Caillaux Speaks

According to the French Nationalists, Premier Edouard Herriot arose one morning last week, abluted, consumed his coffee and petits-pains, descended to his office in the Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Office) and there read certain handwriting on the wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

That evening, the League for the Protection of the Rights of Man gave a monster "banquet of welcome" to Joseph Caillaux,* whose financial genius has, in years past, won nation-wide repute. Two thousand radical and socialist persons were present. Premier Herriot did not attend but, said M. Paul Painleve, President de la Chambre, "he is here in spirit." Presently there entered Maitre Moro-Giafferi, the famed French lawyer who defended Caillaux before the Senate when he was condemned to exile for endangering the alliances of France in 1919. He whooped a cry of delight at seeing his old friend and client, rushed at him, clasped him in his arms, pressed him to him, kissed him ecstatically first on one cheek, then on the other.

After a speech of welcome by M. Painleve, M. Caillaux stood up to orate. What was he to say? He was expected by some to sound the death-knell of Premier Herriot's Ministry. He was expected by others to formulate a new national policy. At least he would make a bid for power. But it would be a difficult business. M. Caillaux's party is in power and he could hardly attack his own party. What was he to do? What could he say?

The ex-Premier got over the difficulty by making a moderate speech. His references to the Herriot Government were fleeting: he confined himself principally to attacking the Clemenceau and Poincare Governments, attacks which at various times brought forth cries of : "Clemenceau must be sent be fore the firing squad." "Let Poincare take Caillaux's place before the High Court."

Said M. Caillaux: "You Nationalist gentlemen who won the military fight have lost the financial fight. You for got about it or perhaps you never realized it existed. Today it is you who are at the bar."

He went on to accuse "the Nationalist gentlemen" (Clemenceau, Poincare and their ilk) for all their financial blunders and their propaganda against the Left parties.

Turning to the actual financial situation, he advocated the scaling down of the high tariffs, increase of taxation and an entente with Germany. It was a restatement of his old policies. The Anglophobe, Germanophile statesman had not budged. He declared that France "must not become a prisoner in the great bastille over which would float the Anglo-Saxon flags."

Such a policy under the present state of affairs, it was argued, could mean only the ruination of French credit and the end of the Entente Cordiale. In that it hardly seemed a constructive program.

*Recently Joseph Caillaux returned to Paris after five years of exile brought to an end by the Amnesty Bill (TIME, Dec. 29).