Whatever may be the result of the trial of Madame Caillaux there is no
question of the immediate result of the murder of Monsieur Calmette, on
public opinion in France. Men and women alike, all consider that Madame
Caillaux should be treated with the utmost severity, and men and women
alike, all are anxious to see whatever punishment is possible meted out
to her husband. So real is this feeling—and I am talking now of the
general public and not of journalists or politicians—that Monsieur
Caillaux has found it necessary to go about, when it has been needful
for him to show himself in public, with a strong bodyguard of police
in plain clothes. He has allowed himself to be persuaded, contrary
to his first intention, to remain a candidate for re-election in
his constituency, but he is so well aware of the feeling against him
everywhere that, although lack of personal courage is certainly not
one of the faults of the ex-Minister of Finance, he is conducting his
canvass by deputy, and remains in Paris under constant guard.
[Illustration: _Le Miroir, Dessin de F. Auer._
PRESIDENT POINCARÉ GIVES EVIDENCE ON OATH IN THE CAILLAUX DRAMA BEFORE
THE PRESIDENT OF THE APPEAL COURT, WHO WAITED ON HIM FOR THIS PURPOSE
AT THE ELYSÉE.]
I have spoken of the unfair manner in which the Opposition Press
of France have fallen on everybody who has ventured to express the
opinion that there was any motive at all for Madame Caillaux’s crime
except an inhuman lust for murder. And yet not only the evidence of
Monsieur Caillaux himself but the evidence on oath of the President of
the French Republic, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré, and the evidence of
other independent and unbiased witnesses, shows that there is reason
to believe that the immediate motive of the crime was a hysterical
fear of disclosures which Madame Caillaux believed would be made in
the _Figaro_. Of course this hysterical fear does not excuse the crime
of Madame Caillaux, but it certainly goes very far towards explaining
it, and the existence of the belief that there was danger of the
publication of letters which contained intimate allusion to her private
life cannot be doubted by anybody, no matter what their political
convictions may be after reading the evidence which President Poincaré
felt called on to give, creating by the giving of it a precedent which
emphasizes the doctrine that the President of the Republic has, with
the rights, the liabilities and the responsibilities of every private
citizen of France. President Poincaré did not go to the Palace of
Justice to give his evidence. Monsieur Caillaux, on Thursday, April
2, informed the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard, that certain
persons had evidence of importance to give which bore on his wife’s
case. Among the names which he mentioned was that of Monsieur Raymond
Poincaré, the President of the French Republic, and Monsieur Caillaux
stated that the evidence for which he asked the examining magistrate
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