made it altogether superfluous for him to seriously defend himself in the court-martial of January, 1898.

Passing over "the many minor infamies that have followed in the wake of this great crime," "Huguenot "proceeded to make some concluding reflections on the general situation as it presents itself to the eyes of a minority of loyal but despairing Frenchmen." These were fortified by a remarkable extract from an article in the Law Journal of St. Petersburg, from the pen of M. Ignatius Zakrewski, President of the Russian Court of Appeals, to whom one would imagine the French would listen if they can tolerate any foreign opinion:

"The trials of Dreyfus and Zola could not otherwise than deeply distress the true friends of France. The first of these trials presented a variety of improbabilities and irregularities, of which the most flagrant was the production before the judges alone in the courtmartial itself of a secret document by order of the military authorities. This astonishing infraction of the rules of all correct procedure renders the condemnation of Dreyfus null and void. Guilty or not guilty, he has not been fairly tried. They have simply deported and imprisoned him according to administrative procedure in countries where despotism reigns. It is the bringing back again of lettres de cachet and of the Bastille under the pretext, it is true, of subserving reasons of State, as if that was not the pretext which shielded the most iniquitous acts of the an. cient régime."

But the passages in "Huguenot's article to which attention is principally directed are the following, which the reader should bear in mind as they have borne surprising fruit:

"The affection of the French for their army is as ardent and romantic as that of a woman for her lover. But what if by a sudden revelation it were brought home to the masses, who now parade the streets, crying,

Vive l'Armée, mort aux Juifs!' that their confidence has been betrayed, that the swaggering officers whom they cheered so madly at the trial of M. Zola are the real traitors to France, and that Dreyfus is the victim of their base conspiracy? For the Emperor William holds in his hands a weapon with which, when the occasion arises, he can smite the entire État Majeur, and destroy the confidence of the French people in their army for at least a generation. The series of secret documents sold by Esterhazy does not stop in October, 1894, the date of Dreyfus' arrest, but extends on into the year 1896. (It included many important documents of later

origin than October, 1894, all in the handwriting of the bordereau. Dreyfus cannot have written these, for he was already in prison. The defenders of Dreyfus have themselves a list of these documents, obtained evidently through some well-informed person; for in the middle of April the Siècle, in an open letter to General Billot, gave details of several of them, among others signalizing the plan of mobilization of the Third Army Corps at Rouen, to which Esterhazy was attached in 1896, when he communicated the plan to Schwartzkoppen.) Now the Emperor William, by communicating to the French or European Press in facsimile any one of these documents of origin later than 1894, can, whenever he likes, tear across the web of lies with which the French War Office is now striving to hide its misdeeds. Perhaps the dénouement will come in this way; for the Emperor has, it appears, already authorized Schwartzkoppen, at the close of the last year, to communicate to Count Casella, for publication in the Siècle, on April 8th last, many hints of the truth (and these hints were enough, in the elegant phrase of the Socialist paper, Les Droits de l'Homme, to cause the members of the État Majeur to 'sweat with fear') How long will it be before William II. draws tight the noose into which all the leading French generals and colonels and nearly all the leading politicians of every party, save the Socialists, have so obligingly adjusted their necks. Happy for the French if, without such intervention, they can recover their own self-respect and the regard of the civilized world. judges of this Higher Court (Court of Cassation) are irremovable by the Government, and have already, in the decree which annulled Zola's first trial, gone out of their way to intimate that they will also annul the illegally obtained sentence on Dreyfus whenever they get an opportunity. So there is still some hope for France. This Higher Court keeps the conscience of France alive; and every real friend of France hopes that the day will soon come when its voice and authority will be asserted, and the country forced to awake to the sense of right, throwing off the horrible cauchemar of crime which now broods over it."

The

The prominent points of the article may thus be summarized:

1. In 1894 Captain Dreyfus, an unpopular Jew, was rashly assumed to be the traitorous author of the bordereau, and illegally convicted by means of a trick.

2. In 1897 the French War Office realized that Esterhazy had written the document for which Dreyfus had been transported, but elected to protect the traitor rather than confess their own crime.

3. That the German Government

possesses documents (in the handwriting of the bordereau, delivered to the German Military Attaché in Paris, by Esterhazy, after Dreyfus was transported) which will enable the Germans, at their own convenience, to ruin the reputation of the French headquarter staff by showing that for their own interests they kept an innocent man in prison after they became aware of his innocence.

4. An urgent appeal to the French to undo a great wrong of their own motion, and in their own interests.

II.-" LES ENSEIGNEMENTS DE L'HISTOIRE."

