origin of his title of
dishonour from the Khedive could not have escaped notice. Yet he, a
born Frenchman, all whose begettings and belongings were a matter of
record, pursued his shameless policy in the interest of Germany with
apparent certainty of immunity from interference.
It was this very same certainty of immunity that made all but a few
afraid to speak out. Bolo, in fact, was a privileged person, until
there was a statesman at the head of affairs who not only did not
fear to take the heavy responsibility of the arrest and imprisonment
of M. Caillaux, but was also determined that the proceedings in the
other cases already commenced should be pushed to their inevitable
conclusion. "The unseen hand" in France, therefore, was no longer
unseen. Yet so wide was the reach of the octopus tentacles, directed by
underground agency, that even to this day not a few innocent, as well
as guilty, people are in mortal fear lest disclosures may be made which
will in some or other way implicate them. For the trial of M. Caillaux
has yet to come.
The two really dramatic episodes in all this gradual exposure of infamy
were the arrest and imprisonment of M. Caillaux, upon the suspension
of his privileges as deputy, and the public trial of Bolo Pasha. After
what had happened since August, 1914, it seemed almost impossible that
any Minister, however powerful he might be, would venture to go to the
full extent of what was indispensably necessary with M. Caillaux. A
man who had been Prime Minister of France, who in that capacity had
gathered round him groups of politicians whose members looked to him to
ensure their personal success in the future, was formidably entrenched
both in the Senate and in the Assembly. To incur the personal enmity
of such a capable statesman and such a master of intrigue as Joseph
Caillaux was more than any of the previous Ministries had dared to
risk. There were too many political reasons against it. Even the most
honest of the Socialist Ministers themselves seem to have felt that.
All the time, likewise, an influential portion of the Press vigorously
supported the ex-Premier. They carried the war into the enemy's camp by
denouncing his critics either as unscrupulous and lying reactionaries,
who were endeavouring to ruin a really progressive statesman, as men
imbued with such lust for slaughter and eagerness for revenge that they
had lost all grip of the actual situation, or as malignant intriguers
behind the scenes whose one object was to blacken the character
of an opponent who stood in the way of their schemes for personal
aggrandisement.
Furthermore, M. Caillaux, holding the eminent position already referred
to in the world of finance, had the whole-souled and entire-pocket
backing of the French and German-Jew international money-lords. These
magnates of plutocracy, marvellous to relate, found themselves on
this issue hand in glove with the most active international French
Socialists. Nobody who was in the least afraid of political cliques,
of journalistic coteries, of financial syndicates, or of Socialist
rancour, could put Caillaux under lock and key. And the military
outlook lent itself to the encouragement of the leading advocate of
surrender and his acolytes. The word was assiduously passed round that,
now Russia was out of the fray, a drawn battle was the very best that
the Entente could hope for.
France was bled white, Great Britain was war-weary and her workers
were discontented, Italy--think of Caporetto--while, as to the United
States, America was a long way off, President Wilson was still "too
proud to fight" in earnest, American troops could never be transported
in sufficient numbers across the Atlantic, and, to say nothing of
dangers from submarines, there was not enough shipping afloat to do
it. All pointed, therefore, to prompt "peace by negotiation," and
what better man could there be to negotiate such a peace than M.
Joseph Caillaux? It was because he was the one political personage
in France who could secure fair terms for his distressful country,
at this terrible crisis, that he was so persistently attacked by the
Chauvinists as a pro-German and accused of the most sordid treachery by
men who envied him his power at the international Council Table!
Such was the situation. So long as M. Caillaux was at large, and able
to direct the whole of the forces of defeatism, no genuinely patriotic
Ministry could be successfully formed, or, if formed by some fortuitous
concurrence of circumstances, could last for three months. Treachery
breeds treachery as loyalty engenders loyalty. When Clemenceau took
office, therefore, everything depended upon what he did with Caillaux.
Paris and all France held their breath as they awaited the event.
Patriots were doubtful: defeatists were hopeful: soldiers were on the
look-out for a man.
