THE DREYFUS AFFAIR (II)
This trial of Zola and _l'Aurore_ was the greatest crisis in the long
succession of crises which centred themselves round Dreyfus. The more
serious the evidence against the conduct of the Court Martial and the
honour of the army, the more truculent became the attitude of the
militarists, Catholics, anti-Semites and their following. Passion
swept away every vestige of judgment or reason. There was no pretence
of fair play to the defendants. Inside the Court, which was packed
to overflowing, inarticulate roars came from the audience when any
telling argument or conclusive piece of testimony was put in on the
side of truth and justice. Outside, an infuriated mob of reactionists
demanded the lives of the accused. The smell of blood was in the air.
The likelihood of organised massacre grew more obvious every day.
Clemenceau told me himself--and he does not know what fear is--that if
Zola had been acquitted, instead of being condemned, the Dreyfusards
present would have been slaughtered in court.
How determined the whole unscrupulous and desperate clique were to
carry their defence of injustice to the last ditch was displayed when
M. Brisson, the President of the Republic, himself a man credited with
austere probity and cool courage, was forced by them to authorise
proceedings against Colonel Picquart, because he had offered the
highest personage in France to help him to discover the truth. Picquart
was therefore to be victimised still further: likewise for the honour
of the army! He was duly incarcerated and degraded. France herself was
being found guilty and cashiered by the persecution of this high-minded
and courageous colonel. Esterhazy runs away when his treachery and
forgeries are finally exposed. Clemenceau and the Dreyfusards are
willing that he should have a safe-conduct back again, if his coming
will help to manifest the truth. A very different attitude towards
a culprit convicted, not by a secret Court Martial, but by his own
public actions and admissions. Yet General Gonse and the General Staff
were ready at first to aid and support Colonel Picquart in exposing
Major Esterhazy, as only a German spy, in constant communication and
collusion with Colonel Schwartzkopfen, acting on behalf of the German
Army and the German Government. Esterhazy was no direct agent of the
French Staff! When, however, it was discovered that Colonel Picquart's
investigations went far to clear Captain Dreyfus altogether, and proved
that he had at any rate been condemned on a forged document, _then_
Picquart himself was to be treated as a criminal, unless he suppressed
the truth at once, and held his tongue for ever.
And so this extraordinary case was now being tried in the open street
before the public of France and of the world--for every civilised
nation followed the changes and chances of Dreyfus's martyrdom--and so
day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year,
Clemenceau, Scheurer-Kestner, Jaurès and the Socialists fought on for
a re-trial. The highest Court of judicature in France, worthy of its
history, accorded the right of appeal. A sense of doubt was beginning
to creep through the community. Thereupon, the Generals, their Church,
their Press, their Mob, _their_ Army, began afresh a very devil dance
of organised forgery, calumny, perjury, vituperation, attempted murder
and concomitant infamies.
Looking back at that period of desperate antagonism, it seems strange
that open conflict should have been averted. It was no fault of the
General Staff and its myrmidons that it did not break out. That such a
result of their campaign of injustice and provocation would have been
welcomed by many of the chiefs of the French Army is beyond question.
At more than one juncture the outlook was so threatening that two, if
not three, pretenders to the throne of France were in the country at
the same time. Things did not take the turn they expected, and they
went off again. All this was known, of course, to Clemenceau, who was
also well aware that a great deal more lay behind the Dreyfus affair
than the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus. Nor did the fact by any means
escape him that those semi-occult ecclesiastical influences which had
been against him all his life, not for personal reasons, but because
he was a Radical, a free-thinker and a champion of free speech, a free
press, secular and gratuitous education, and separation of Church and
State--that those hidden powers were at work behind the General Staff
in the Dreyfus case in the hope of gaining ground on a side issue which
they were losing steadily on the main field of battle.
This it was which made the collision between the two opposing forces so
critical an event for France. This, too, accounted for the desperation
of the losing party.
The Jesuits of the Dreyfus affair had none of the diabolical far-seeing
coolness of the type represented by the Père Rodin in Eugène Sue's
_Wandering Jew_. They were infuriated fanatics whose unreasoning
anxiety to torture and burn their heretic opponents was reflected in
the blundering mendacity and undisguised hatred of their tools of the
military Staff. Hence, in the long run, they delivered themselves into
the hands of the Frenchmen of the future--Zola, Jaurès, Picquart and
Clemenceau. Clemenceau's daily articles, which constituted the most
formidable barrage on behalf of Dreyfus, make up five closely printed
volumes. They are full of life and fire; but they are full also of
crushing argument enforced with irony and sarcasm and illustrated by
telling references to recent history. Abuse and misrepresentation could
not permanently hold their own in a discussion thus conducted. Forgery
and perjury when brought home to the real criminals necessarily made
their case worse. Nothing is more surprising than the lack of dexterity
and acumen on the part of the reactionary forces. They forgot that a
bludgeon is a poor weapon against a rapier in the hand of an expert.
