and sometimes much more, by Monsieur Calmette in the _Figaro_ attacking Monsieur Caillaux, Monsieur Caillaux’s past, and Monsieur Caillaux’s policy. He was attacked as a politician, as a man, and as a financier, and his silence under attack made the attacks which followed more bitter instead of putting an end to them. Six years ago the Rochette affair had, directly and indirectly, been the cause of more than one storm in the French political tea-cup. It had brought the fierce light of publicity to bear on many public men, and politicians feared publication of the details of the case as much, almost, as the side issues of the Dreyfus case were feared some years before, and as, before that, the Panama and other scandals had been feared. During the Agadir trouble Monsieur Caillaux had laid himself open to a great deal of criticism, and the _Figaro_ did not hesitate to disinter both these affairs and use them as a weapon against Monsieur Caillaux. Another affair of lesser importance in which Monsieur Caillaux’s name was mentioned in the _Figaro_ campaign was the affair of the Prieu inheritance. In this connexion the _Figaro_ did not hesitate to accuse Monsieur Caillaux of dishonourable conduct, and to base on it his unfitness for the post of a Minister of France. It is almost impossible in the space at my command to give all the details of a newspaper campaign such as this against a Minister in power. The campaign lasted nearly three months, and it was so many-sided that I should need another volume if I were to attempt to set down its details fully. But I may resume the broad lines of the _Figaro_ campaign against Monsieur Caillaux and the reason which the _Figaro_ itself gave to its readers for that campaign. Monsieur Calmette from the first declared that he considered the return to power of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux after his downfall in 1911 as a veritable misfortune to France. He considered that the presence of Monsieur Caillaux in the Cabinet was of real peril to French interests, and, as I have explained, it was undoubtedly a peril to the interests of the rich men’s party which the _Figaro_ represented, for Monsieur Caillaux was determined to carry through his tax on accumulated property, and the general idea of this tax was decidedly popular. There is nothing Frenchmen love so much as making a rich man pay. Monsieur Caillaux with political astuteness saw the vote-catching possibilities of his measure, was doing everything in his power to maintain the Doumergue Ministry, of which he was the leading member, at the helm of public affairs until this year’s elections, and would undoubtedly have succeeded.