On January 15th, then, M. Caillaux was arrested and put in prison
by Clemenceau and his Ministry. All the predictions of upheaval and
disaster, indulged in by M. Caillaux's friends, were falsified. The
country breathed more freely. Thenceforward, France knew whom to back.
But, supposing that M. Caillaux had still been within the precincts of
Parliament and carrying on his political plots when the terrible news
came of the disasters of Cambrai and St. Quentin, and when the German
armies were within cannon-shot of Paris--how then? Those who knew
best how things stood believe themselves that counsels of despair and
pusillanimity might have prevailed, to the ruin of the country.
No such fateful issue as that involved in Caillaux's arrest hung upon
the result of the trial of Bolo Pasha. But Bolo's whole career was a
tragical farce, to which even Alphonse Daudet could scarcely have done
full justice. Bolo was a Frenchman of the Midi: a Tartarin with the
tendencies of a financial Vautrin: a fine specimen of the flamboyant
and unscrupulous international adventurer. His first experience in the
domain of extraction was as a dentist in the country of his birth. A
handsome, blond young man of fine appearance and manners and methods of
address attractive to women, he soon found that the drawing of teeth
and other less skilled professions led to the receipt of no emoluments
worthy of his talents. To take in a well-to-do partner and decamp with
his wife and the firm's cash-box was more in the way of business.
So satisfactory was this first adventure that he extended his field
of operations, and several ladies had the advantage of paying for his
attentions in the shape of all the money of which they chanced to be
possessed. Somehow or other he found himself in the Champagne country
during the wine-growers' riots, and continued to have a good time in
the district while they were going on. But in 1905 the claret region
proved more lucrative. For in Bordeaux the charm of his disposition
produced so great an effect upon the widow of a rich merchant of that
city that she succumbed to his attractions and married him. This
provided Bolo with the means for setting on foot all sorts of financial
enterprises in Europe and America. He thus became a promoter of the
open-hearted and sanguine type, found his way into "society" of the
kind which opens its arms to such men, had sufficient influence to
become a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and by 1914 had lost all
his wife's money and more into the bargain--was, in fact, in very
serious financial straits from which he saw no way of extricating
himself. Certain Egyptian friends he had made, who later obtained for
him his title of Pasha from the Khedive, were not then in a position to
help him.
But Bolo without money meant a German agent in search of a job. It
proved easy to get it. He notified the Germans through the Egyptians
that he could do good service in France if only he were provided with
plenty of funds. He was so furnished with hundreds of thousands of
pounds. _L'Homme Libre_ said of him that he revelled in the prestige
of having money, to such an extent that he believed that money was
everything. Rather, perhaps, he had become so accustomed to indulge
in pleasures and political and financial intrigues of every sort that
he would run any risk rather than give up the game. So it was that he
carried on the dangerous policy, if such it could be called, sketched
above.
About his guilt there could be no doubt. That he had been closely
connected with people in high places as well as in low, and possessed
considerable personal magnetism, was clear. All this came out in court,
where persons of every grade, from Ministers and Senators to Levantine
rogues and Parisian courtesans, passed in and passed out like figures
on a cinema film. Bolo, of course, denied every charge, and posed as a
financier of high degree, but he was condemned to death, and his appeal
against the sentence was fruitless, though he pretended he could make
harrowing disclosures. He met his death bravely on April 10th. His fate
was a heavy blow to other spies and conspirators.
There was an interpellation on the Bolo trial, a month before his
execution that led to a powerful speech by Clemenceau, in which he
declared that he was first for liberty, next for war, and finally for
the sacrifice of everything to secure victory. He then made a vigorous
appeal to the Socialists to join with the rest of the country in
supporting his Government in a supreme effort to free France from the
invader. "It is a great misfortune that my administration should be
denounced by Renaudel"--then editor of _L'Humanité_--"as a danger to
the workers. My hands are to the full as hardened by toil as those of
Renaudel and Albert Thomas, good bourgeois citizens as they are, like
myself. I have in my pocket a paper in which Renaudel is stigmatised
as Clemenceau's orderly; nay, adding insult to injury, he is held
up to public obloquy as _Monsieur_ Renaudel." Then, addressing the
Socialist group, he declared with vehemence: "We have done you no harm,
but my methods are not yours. You will not defeat Prussian Junkerdom
by baa-ing around about peace." The appeal was quite bootless. On a
division confidence in the Clemenceau Government was voted by 400 to
75. The Socialists were the 75. The vote was a direct outcome of the
sordid and gruesome Bolo case.
