THE DREYFUS AFFAIR
When Paris at first began talking about the high treason of Captain
Dreyfus, people did not take much notice; it seemed to be but one of
many such. The public was more or less used to events of the kind, and
did not give them more than a passing thought. I happened, however, to
know some friends of the Dreyfus family, and, calling on one of them, I
was not very much surprised to hear him declare that the Captain was
innocent--the victim of an intrigue. Such language was perfectly natural
on the part of relatives of the accused man, but these denials were also
accompanied by several details which gave them more importance than,
under different conditions, would have been legitimate.
For the first time I heard the name of Colonel Esterhazy as one who
could have said a lot concerning this intricate affair had he cared to
do so, and the impression left upon my mind by the conversation which I
had on that day was strong enough to inspire me with the desire to be
present at the coming trial. Consequently, I requested and, after
difficulty, obtained from the War Office permission to be present.
I had never seen Captain Dreyfus before the day when I beheld him
sitting in the dock listening to the evidence on the strength of which
he was to be sent to the Devil’s Island for five long years. I must say
that his appearance did not draw out the sympathy of any onlooker who
did not give himself the trouble to watch his countenance attentively.
Indeed, had his appearance been more prepossessing, he would perhaps
have met with more indulgence than was the case. But in the whole of my
long life I have never seen a man with more strength of character and
more power to keep his personal emotions under control. Not a muscle of
his face moved during the time that witness after witness spoke of his
presumed guilt; his eyes never fired up, even when he heard himself
accused of a crime that he had never committed. The only words he spoke
were uttered in a low tone, in which weariness more than anything else
was apparent, and he never said anything else but the phrase, “Je suis
innocent.”
And yet it was impossible to look at him and not to realise that this
indifferent man, whom nothing seemed to move, who had not even the
strength to protest indignantly against the accusation hurled at him,
was enduring a perfect martyrdom; that his apparent calmness was the
calmness of despair. He knew too well that he could not prove his
innocence, that he had been made the victim of other people’s guilt, and
that he was being crushed by the wheels of a Juggernaut, moved along by
ah inexorable fate. Once he started, and that was when sentence was
pronounced against him, and when the words, “dégradation militaire,”
resounded in the room. A feeling of revolt appeared to shake him, and he
made a gesture as if he wanted to rush forward; but it lasted only a
second, and then he lapsed into his usual apathy, as if he had
understood that his protest would only have added to the bitter feelings
of revenge which the public manifested against him.
After judgment had been pronounced I had the opportunity of speaking to
one of those who had given the verdict. I asked him whether he really
believed in the Captain’s guilt. The officer shrugged his shoulders and
replied: “It is difficult to say. Treason has taken place; and, after
all, it is better to assert that a Jew has been guilty than to fix it on
a Frenchman.”
It seemed to me that these words gave the key to the undercurrents of
_l’affaire Dreyfus_. Some people, whether sincerely or otherwise,
believed that treason had been committed, and finding that it became
incumbent to fix it on someone, preferred to take a Jew as a victim than
one of their own brethren in race and faith.
At the time the affair began anti-Semitism was already very powerful in
France.
Drumont had published his famous books, each rendered so stupid in one
sense by the pertinacity with which he called a Jew every person whom he
thought he had a reason for disliking; and so dangerous in another
sense, by the way in which he appealed to all the evil instincts of the
mob, and urged it to rise against people whose only guilt consisted in
being rich.
The Clerical party especially did all that was in its power to fan the
hatred against Jews, which had always existed in a greater or lesser
degree. It accused them of inspiring all the anti-Clerical measures
adopted by the various governments which had succeeded one another in
the country. Also, it was foolish enough to seize the pretext of the
Dreyfus affair to associate anti-Semitism with the question of the
Captain’s guilt or innocence, and thereby to excite public opinion
against the Jews in general, more even than against the Captain himself.
On the other hand, the Radical party, which was gaining adherents every
day, was delighted to be able to secure the support of the Jews in its
struggle against Clericalism. They, therefore, hastened to accuse the
Clericals of trying to prove the Captain guilty in order to be able to
trace some association between his supposed guilt and the actions of
the numerous rich Hebrews in France.
It has been said that at the beginning of the campaign which was started
in favour of Dreyfus, when someone asked M. Clemenceau what he thought
about the whole affair, the Radical leader replied that he did not know
yet what there was in it, but that he saw it could become an admirable
weapon in the hands of the different political parties which existed in
France.
That weapon no one better understood how to use than he did. His great
ambition had always been to become Prime Minister, if not President, of
France, but so far he had not seen any possibility of realising his
dream. The Dreyfus affair gave him the opportunity he sought, and he was
not the man to allow it to slip.
