“The republican régime,” writes Monsieur Lebon, “is settling down in the mud. We may consider it permissible to think that a few more stains will not be much more visible. When a man is drowning it is perhaps an excess of precaution to refrain from throwing him a rope for fear of splashing him with a few drops of water. One of these days it will become perceptible that if the Third Republic fell so low, it was because the Third Republic was ‘la République des camarades.’” This is severe language from a Frenchman about France, but unfortunately there is much in the political history of recent years to support this charge of graft and of corruption. Charges of corruption in the N’Goko Tanga affair, charges which were not altogether denied satisfactorily, were brought by Monsieur Ceccaldi when the colonial Budget came up for discussion, and the fact that Monsieur Ceccaldi has since become a close friend and supporter of the Caillaux Government makes these charges all the more significant now. Each Government in France has a secret fund of £44,000; £24,000 of this fund are used comparatively openly. The little balance of £20,000 is not nearly enough for the funds needed by the Government at the general elections, and it is a well-known fact that a great deal more is spent. The question as to where this money comes from is hardly a mystery. The Mascuraud committee, an association of parliamentarians and commercial men, has been generous with money in the past. This year it is said to have withheld a large proportion of its usual subsidy, and the _Figaro_ and other Opposition papers declare that Monsieur Caillaux did what he did for the purpose of ensuring at the coming elections the election of Government candidates for the Chamber of Deputies. [Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_ MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S FRIEND, M. CECCALDI] On January 15 another long article over Monsieur Calmette’s signature in the _Figaro_ dealt severely with Monsieur Caillaux’s relations with financial men in Paris. The suggestion made was that Monsieur Caillaux, who was a member of the board of the Argentine Crédit Foncier, the Egyptian Crédit Foncier and other enterprises of international finance, was for personal and pecuniary reasons unable to resist the pressure brought to bear on him by his colleagues among the directors of these financial boards, and was obliged to do what they told him to do, irrespective of his own political convictions or of the higher interests of the country, which interests he as a Minister of the State should have considered first. According to the _Figaro_, a Monsieur Arthur Spitzer, an Austrian by birth, a Frenchman by naturalization, and one of the most influential directors of the big French bank, the Société Générale, had gained his position there owing to the influence and recommendation of Sir Ernest Cassel.