SUMMARY OF EVENTS RELATING TO TREACHERY IN PARIS,
JULY, 1917, TO JULY, 1918.
_July, 1917._--Clemenceau attacks M. Malvy, then Minister of the
Interior, for ruinous weakness towards traitors.
Assails the Ribot Ministry as responsible for the propaganda of the
pro-German journal _Le Bonnet Rouge_.
It was shown later that this newspaper had received State support to
the extent of £4,000 a year.
_August, 1917._--M. Almereyda (_alias_ Vigo), connected with Bolo
Pasha, M. Caillaux and the _Bonnet Rouge_, arrested and dies in prison.
M. Malvy "explains" the Almereyda affair.
_September, 1917._--M. Malvy resigns.
_October, 1917._--Debate in Chamber upon M. Léon Daudet's charge of
treason against Malvy.
Captain Bouchardon begins investigation.
Proprietors of _Bonnet Rouge_ arrested.
_November, 1917._--Revelations by Clemenceau in _l'Homme Enchaîné_,
which had been going on for a twelvemonth, take effect on public.
_Bonnet Rouge_ trial.
Revelations concerning M. Paix-Séailles's document about French troops
at Salonika to have been published in _Bonnet Rouge_. Paix-Séailles in
M. Painlevé's _entourage_.
Clemenceau exposes Caillaux's intrigues with Almereyda, the _Bonnet
Rouge_, the defeatists in Italy, and comments on the large subsidies
to the _Bonnet Rouge_ which enabled it to become a daily instead of a
weekly sheet.
Clemenceau forms Ministry.
_December, 1917._--Clemenceau examined before Committee of Senate on
Caillaux affair.
Clemenceau declares if Parliament would not sanction prosecution of
Caillaux his Ministry would resign.
Caillaux's immunity as deputy suspended by vote.
_January, 1918._--Captain Bouchardon's report on Bolo Pasha published.
Traces Bolo's career from 1914, his intrigues with Germany through
ex-Khedive of Egypt and other Egyptians. Receipt by Bolo of £400,000
from Deutsche Bank.
Bolo buys shares in _Journal_, and tries to buy shares also in the
_Figaro_ and the _Temps_.
M. Caillaux arrested.
His private safe brought from Florence containing strange papers
relating, among other things, to a suggested _coup d'état_.
United States agent at Buenos Aires reveals series of negotiations
between M. Caillaux and the German representative, Count Luxburg,
having for object the conclusion of a German peace.
M. Malvy arraigned before the High Court of the Senate.
_February, 1918._--Trial of Bolo begun. Caillaux, Humbert and others
incriminated.
U.S.A. secret service shows that large sums passed from Count
Bernstorff, German Ambassador in Washington, to Bolo for the purposes
of German propaganda.
Bolo found guilty and condemned to be shot on February 16th.
M. Malvy's case before the High Court extended.
_March, 1918._--Bolo appeals.
Bolo case discussed in Chamber. Socialists attack Clemenceau. Vote of
confidence in Clemenceau's Ministry 400 to 75.
Terrible military disasters at Cambrai and St. Quentin due to heavy
German attack on positions weakened by withdrawal of British troops.
_April, 1918._--Bolo shot.
Caillaux in gaol.
Malvy trial continued.
_May, 1918._--Caillaux "explains" his connection with _Le Bonnet
Rouge_.
_June, 1918._--Committee report on M. Malvy's case and fix date of
trial.
_July, 1918._--M. Malvy found guilty of undue laxity towards traitors
and condemned to exile from France.
French Socialists infuriated at M. Malvy's expulsion.