On June 4th, 1898, there appeared a long article of three columns in the French paper Le Siècle, entitled, “Les Enseignements de l'Histoire," from the pen of that able and brilliant Frenchman, M. Joseph Reinach, whose devotion to the cause of justice cost him his seat at the recent elections. He commenced by contrasting the dictum that "the Prussian schoolmaster won the Battle of Sadowa," with the rival view that "victory goes to the big battalions," with which, as a keen soldier, he agreed, adding: "Nevertheless material force is not everything; moral force counts for something, and the country which on the opening of a war is frowned upon by the public opinion of the civilized world is placed at a dangerous disadvantage." He enforced this doctrine by recalling the moral damage inflicted upon France when Bismarck published the famous circular of July 29th, 1870, and thus at a critical moment rallied the wavering verdict of Europe in favor of Germany at the outset of the war.

This revelation certainly placed France in a disagreeable light, and was of the utmost value to her enemy. For it appeared that after the Battle of Sadowa (1866), which had smashed Austria and exalted Prussia into a first-class military and political Power, the Emperor Napoleon III. had addressed demands for "compensation" to the victorious King William who had recently acquired the Danish

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXVIII., No. 3.

Duchies, the Kingdom of Hanover, Frankfort, Hesse, and Nassau. author of the Prussian-Italian Alliance, Louis Napoleon claimed as a reward or set off "la rive gauche du Rhin jusqu'a et y compris Mayence." This proposal was promptly declined in Berlin. Whereupon the French Emperor offered the Prussian King an offensive and defensive alliance on the following terms: That recent Prussian conquests should be recognized, that the Emperor should not oppose the federation of Northern and Southern Germany, that in return Prussia should use her good offices to facilitate the acquisition of Luxembourg by France, and should aid the latter with arms to conquer Belgium. When these cynical overtures were made to Prussia, France was in friendly relations with Belgium, whose neutrality and independence she had solemnly guaranteed, and had promised her protection to the Southern States of Germany.

French policy was at this time imprudent as well as unscrupulous. When Count Benedetti, the French Minister in Berlin, proposed the alliance to Prince Bismarck (August 20th, 1866), and broached the secret terms, he was actually induced to transcribe the latter on a sheet of Embassy paper, which with childlike faith he entrusted to Bismarck. A few days later, having effected an understanding with Russia, Bismarck abruptly broke off the pourparler with Benedetti; Prussia kept all her conquests without offering France a square yard of compensation; and Bismarck's personal prize was the bordereau signed by the French Ambassador.

In 1870 Bismarck had this document photographed, and on the outbreak of war with France he submitted. it to the foreign diplomatists in Berlin. He caused it to be published in The Times on July 25th, and annexed it to his circular of July 29th, which contained the following declaration:

"These proposals are from beginning to end in the handwriting of Count Benedetti, on the official paper of the French Embassy; the Ambassadors of Austria, England, Russia,

21

Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Hesse, Italy, Saxony, Turkey, and Wurtemburg have seen the original and recognize the handwriting. The effect of this disclosure was electrical and stupefying, and France found herself confronting not only Prussia, armed to the teeth, but the fury of united Germany, while Russia, Austria, and England became suspicious or unfriendly. The public opinion of solid Europe crystallized in favor of Bismarck and his master.

After recalling this "desolating incident, Mr. Reinach turns to the future and avows his anxiety, lest history may repeat itself, and in the crisis of her fate France may again have to face the production of equally damaging documents. He points out that the late German military attaché in Paris, Colonel Schwartzkoppen, had bought over 150 papers from a man who still wears the Legion of Honor and the French uniform. What is still more terrible is that these documents contain the overwhelming, irrefutable proof that an innocent man is expiating another's crime, and that the guilty party is protected against the evidence. by those whom he has had the audacity to term his "equals." The Court that condemned Dreyfus had acted in good faith but under constraint. The fact remained that the very man Colonel Schwartzkoppen had described to Colonel Panizzardi (the late Italian military attaché in Paris) as "my man (Esterhazy) was the same whose acquittal (by the bogus court-martial) General Pellieux had congratulated himself on securing, and against whom General Billot, the Minister of War, had not dared to proceed even after the avowal of the letters to Madame de Boulaney, and whom the officers of the headquarter staff had been compelled to shake hands with during the Zola trial: "One of these days-Di tale avertite-when war breaks out between France and Germany, these documents, having been photographed like the Benedetti Note, will appear in facsimile throughout the Press. A successor of Bismarck will attach them to a diplomatic circular, and before the entire world the chiefs of one of the

contending armies will find themselves charged with imposture and felony, and in any case convicted of the most unjustifiable blunder."

