Government were numbered. M. Caillaux, it was clear, could not escape searching investigation into his war-time activities. On Nov. 13 the Ministry was defeated by 279 votes to 186, and all the eleventh-hour efforts of Socialists and Socialist-Radicals could not keep Clemenceau from power.
Clemenceau quickly got to work, and showed, by the choice of his colleagues, that he intended to have as little as possible to do with the political patchwork system whereby each successive prime minister regrouped around him all the eminent failures of his predecessor's Cabinet. He himself, as a fighting leader, took the only portfolio which in his eyes had any importance at the moment that of the Ministry of War. The rest of his Cabinet was as follows: Nail, Justice; Pichon, Foreign Affairs; Pams, Interior; Klotz, Finance; Georges Leygues, Marine; Clementel, Commerce; Claveille, Public Works; Loucheur, Munitions; Laf- ferre, Public Instruction; Henri Simond, Colonies; Colliard, Labour; Jonnart, Blockade; Boret, Supplies and Agriculture. Of these only Klotz, Clementel, Claveille and Loucheur had held office previously during the war. M. Clemenceau surrounded himself by five under-secretaries at the War Office, one of whom was charged with the administration of military justice. The ministerial declaration read to Parliament on Nov. 20 was in its tonic effect upon the country as stimulating as a victory at the front. " The war and nothing but the war " was, he declared, his Government's one thought. " We have one sole, simple duty," he said, " to stand fast with the soldier; to live, suffer and fight with him; to cast from us everything that is not for our country." The rhetorical portions of his declaration amounted to a moral mobilization of the whole country. The concrete passages were concerned with treason, food restrictions and finance. Towards treasonable propaganda the Government would act without mercy. All such cases would be tried by court-martial; they would tolerate no more pacifist campaigns, neither treason nor half-treason. Within the month effect had been given to this determination. Those cases which had already been opened were handed over to the military legal authorities; the Malvy case had been sent before the High Court; the prefect of the Paris police had been removed from his post ; the Government had applied for the suspension of parliamentary immunity in the case of Senator Humbert, Joseph Caillaux and two other members of Parliament. The parliamentary immunity was suspended before the end of the year; Caillaux was arrested on Jan. 14.
The Treason Scandals. The chief a/aires de traison which were investigated by military justice and the High Court were those arising out of M. Caillaux's visits abroad and activities at home, from M. Malvy's administration as Minister of the Inte- rior, the sale of Le Journal, the policy of the Bonnet Rouge, and Bolo's connexion with both these last-named matters. All the cases were closely connected one with the other, and the prosecution sought, in the conduct of each one of them, to show that M. Caillaux was involved in all. Bolo was on friendly terms with Caillaux and Malvy, and had acquired an interest in the Journal and the Bonnet Rouge. His was the first case to come for trial be- fore the third Paris court-martial. The case opened on Feb. 4 1918, when Bolo and a subordinate figure, Porchere, were in the dock, Cavallini, an Italian, who was also charged, being in Italy. Lt. Mornet, acting as public prosecutor, outlined the case. He charged Bolo, under nine different clauses of the penal, military and criminal code, with " having entered into com- munication with the military power of Germany, notably through the ex-Khedive of Egypt, with the object of favouring enemy undertakings; having with the same object in view received from Cavallini moneys sent by the German Government to the ex- Khedive in order to create a pacifist movement; having in 1915 endeavoured for the purposes of the enemy to buy shares in the Figaro with money of German origin; having in 1916 received money from the German Government for the purpose of creating a movement of opinion favourable to the enemy in the French Press; having furnished to M. Humbert, director of the Journal, enemy money with a similar intention." The prosecution showed that Bolo had made efforts, ever since 1915, to corrupt the French Press. After Germany had lost the first battle of the Marne she
turned round in search of other weapons with which to restore her military fortunes. Bolo, who was a hanger-on of the former Khedive of Egypt, went to see him in Switzerland, where he was playing an important part in the German system of espionage and intelligence. Bolo suggested pacifist operations in the French Press. Herr von Jagow, then German Minister for Foreign Affairs, accepted the scheme submitted and promised to support it with 10 monthly payments of 1,000,000 francs. In March 1915, the ex-Khedive received 2,000,000 marks from Germany, and paid a portion of this sum to Bolo, who invested 150,000 francs in the Rappel, and tried to obtain interest in La Revue. the Cri de Paris, the Figaro, and I' Information. The German Government, apparently considering that it had not received its money's worth from this payment, a large portion of which was devoted by Bolo to the settlement of his personal and pressing debts, did not carry out the rest of the programme. Bolo there- upon played for higher game, and, having obtained an option on the controlling interest in the Journal, went to America, where he was provided with 336,700 by the German Government, 220,000 of which he used to purchase shares in the Journal.
The Bolo case aroused an immense sensation, not only because of the revelation of the danger to which France had been exposed from treason from within, but also on account of the high position occupied by many of the witnesses, and perhaps especially by reason of its bearing upon the cases of MM. Caillaux and Malvy, with both of whom, as the correspondence produced showed, Bolo had been on intimate terms. Fruitless attempts were made by the defence to compromise the President of the republic, Poin- care, and to discredit the Clemenceau Government. Eleven questions were put to the court on the last day of the trial, Feb. 14, and to each the unanimous reply of guilty was returned. Bolo was condemned to death, Cavallini was sentenced to death in contumaciam, and Porchere was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Bolo, after appealing both to the courts and to the President of the republic against his sentence, after trying to save his life by eleventh-hour revelations, was executed at Vincennes on April 17.
Bonnet Rouge Trial. Twelve days later the gang of the Bonnet Rouge came before the third court-martial. In this case there were seven accused, four of whom were charged with intelligence and commerce with the enemy Duval, Marion, Goldsky and Landau; one, Joucla, with intelligence with the enemy only; and two others, Vercasson and Leymarie, principal private secretary of the Minister of the Interior, with complicity in commerce with the enemy. The first notification of the case was the arrest at the Franco-Swiss frontier of Duval, who was then found to be the bearer of a German cheque for over six thousand pounds. The investigations of the French police showed that the Bonnet Rouge was the centre of a chain of news- papers established in Paris, with no other apparent purpose than that of spreading despondency and doubt among the French as to the justice of their cause, and suspicion as to the honesty and loyalty of their Allies. The arrest of Almeyreda soon followed that of Duval. Almeyreda was an unsavoury and needy hanger-on of politics, who had fished in the troubled waters of anarchist and communist ideas before the war; had furnished Caillaux with a bodyguard of toughs to protect him during the trial of his wife for the murder of Calmette, and remained in touch with him as well as with Malvy throughout the war. He founded the Bonnet Rouge in 1913 as a weekly paper, and with funds supplied by Caillaux, after the murder of Calmette, transformed it into a daily publication in 1914. It was on his representations that, when the war broke out, M. Malvy, then Minister of the Interior, agreed not to proceed with the arrest of those who were nationally suspect, and of whom a list had been prepared in anticipation of war. This list included a number of political undesirables, among whom was Almeyreda himself. He was found dead in gaol on Aug. 14 1917, and, although he was known to be a morphine maniac, the circumstances of his death, and the interest which certain highly placed personages had in his disappearance, led to definite charges against the prison authorities. At the trial it was shown that Duval had received about 40,000 from a Mannheim