Thus it came about that after a long contest, whose interest, even for
outsiders, was maintained throughout by tragical incidents such as the
suicide of Colonel Henry--the forger for _esprit de corps_ as Esterhazy
was the forger for money and power--the attempted poisoning of Picquart
and the attack upon Labori, a re-trial was forced from the Government
of the day. The names of the chief opponents are already forgotten,
such minor actors and apologists of injustice, forgers and spies on the
"right side" were never remembered. Who now cares whether the _petit
bleu_ was written by Schwartzkopfen or not? Who can recall what Major
Lauth did or bore witness to? The trail of the serpent is over them
all. That is what the world bears in mind to-day. The broad features
of the drama are recorded on the cinema film of history. The faces and
characters of the villains of the piece are already blotted out. Only
the heroes of the conflict remain. And of these heroes Clemenceau might
fairly claim to be the chief. The re-trial at Rennes was, when all is
said, mainly his work.
What a re-trial it was! The Court was still a Court Martial. The
president of the court, Colonel Jouaust, was still a violently
prejudiced officer. The judges behind him were all inspired by that
fatal _esprit de corps_ which accepts and acts upon the Jesuit motto
that the end justifies the means, where the interests of a particular
set of men are concerned. In fact, the combination in favour of
military injustice remained what it had been throughout: a body
resolved that, come what might, the victim of the forged document and
other criminal acts should not be formally acquitted, even if monstrous
illegality at the first trial forced a revision.
Nearly five years had now elapsed from the date of Dreyfus's original
condemnation, when, released from his imprisonment, he stood at the
Bar after that long period of physical and moral torture. Clemenceau
is not a man of sentiment: he had long doubted whether Dreyfus was
really innocent: even the outrageous proceedings at the first Court
Martial had failed to convince him that there might not be something
behind the forged _bordereau_, concealed from the prisoner, which
could in a degree justify his judges: not until the close of the case
against Zola and _l'Aurore_ was his mind made up that, "consciously
or unconsciously," a terrible crime had been committed. But now, with
Dreyfus himself present, with all the old witnesses contradicting, more
directly than ever, one another's testimony, yet allowed incredible
licence of exposition and explanation by the Court; with the evidence
of General Gonse, General Mercier, Roget, Cinquet, Gribelin, Lauth and
Junck cut to ribands by the questions of Dreyfus's advocates; with
Colonel Picquart brought up short by Colonel Jouaust, who had allowed
all sorts of long-winded and irreconcilable accounts to be given
by his favourites subject to no interruption--with all this almost
inconceivable unfairness going on all day and every day through the
Rennes Court Martial, Clemenceau seems to have been really affected,
not only by the injustice done, but by the personal sufferings which
the prisoner on trial had undergone and was undergoing.
Colonel Jouaust's interruption of Colonel Picquart's closely knit but
passionless statement by the exclamation "_Encore!_" was destined
to become famous. It summed up in one word the whole tone of the
prosecuting judges on the Bench. Yet as the case proceeded and the
criticisms of Clemenceau and his coadjutors became still more scathing
than they had been before, it was difficult to see how even a suborned
court could avoid a verdict of acquittal. But this Court dared not
be just. There was too much at stake. The whole of the chiefs of the
army had taken sides against the prisoner. They were there to secure
condemnation of Dreyfus again at all costs. The Court, headed by
Colonel Jouaust, was forced to do the same. It was the "Honour of the
Army" backed by Esterhazy, Henry and Sandherr against the character of
one miserable Jew. There could be no hesitation under such conditions.
Dreyfus was found "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances."
Extenuating circumstances in the dealings of a spy and a traitor who,
not being in any pressing pecuniary need whatever, had deliberately
and infamously sold France to the enemy! Not one of the five judges
who rendered this verdict could really have believed Dreyfus to be
guilty. France was more dishonoured by this decision than if the Court
had definitely declared against the whole weight of the evidence that
Dreyfus was a traitor.
Dreyfus was thereafter "pardoned" and released. That special plot of
the anti-Republican clerico-military syndicate of Father du Lac, to
use Clemenceau's phraseology, had after all miscarried. As the result
of incredible efforts Dreyfus was at last a free man. The world could
judge of the character of his accusers and of his champions. It did
judge, and that verdict has never been revised. A gross injustice had
been partly remedied but could never be fully obliterated. That Dreyfus
was innocent the world at large had no doubt.
