banker called Marx, who acted as distributor of German Secret Service money in Switzerland during the war. It was also shown that in the Ministry of the Interior complete chaos prevailed in the police services, which were themselves in conflict with the secret services of the War Office; that it was with the connivance of M. Malvy (who, as Minister of the Interior, had subsidized the Bonnet Rouge) and his chef de cabinet, Leymarie, that Duval obtained passports for some of his visits to Switzerland.
The trial ended on May 15, when Duval was sentenced to death, Marion to ten, Landau to eight, Goldsky to eight and Joucla to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. Leymarie was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine; and Vercasson to two years' imprisonment with benefit of the First Offenders' Act, and a fine of 5,000 francs. Duval's appeal was dismissed on July n, and he was shot a few days afterwards, on the eve of the opening day in the proceedings against M. Malvy, who, for three years during the war, and in five successive Governments, had been Minister of the Interior.
The Malvy Case. Malvy appeared before the Senate, sitting as a High Court, on July 16 1918. The charges against him, in practice though not in law, were first formulated by Clemenceau in his attack upon the Ribot Government in July 1917, when he showed how greatly negligent administration at the Ministry of the Interior had encouraged defection, both at the front, and behind the lines. That attack led to Malvy's resignation, and to the fall of the Ribot Government, and later, in Oct. 1917, it was given a sensational sequel by the Royalist, Leon Daudet, editor of the Action Franqaise, who, acting as chief spy-hunter during the war, had aroused public and Parliament to a knowledge of the danger of allowing enemy agents and traitors complete free- dom of action in France. In his newspaper for months he had attacked Malvy; and on Oct. 4, in a letter addressed to President Poincare, he roundly accused Malvy of having betrayed France during the three years' term of his office during the war; of having communicated the French plan of attack on the Chemin des Dames in the spring of 1917 to the enemy, and of being partly responsible for the military mutinies which followed that attack. So slow is the machinery for bringing a member of Parliament to trial before the High Court, that the report of the Senate Com- mittee on the charges was not read until July 16. It was upon that report that M. Malvy was charged with a number of acts committed between 1914 and 1917, calculated to favour the cause of the enemy, and to incite French soldiers to revolt. The reporter, Senator Peres, briefly dismissed the definite charge of treason made by Daudet, but examined in some detail the effect of Malvy's policy of tolerance and slackness on the moral of troops at the front. He showed that while first Gen. Nivelle, and afterwards Gen. Petain, were vehement in their requests for sterner measures in dealing with defeatist propaganda, Malvy and his police turned a deaf ear towards them, and that Malvy actually, on the eve of the military mutinies which affected over a hundred French battalions in the front zone, complained of " myths that are too easily believed." The military and civil police were constantly at warfare. The soldier urged that foreign and other suspects should not be permitted to roam about the country; and while Malvy maintained with equal vigour that it would disturb public opinion to make many arrests, the police in his care actually furnished passports and gave missions to men whom their own services had denounced as enemy agents. One passage of the report which had special bearing on the approach- ing Caillaux case was that in which it was shown that when Caillaux was visited by an Austrian peace agent, and while he was being shadowed by the police, he was warned by Malvy.
The Public Prosecutor, in his opening, ignored Daudet's accusations, and charged Malvy with culpable negligence in the administration of his office; with having been, instead of a servant of his country, the servant of a politician, Caillaux, who desired to keep his power in politics although he was himself discredited and out of office. Instead of acting as the sword against the suspect and the treason-monger, whenever the name of Caillaux was involved he acted as the shield, ordering that surveillance and prosecution should be stopped, restraining what zeal his police
possessed in controlling and stopping the activities of secret anarchist printing works, revolutionary committees, and the spreading of Bolshevik and pro-German doctrines. The Public Prosecutor showed that Malvy had been duly warned in a document drawn up by one of his own chief officials, known as the Red Book. This work, of which six copies only were made, was given to the President of the republic, the prime minister, the prefect of police, Hudelo, and Malvy himself. The vital period in the case was that which followed Gen. Nivelle's unsuccessful of- fensive in the Champagne. It was then, as Caillaux subsequently wrote, in Mes Prisons, that his own policy of conciliation with Germany, and Clemenceau's policy of victory over Germany came to grips. The country was low-spirited, war-weary, and suffering from a bad political and economic leadership. It was at this time that the defeatist propaganda became most intense. The agitation for a Socialist Peace Conference at Stockholm had made considerable headway among the people; the Bonnet Rouge and all its offspring were most active; men coming back from leave were addressed by agitators, given seditious literature; the Bonnet Rouge was distributed free in the trenches; troop-trains returning from the front had on several occasions to be kept out of Paris, so clamorous were the men for peace; in 118 battalions, including some of the best troops in the French army, mutinies broke out and had to be repressed with military severity; the streets of the capital were filled with strikers, and labour troubles were spreading through the provinces. All that the military leaders had dreaded had come to pass, and any action Malvy took was always in favour of the agitator.
The evidence given at the trial by police officials, civil servants, and soldiers, concerned with the moral of the army and employed in the intelligence services of the country, showed that the whole machinery of police and counter-espionage had been devoted to the protection of political patrons, their friends and allies, rather than to defending France and confounding the designs of the enemy. Complete anarchy prevailed. Police records were lost, suppressed or stolen by the various personages most concerned. Official fought official, department was arrayed against depart- ment, ministry against ministry, to such an extent that the public and the Senate could have been pardoned in believing that Malvy and his friends and officials thought themselves engaged, not in a struggle for national existence, but in a civil service war. Political capital was naturally made by the defence out of the fact that Cabinet sanction, delivered by successive prime min- isters, Viviani, Briand and Ribot, had been obtained for the acts performed and the policies pursued by Malvy as Minister of the Interior in their respective Governments; and the solidarity of politicians was shown when those three former prime ministers, with the latitude allowed by the elastic customs of the law, made with their testimony three speeches for the defence.
The trial came to an end on Aug. 6, after a lot of legal and political quibbling, when the Senate, definitely dismissing Dau- det's charge of direct treason, found Malvy guilty of " forfeiture " a charge correspondent to the old one of " forfaulture "by 101 to 81. This amounted to declaring that Malvy had been guilty of such gross general negligence as amounted to treason. The Court found:
" That M. Malvy, acting as Minister of the Interior, and in the exercise of his functions from 1914 to 1917, has failed in, violated and betrayed the duty of his task in conditions which place him in a position of forfeiture, and has therefore come under the criminal provision of Art. XII. of the law of 1875. The Court therefore con- demns M. Malvy to five years' exile, but without civic degradation."
The verdict pleased no one in particular, but it was delivered on a day when Gen. Foch's nomination to be Marshal of France marked the beginning of victory. It aroused no political or public sensation, and, on Aug. 10 Malvy, after protesting his innocence, left Paris for San Sebastian and exile.
The Caillaux Trial. Caillaux did not actually come up for trial until Feb. 17 1920, although it was the third time that the Senate had sat as High Court to consider his case. The previous dates in the case were: (a) demand for suspension of Caillaux's parliamentary immunity, Dec. n 1917; (b) immunity voted by
