I do not think it unfair criticism to point out that it is this mentality which makes for such corruption in French politics as we had to deplore at the time of the Panama scandal, for such corruption as was seriously suspected during the progress of the Rochette case, and for the undue use of influence which is considered quite natural on the part of individual members of the governing bodies of France, by which I mean not the Government alone, but also the Chamber and the Senate, which undue use of influence culminated in the shameful apotheosis of the scene in the room of the Prime Minister which resulted in the postponement, with its consequences, of the trial of the financier Rochette. The inner history of the Caillaux drama differs in details from the inner history of other French scandals, but it differs very little from them in essentials. In every case when one of these unsavoury ulcers on France’s fair name festers and bursts we find the same pus in it. The root of all the evil is the inherent selfishness of the French character, and I am not disinclined to believe that there is a great deal of inherent dishonesty too at the root of the evil. A Frenchman will often refuse to keep a promise in commercial matters because the man to whom he made it can produce no _written_ proof that the promise was given. Business men will refuse business interviews without the presence of a witness. There are severe laws in France compelling, under severe penalties, the restoration to the unknown owner through the police authorities of anything of value found lying about. But ask anybody who has picked up money in the street what he would do with it if nobody saw him pick it up. The Frenchman is frank. He will laugh and will maintain his right to pocket this find, because if _he_ loses anything he knows that the person who finds it will pocket it if he dare. I have seen respectable Frenchmen swindle other respectable Frenchmen out of a halfpenny in a Paris omnibus. It is not the halfpenny that is important, it is the mentality which underlies the theft. It may seem a far cry from the theft of a halfpenny to the Rochette scandal, but you can trace the connexion very easily if you care to think the matter out. And if you think it out with care, you cannot fail to see that this basis of selfishness, permeating upwards through every vein of French private, public, and political life, has been directly responsible for the Caillaux drama and for the results which that drama has had and will have on the life of France in the future. XII BEFORE THE LAST ACT OF THE DRAMA