He engineered the whole campaign begun by M. Scheurer Kestner, when he
proclaimed aloud that he had obtained the proofs of the innocence of
Captain Alfred Dreyfus; he encouraged M. Zola to write his famous
letter, “I accuse”; he gave all the benefit of his experience to those
whom he sent fighting for the cause which he considered to be more his
than anyone else’s, and in the end he reaped the reward of his
unremitting zeal. To the Dreyfus case he owed finally the Premiership of
France, a post which he had coveted all his life, and on the wave of
this affair he would have been elected President of the Republic had he
not found an adversary of importance in M. Briand, whom he himself had
helped to come to the front without suspecting that he could become his
rival.
A curious feature in the Dreyfus campaign was the celerity with which it
became a personal matter with those who took part in it. One and all
sought in its intricacies their own advantage, more than anything else,
and the Captain was very soon forgotten. Having been the pretext for
furthering innumerable personal ambitions, he was scarcely remembered
whilst the fight for his rehabilitation lasted.
As an instance of what I have just said, I will relate an amusing
incident. After the trial at Rennes, and when it became known that
President Loubet had pardoned Dreyfus, I was dining one evening with a
lady, Madame de----, whose salon had been one of the strongholds of the
Dreyfusards. Of course, the affair was discussed. Someone remarked that
it was a pity that the accused man had not been acquitted, as it would
have put an end to the whole sad and, in many points, sordid business,
whereon our hostess exclaimed, “Oh, no, it is not a pity; fancy how sad
it would be if we had not a pretext for carrying it farther!”
This hasty retort, which I am sure Madame de ---- regretted later on,
represented the opinion of most of the partisans of Dreyfus; they forgot
entirely the personal feelings of the victim of this injustice of
political passion, and only sought in the agitation the furtherance of
their own schemes and intrigues.
This Dreyfus campaign completely hypnotised every person who was drawn
into its intricacies. Towards its close, I do not think that even among
the principal actors of the drama one could have found one man or woman
who really understood it, or who could speak of it without allowing
their personal interest to interfere with the opinions held.
As for the real circumstances attending this curious episode in the
history of modern France, I do not think that they will ever be known.
It is certain that among some of the adversaries of Dreyfus there were
several sincere people who believed that he was guilty. There were also
others, quite as earnest, who professed the erroneous conviction, that
once a mistake had been made this mistake ought not, for the honour of
the army and for that of its generals, to be admitted. Of course, this
was a point of view which could never be accepted by anyone calling
himself honest, but, in a certain sense, it can be understood though
never excused.
Only the severest condemnation can be given to the means by which it was
endeavoured to prove Dreyfus guilty, the hideous way in which each one
among all those upon whom his fate depended not only refused to
acknowledge error, but, on the contrary, tried everything that could be
thought of in order to uphold the false theories as to his guilt.
During the time that the agitation for the new trial lasted, I had more
than one opportunity of discussing the innocence of Dreyfus with several
officers holding high commands, and I was horrified to observe the
cynical way in which they tried to explain to me that it was
indispensable that the decision of the Paris court-martial should be
confirmed. When I asked them why, they always replied the same thing:
“Les arrêts d’un conseil de guerre, ne peuvent être critiqués, cela leur
enleverait toute autorité sur l’armée dans l’avenir.” (“The decisions of
a court-martial can never be criticised; it would deprive them of all
their authority over the army in the future.”)
I have never been able to make them understand that, however important
the evidence, a court-martial can be mistaken just as well as other
people.
Another remarkable side of the Dreyfus agitation is the rapid way in
which it subsided and was forgotten, as soon as the Captain was
rehabilitated, and granted the Cross of the Legion of Honour as a reward
for his long sufferings. With the exception of a few people, such as
Madame Zola and her immediate friends, all those who had taken a leading
part in the struggle did everything that they could to induce the world
to forget. M. Clemenceau himself was the prime mover in the general
desire to consign to oblivion this episode in the political life of the
day. The latter, when he became Prime Minister, buried Zola in the
Panthéon. The event was the occasion of a new misfortune for the
ill-starred Captain Dreyfus, inasmuch as a Royalist and Clerical
partisan seized this opportunity to fire at him a shot which slightly
wounded him. The incident nearly gave rise to a panic among the
assistants, who thought that a bomb had been thrown at President
Fallières and the members of the government who were present at the
ceremony.
Having paid this last homage to the writer who had lent the help of his
powerful pen to the cause which he had so ardently championed, M.