The writer inquires "Who will not groan at the thought of a moral Sedan lost before the first shot is fired?" rejects "the policy of the ostrich," which buries its head in the sand to avoid approaching dangers, and claims that patriotic men owe more than their life to their country. They owe the truth at all costs; happily there is still time to parry the risk of an "abominable humiliation." Liberari animam meam. M. Reinach then turns to "Huguenot's" article in THE NATIONAL REVIEW, and quotes translations of the passages in small print which I have given on a preceding page, omitting the two or three sentences enclosed in brackets, and emphasizing a few others by italics. For the sake of clearness I append these translations as they appeared in Le Siècle:

"L'amour de la nation française pour son armée est aussi ardent, aussi romanesque que celui d'une femme pour son amant. Hélas! que se passerait-il le jour où ces foules qui s'en vont criant à travers les rues: Vive l'armée ! Mort aux Juifs!' apprendraient, à n'en pouvoir plus douter, par une déclaration venant du dehors, que leur confiance a été trompée, que ces chefs qu'elles acclamaient si follement au procès Zola ne lui ont pas dit la vérité, que Dreyfus est une innocente victime? L'empereur Guillaume tient, en effet, entre ses mains une arme avec laquelle, quand il trouvera une occasion favorable, il pourra briser l'État Major et détruire, pour une génération, la foi du peuple français dans les chefs de son armée.

...

"La série des documents secrets vendus par Esterhazy ne cesse pas avec le mois d'octobre 1894, date de l'arrestation de Dreyfus ; elle s'étend jusqu'en 1896, comprenant nombre de documents importants, d'une date postérieure à celle d'octobre, 1894, tous de la même écriture que le bordereau Dreyfus n'a pu les écrire, puisqu'il était déjà en prison. Eh bien l'empereur Guillaume n'a qu'à communiquer à la presse française ou européenne quelques-uns de ces documents, pour pouvoir, quand il lui plaira, rompre et déchirer le tissue de mensonges sous lequel l'ÉtatMajor cherche à cacher ses méfaits. Le dénouement viendra probablement de cette façon Il paraîtrait que Schwartzkoppen était déjà autorisé par l'Empereur, quand il communiqua au comte Casella les quelques bribes de vérite qui ont paru dans le Siècle du 8 avril. A quel moment Guillaume II

tirera-t-il le lacet où tant de généraux et d'officiers français, où presque tous les chefs des partis politiques, à l'exception des social

istes, ont si complaisamment enfermé leurs cous ?"

M. Reinach pointed out that the author of these passages "is not an enemy of France." He is a friend for showing us the cloud on the horizon and for exclaiming after uttering his warning:

"Heureux les Français s'ils peuvent faire justice sans une pareille intervention!' Et plus loin: Les juges de la Cour de cassation, en annulant le jugement qui a condamné Zola, ont indiqué clairement qu'ils attendant que l'occasion leur soit donnée d'annuler également la sentence illégale qui a frappé Dreyfus. Il y a donc encore quelque espoir pour la France. La Cour suprême garde en vie la conscience française. Tous les vrais amis de la France souhaitent que le jour soit proche où l'on entendra la voix de ces magistrats, où le pays sera forcé de s'éveiller au sentiment de la justice, échappant à l'horrible cauchemar qui pèse maintenant sur lui."

After quoting "Huguenot's "earnest appeal to the conscience-keepers of France, M. Reinach closes his striking article on "Les Enseignements de l'Histoire" in the following words: "That is the solution that I have always indicated. Dreyfus was not only unjustly condemned; he was also irregularly condemned. The interests of Law precede all others. Moreover, the Government alone can ask for revision in the interests of Law. No doubt many will have to unsay their declarations that Dreyfus was justly and regularly condemned. But what is more honorable than the loyal admission of a blunder? And is not anything better than that blunder? Nothing but the winds of Justice sweeping through the Heavens can scatter the rising clouds."

III. THE PROSECUTION.

M. Reinach's article appeared in the Siècle of June 4th, and, forthwith, all the machinery of the Anti-Semitic fury was set in motion to compel the moribund Méline Cabinet to proceed against the audacious author. Finally, to the delight of the Rochefort-cumDrumont combination, and to the bewilderment of the world at large, it

was announced that M. Reinach was

actually to be tried by a military Court of Inquiry-a tribunal not easily distinguishable to the lay mind from a court-martial. With the vast majority of Frenchmen under the age of fortyfive, he belongs to the army, being in the Reserve. On Wednesday, June 15th, M. Reinach received the following letter translated in The Standard:

"PARIS, June 14, 1898. "General Zurlinden, Military Governor of Paris, to Captain Reinach, of the Territorial Cavalry, Staff Service, Paris.

