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Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1926, Page 2

The portfolio of Finance in the re-icently-reertnstructed French Cabinet has been taken up bv M. Joseph Caillaux, who has already had previous experience of the office. He has had an astonishing career. In 1914. when bis wife shot M. Calmette, editor of “Figaro.” it was thought that his career had been effectively ruined. All through the war his pacifist policy earned him the hatred and contempt of

every patriotic Frenchman, and in 1917 lie was arrested on a charge of communicating with the enemy. Ho was sentenced in 1920 to three years’ imprisonment, five years’ banishment from Paris, and ten years’ deprivation of civil and political rights. He was, moreover, accused by his enemies of private immorality and financial corruption. Had anyone suggested in France a few years ago that, a man with such a sinister record could ever again play a prominent part in French public life he would have been thought mad. And yet the French Senate, by 176 votes to 104, a couple of years ago passed a Bill granting him an amnesty, and now lie is back in Ministerial Office. Caillaux was born in 1863. He was the son of a Finance Minister in the Broglie Cabinet, and so inherited a leaning towards politics. He became a Treasury official, and a professor of political economy, entered the Ohamebr of Deputies in 1898, and, so unmistakeable was bis ability, was given the post of Finance Minister by 31. 3Valdeck-Roussean" in the following year. Caillaux had always been a pacifist, and one of his first moves on becoming Premier in 1911 was to court an alliance with Germany ns a. substitute for tlie entente with Britain. The result was the Agadir crisis. Germany thought that with tlie French Ministry favourably disposed, Britain could he safely ignored. But when Mr Lloyd George, at the request of Mr Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, made the famous speech at the Mansion House in July, 1911, and the Ministry showed that it meant business, the Kaiser found that he had'miscalculated, and climbed down. That error of judgment lost 31. Caillaux tlie Premiership, and it was not- until 3L Doumcrgue formed a-Ministry in 1913. that he returned to office as Finance 3linister.