Clemenceau hastened to hide in the tomb of Zola every remembrance of the
Dreyfus affair, although by it he had realised his every ambition. It
had given him a popularity among French politicians of his generation
which earlier he had been unable to obtain; it had posed him before the
world as something more than a clever man (which reputation he bore)--as
a real statesman, able to treat on a footing of equality the statesmen
of Europe--and it had paved his way to the Presidency of the Republic,
that goal of his ambitions. Now all his desire was to drive away from
the mind of the public the memory of the political campaign in which he
had taken such a prominent part.
After burying in the Panthéon the mortal remains of the great author
whom he had succeeded in persuading that it was his duty to protest in
the name of France against the iniquity that had sent Captain Dreyfus in
exile to Devil’s Island, M. Clemenceau considered himself free from
further obligations toward those who had been associated with him in the
task of bringing Captain Dreyfus back to France, and restoring him to
his family. He saw no reason to continue to meet them, and when Emile
Zola’s daughter married one of his former secretaries, he refrained from
assisting at the ceremony under the plea of ill-health, an excuse which
appeared to be the more out of place seeing that it was announced in the
papers that on that very day he had gone into the country for the
shooting. The Prime Minister did not care that the world should think he
remained faithful to those associations which had had for their only
excuse the political necessities of the moment.
M. Clemenceau was one of many persons who had seen in the Dreyfus affair
the possibility of becoming either famous or powerful through the energy
with which they defended his cause. Many of the minor satellites had
looked to it in order to emerge from the obscurity in which they would
otherwise have remained to the end of their days. There was hardly a
journalist in Paris who did not try to pose either as a Dreyfusard or
the reverse; they became ferocious in their attacks according as their
professed opinions differed. Everything which until that time had been
considered sacred in France was dragged in the mire and became dirtier
every day. Priests forgot their sacred character; soldiers did not
remember the honour of their flag; politicians renounced the creeds in
which they had believed; respect disappeared from the hearts of men and
from the actions of the nation. One can say that France came out of this
tragedy dishonoured before the world--diminished in her own eyes.
But Radicalism grew stronger during the struggle which waged between the
friends and the adversaries of Dreyfus, and certainly it was owing to
this struggle that anti-militarism became so prominent in France. It was
this episode which taught the nation to despise the army and to rise
against its discipline. From this point of view the campaign in favour
of Captain Dreyfus did much harm to France, but from the moral viewpoint
it is impossible not to admire the feeling of indignation which roused
so many people against the injustice of a few. It is only a pity that
this indignation was so often but the mask under which lurked ambitions
that had nothing to do with the desire to see Captain Dreyfus righted.
Among all the people who were the actors in this drama, there are some
whom it is impossible to pass by. One of them is Colonel Esterhazy, that
dark figure who from accuser became the defender of his colleague, who
certainly knew more about the hidden currents of the whole affair than
anyone else, and who never spoke the truth about it, even when he turned
upon his former superiors, perhaps because this truth would have been
even more shameful for him than for those who had employed him.
I had occasion to meet Esterhazy before the disgrace which overwhelmed
him after the Dreyfus trial. There was a time when he had been a dashing
cavalry officer, much sought after in the most elegant of the many
elegant salons of Paris. I had seen him at the Tuileries, dancing
_vis-à-vis_ with the fair Empress who reigned there, and later on I had
the opportunity of watching him in several houses where we were both
frequent visitors. He was an amiable man, full of wit, and exceedingly
amusing in his conversation. As for his moral worth, no one troubled
about it at that period, and though from time to time scandal of some
sort became associated with his name, no one could have believed him
capable of the dark deeds which later on stamped him with such a stigma
of shame and unscrupulousness.
And yet, a man who certainly was one of the most observant of his
generation; Jules Ferry, who was not destined to see all the episodes
which have rendered the Dreyfus affair so memorable, meeting Esterhazy
one evening, expressed to me, as we were going out together from the
hospitable house where we had dined, the profound distrust with which
the brilliant officer inspired him. “C’est un homme capable de tout,”
he told me, and when I asked him what reasons he had for proffering such
a severe judgment on a man he did not know except superficially--“Look
at his hands,” he said, “ce sont les mains d’un brigand.” Later, when I
saw Esterhazy during the Zola trial, I remembered these words, and
glanced at the hands of the Colonel as he was giving evidence at the
bar; they were repulsive in their shape, and certainly gave one the
impression of being the hands of a brigand.
Esterhazy was the saddest of all the sad heroes of the Dreyfus affair,
because the other sad actor in the drama, Colonel Henry, had at least
the courage to seek in death the expiation of his crime. There has been
much talk about his suicide, and some people have expressed a doubt
concerning it, suggesting that it had been simulated, and that the
Colonel had simply been put out of the way, as he might have become
rather an embarrassing witness. I hasten to say that I do not believe in
this version. Colonel Henry was a soldier, more imbued with military
discipline than Esterhazy; he would not have been able to face the shame
of a public trial, and his soldier’s soul would not have found the
courage to accuse those who had had the right to order him to do the
deed for which he was to lose his life, and his honour after death.
