The Chickasha daily express. (Chickasha, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1899-current, 1920-02-17
Joseph caIlaux Goes to Trial Before
French Senate, Sitting AS High
Court in Connection With
Famous War Drama.
ACCUSED OF PLOTTING
AS HUNS AT PARIS GATE
Decision to Try CailIaux Result Of
Senate Committee sigation;
Boo Pasha, Malvy and 9th
ers Were In the Plot
BY United Press.

by United Press.
Paris, Feb. 17--The French sen
ate, sitting as a high court convened
this morning to begin the trial OF
Joseph Callaux, former premier who
is charged with treason while his
country was at war with GERMANY.
The penalty on conviction is usually
death.
The state has summoned 81 wit
nesses and it is expected that the
trial will last several weeks as the
senate will be forced to give some
time to legislative matters. The
senate will sit three days as a court
and three days as a legislative body.
The trial probably will be the last
Of Importance in the long series of
court proceedings connected with the
complicated drama of treason and in
trigue by which the French govern
ment charged such men as Bolo
Pasha, Louis J. Malvy, Pierre Lee
noire and Caillaux attempted 10 car
ry or a defeatist campaign when
Germany was battering hardest at
the gates of Verdun. They wanted
Germany to come SO near to win
ming the war that Caillaux as lead
er Of the enemies of the administra
tion at Paris, might be called TO pre-
serve the republic, thus embarrass
ing Premier Clemenceau
The trial of Caillaux was decided
npon on September 16 last by the
French senate committee investigat-
ing the defeatist( movement The
basis of the charges against the for
mer premier, as summed up in the
formal report of the senatorial com
mittee- corresponding to an indict
ment in American court procedure
follows.
Political notes discovered in a
Florence safe throw flood of light
on NJ Caillaux's real intentions. They
prove he had conceived a plan to
seize power when, on making the
public believe the Germans were go
ing to take Verdun and win the war,
has followers would put him for
ward as Frances saviour These doc
uments cannot form the basis of a |
charge but justice has the right and /
it is its duty to take account of
them.
The indictment then pictures Gail
laux from the time he left the army
as paymaster, in which he had en-
listed a few months previous, and /
follows him through all his plot |
tings 1t shows him with an infinite /
capacity and desire for labor, but al
ways directed to the ends of his un-
scrupulous ambitions.
He said he went to South America |
on an obscure mission for the gov
ernment and while there met Count |
Luxburg, German ambassador, and
gave him his views on the war for |
transmission to the German govern
ment. Then came his operations
with Marx of Mannheim, who, it was
alleged. furnished cash toward the
defeatist campaign being waged in
Bonnet Rouge, under direction of
Louis J. Malvy. Then there we're
implications of collusion with Bolo
Pasha.
It was Clemenceau who tricked the
master plotter. He started off with
speech in the senate against Malvy, |
minister of finance. who was backed 1
by Caillaux. One after another of
the alleged traitors fell under the |
merciless expose of the administra
tion until on January 13. 1918, after
he had piled up volumes ofevidence
against himself during his testimony |
in the trials of Malvy. Humbert, /
Rolo and others. he was arrested and
lodged in the prison de Sante,
charged with treason