Yet, strange to say, there are still men, who certainly had no feeling
against Dreyfus but quite the contrary, who were not convinced. I have
heard this view expressed from several quarters, but the opinions of
two personal friends of the most different character and career made a
considerable impression upon me at the time. The first was my friend,
the late George Henty, well known as a special correspondent and author
of exceedingly successful books for boys. Henty was a thorough-going
Tory, but he had no doubt that Dreyfus was a terribly ill-used man and
the victim of a foul plot--until he went over to France to watch the
re-trial by court martial at Rennes. He returned in quite a different
frame of mind. He knew I was entirely favourable to Dreyfus, as he
himself had been when he crossed the Channel. Meeting him by accident,
I asked him his opinion: "All I can tell you, Hyndman, is that I
watched the man carefully throughout and he made a very bad impression
upon me indeed. The longer I looked at him the worse I felt about him.
I don't deny for a moment that his first trial was abominably conducted
and that he was entitled to fair play. I daresay I may be all wrong,
the weight of the evidence might have overborne me as a juryman. But,
as it was, I felt that if I myself had been one of the jury I should
have given a verdict against him. The man looked and spoke like a spy,
and if he isn't a spy," Henty went on in his impulsive way, "I'll
be damned if he oughtn't to be one." That, of course, is simply the
statement of an impressionable Englishman, who, however, understood
what was going on.
The other anti-Dreyfusard was a very different personality. It was the
famous German Social-Democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht. I knew him well.
A man of a cooler temper or a more judicial mind I never met. As I
have mentioned elsewhere, he and Jaurès, the great French Socialist
leader and orator, were staying with me together in Queen Anne's
Gate, just after the Rennes Court Martial. Jaurès had done immense
service in the Dreyfus matter, second only to that of Clemenceau. He
had studied the evidence thoroughly on both sides. Like Clemenceau,
he had been forced to the conclusion that such methods of defence
would never have been used, unless they had been necessary to cover
up the unjust condemnation of an innocent man, who was known to his
judges to _be_ innocent shortly after he had been shipped off to his
place of punishment. Jaurès's articles in _La Petite République_ had
helped Dreyfus greatly in one way, though in another they told against
him, as the Socialists themselves were unfairly charged with being
anti-patriots and even in German pay. There seemed no possibility
that he could be mistaken. Liebknecht was just as strong on the other
side. He was confident that Dreyfus was a traitor. One of his main
contentions rested on the statement that there existed an honourable
understanding, never broken under any circumstances, between civilised
Governments that, should a man be wrongfully accused of being a spy and
be brought to trial for that offence, the foreign Government which he
was supposed to be serving should notify the other Government concerned
that it had got hold of the wrong man. Now the German Government
had never done this in any way, at any period of the Dreyfus affair.
Of this Liebknecht affirmed he was absolutely certain. Statements as
to Dreyfus's innocence had been made by German military officers;
but the German Government itself, which knew everything, had never
moved. Therefore, urged Liebknecht, Dreyfus was a spy. But the German
Socialist leader gave his own view too. "Have either of you," he asked
Jaurès and myself, "read carefully through the verbatim report of the
re-trial at Rennes?" I admitted I had not. Jaurès said he had. "Well,"
Liebknecht went on, "I was where I was in a position to read the whole
of the pleading and the evidence day by day and word by word. For I was
in prison the whole of the time, and the study of the verbatim report
was my daily avocation. I am as certain as I can be of anything of the
kind that Dreyfus had disclosed secrets to our Government. He may have
done so in order to secure more important information in return. That
is possible. But communicate French secrets to Germany, in my opinion,
he unquestionably did."
We debated the matter fully several times. Nothing Jaurès or I could
say shook Liebknecht's conviction. Nor was it shaken to the day of
his death. I have heard since, on good authority, that more than one
of those who had risked much for Dreyfus never spoke to him again
after the Rennes re-trial. That may easily have arisen from personal
causes, for Dreyfus was not an agreeable man. But I have no ground for
believing that Clemenceau ever saw reason to waver in his opinion in
the slightest degree.
I recall this now, when the lapse of years has calmed down all
excitement and many of the chief actors are dead, to show how, apart
from the mass of sheer prejudice and unscrupulous rascality which
had to be faced and overcome, there was also an element of honest
intellectual doubt among the anti-Dreyfusards. The presence of this
element in the background made Clemenceau's task more difficult than it
would otherwise have been. Even at the present time there may be found
capable observers who lived through the whole conflict, certainly
not sympathetic to militarism, Catholicism or anti-Semitism, who are
still ready to argue that Dreyfus may have been ill-used but that he
deserved the fate to which he was originally condemned! This, however,
may be said with perfect truth, that the victory of his opponents over
Clemenceau, Jaurès, Zola and all they represented would have been a
disaster to France, whatever view may be taken of Dreyfus himself.
In 1906 the first report of the Committee appointed to examine into the
whole of the Dreyfus case was presented. It exonerated Dreyfus from all
blame, declared him to have been the victim of a conspiracy based upon
perjury and forgery. This report secured the complete annulment of the
condemnation at Rennes and restored him to his position in the army,
after years of martyrdom.