"Capitaine, I have the honor to inform you that, in conformity with the Decree of June 22d, 1878, you are invited to present yourself before a District Court of Inquiry, which, by order of the Minister of War, will assemble on the 24th June, 1898, at the École Militaire, under the presidency of General Kisgener, Baron de Planta, commanding the 5th Brigade of Dragoons, to give its opinion on the following question: Is M. Joseph Reinach, Staff Captain of Territorial Cavalry, liable to be dismissed the Service for a gross breach of discipline?' The reporter of the Court of Inquiry is Chef d'Escadrons de Carbonnieres, of the 2d Regiment of Cuirassiers, who will acquaint you with the object of the Inquiry.

"By order, (Signed) The Chief of the Staff, 'AURELE GUERIN."

onel Panizzardi C'est mon homme !' c'est le même dont le général de Pellieux se félicitait d'avoir-provoqué l'acquittement, contre lequel le général Billot, ministre de la guerre, n'a pas osé sévir, même aprés l'aveu des lettres á Mme. de Boulancy, et à qui les officiers de l'état-major, témoins à la Cour d'assises, ont été condamnés, par ordre cette fois, a donner la main.”

"Alors, qu'un jour ou l'autre, que demain -Di tale avertite . .-un conflit éclate entre la France et l'Allemagne. Ces papiers ont été photographiés comme l'avait été la note de M. Benedetti sur la Belgique. Ils paraissent en fac-similés dans tous les journaux. Un successeur de M. de Bismarck les annexe a quelque circulaire diplomatique. Et voilà, devant le monde entier, accusés d'imposture et de félonie, convaincus en tous cas de la plus injustifiable des erreurs, les chefs mêmes de cette armée qui va se battre."

The Minister of War also selected the following extract that M. Reinach had translated from "Huguenot's article in THE NATIONAL REVIEW:

"L'empereur Guillaume tient, en effet, entre ses mains une arme avec laquelle quand il trouvera une occasion favorable, il pourra briser l'état-major et détruire pour une génération, la foi du peuple français dans les chefs de son armée.

"Eh bien ! l'empereur Guillaume n'a qu'a communiquer à la presse française ou européenne quelques uns de ces documents pour pouvoir, quand il lui plaira, rompre et déchirer le tissu de mensonges sous lequel l'état-major cherche à cacher ces méfaits. Le dénouement viendra probablement de cette façon."

The court-martial was held in camera on June 24th. Of its proceedings we know nothing except that M. Reinach had been furnished with the following remarkable letter from "Huguenot," which he read to the Court:

"Oxford, June 23. Sir,-I learn

by the papers that you are suspected in Paris of being the author of the article I published in the June number of THE NATIONAL REVIEW, a few lines of which you translated in the Siècle. I have not the pleasure of knowing you. Nevertheless, as an honest man, I deem it my duty to declare by these presents that I am the sole author of the article in THE NATIONAL REVIEW. I am a friend of France, and have always wished her prosperous and great. That is why I thought it useful to publish the information I had gathered as concerns the Dreyfus affair, from the most trustworthy and authentic sources. No

authorized denial will controvert the facts I have established on the evidence of the most unquestionable authorities. Thus I am assured that Colonel Schwartzkoppen will not deny that he made a monthly allowance of two thousand francs to his usual informer, Commandant Esterhazy. I can assure you that the French Staff is threatened with the publication by foreign newspapers, of the facsimile of the documents sold by Esterhazy to Colonel Schwartzkoppen, and which are all in his own handwriting. I assure you that this contingency nearly came about in the month of February of the present year, and that the sword of Damocles is still suspended over the head of the Staff. A sincere friend of France, I pray God that the officers of the Staff may act wisely, while it is yet time, and give proof of the qualities of justice and courage which have ever been the eminent traits of the French Army. I authorize you to publish my letter in the newspapers, and communicate it to the Judges of the Military Court.

"Believe me, Sir, your obedient servant,

"FREDERICK C. CONYBEARE." Two days later this semi-official note was issued:

"In consequence of the opinion unanimously expressed by the Court of Inquiry charged to decide the case of M. Joseph Reinach, and on the proposal of General Billot, Minister of War, M. Reinach, captain of the general staff in the territorial army, is from this

date deprived of his rank, in accord

ance with the decision of the President of the Republic."

Does not the operation of this courtmartial-if finally sustained-establishes a new form of Government in France? Does it not make the military a law unto themselves? Does it not give them a censorship over the civil population until the latter has attained middle age? Practically, every able-bodied Frenchman enters the army, and is subsequently drafted into the Reserve, where he remains until he reaches forty-five. That the