Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/202



Madame Caillaux, who was formerly an actress, has achieved in real life her most remarkable dramatic success. Like Emerson's Lexington farmer, she has certainly fired a shot heard round the world. The assassination of a great political editor by the wife of a powerful minister has recalled to us in a lurid flash the monstrous vanities and violences that raven behind the polite exterior of civilisation. It has given a good many other editors a peg on which to hang a new array of reproachful platitudes. But its effect on the immediate course of politics in France is likely to be of trivial importance. There will be a loud momentary splash, and a wide-going rush of ripples, but it will be found to have been no more than a stone flung into a river already swollen and hurrying to an ambiguous issue. Personal scandals and tragedies are not allowed to disturb that battle of ideas which is the essential life of the Republic. It will be noted that Madame Caillaux' automatic pistol did not purchase for her husband a respite of even twenty hours. The day following, M. Barthou brought the attack into the Chamber to a head by reading the letter of M. Fabre, the Public Prosecutor; the Rochette enquiry has been not delayed,