When I say so, it is on the authority of another soldier who also had
had to do with the question of the guilt or innocence of Captain
Dreyfus, General de Pellieux. It was he who had read during the debates
of the Zola trial, when the great writer had been sent before a jury to
answer to the accusation of having published his famous letter, “I
accuse,” the false document manufactured by Henry. It is impossible to
deny that the General had done so in the full conviction that it was
decisive and would make the whole world share his own persuasion as to
the guilt of Dreyfus. When, later on, M. Cavaignac, who presided at the
War Office, had the loyalty to declare publicly that this document was
nothing but a forgery, made for the purpose of preventing the revision
of the trial of the unfortunate prisoner on Devil’s Island, General de
Pellieux was inconsolable. His grief was that anyone could believe he
had wanted to crush Dreyfus with the weight of an accusation which he
had known to be false, and it was whilst discussing with me later on all
the details of this unfortunate episode in his life that he told me his
opinion about Colonel Henry, adding that he had not the slightest doubt
as to the suicide of the unfortunate officer.
Another rather strange feature of the Dreyfus affair was the advantages
which it procured to all the enemies of the Clerical party.
Unfortunately for the Catholics and Legitimists in France, they took up
the most intransigent attitude in the question. They identified it with
the Catholic Church, and with its interests, and they thought to find in
it the pretext for a crusade against the Jews and the Republicans,
declaring publicly that it was only under a Radical government,
protecting the Israelites, that such an event as the so-called treason
of Captain Dreyfus could have taken place. And among all the enemies of
Dreyfus, none was more ardent than Père du Lac, the famous Jesuit, in
whom the Republicans found their greatest and one of their most powerful
adversaries. Another thing which must never be lost sight of when
talking about the Dreyfus affair is that no one among all his defenders
ever gave a thought to Dreyfus himself. The feelings and sufferings of
the unfortunate man were always talked of, but those who continually
harped upon them would have been extremely sorry had the government
decided to treat him well, or to forgive him for his supposed crime. And
one cannot understand how among all the ministers who were in power in
France during the years which he spent in disgrace, not one tried to
put an end to the agitation by inaugurating the re-trial which was to
prove his innocence.
I make no excuse for again calling attention to this fact, for I
perceive that I am doing exactly the same thing myself; that, by talking
about the Dreyfus affair, I forget entirely its hero, who deserves
certainly more than a passing mention. I learned to know the Captain
well after his return to France, and I learned, also, to respect and
esteem him. Any man in his place would have harboured feelings of the
most bitter resentment against those to whom he had owed such terrible
sufferings. Dreyfus never once allowed an expression of anger to escape
his lips. He did not care to talk about the years of his trial, but when
he was forced to do so it was always in most measured terms, and without
the slightest shade of a revengeful spirit. He once told me that, as a
soldier, he could understand the feelings of those other soldiers who
had believed him capable of betraying his country, but he thought that
had he been in the place of his accusers, he would have taken greater
care to verify the accusation against a brother in arms than had been
done in his case. But whilst eager to see justice done to himself, he
never approved of the means that some people used in order to bring this
about. Dreyfus aspired only to one thing, and that was to be left in
peace. He accepted the rehabilitation which was granted to him, but in
his innermost heart he regretted rather than otherwise that he had to
occupy once more the attention of the world. Captain Dreyfus was always
modest and retiring in his disposition and character; it was just as
painful to him to be praised as to be blamed.
To tell the truth, he returned from his exile a man of broken physique
with shattered nerve, and had he been able to do what he liked, he would
have retired somewhere in the country, far from the madding crowd, which
had in turns hissed and applauded him. He felt deeply grateful to all
those who had worked for his release, but it was painful to him to have
to see them, to mingle once more among the world whose injustice he had
never forgotten.
Captain Dreyfus had an admirable wife, whose devotion has not been
sufficiently appreciated by the public. She behaved heroically towards
him, the more so that she was not very happy with him before the
catastrophe that separated them for a while.
Just before the Captain was arrested, his wife had applied for a divorce
from him; but when she heard him accused, she immediately put an end to
the proceedings and devoted herself entirely to the task of his
rehabilitation, sparing neither her health, nor her efforts, nor her
money in order to obtain it.
When he arrived at Rennes, she had only one thought, and that was to
throw herself into his arms. Now the couple live a most happy life, but
though Madame Dreyfus has entirely forgotten that in regard to her
husband she performed more than her duty, he always remembers it, and
nothing could be more touching than to witness the reverence with which
he approaches her, or speaks about her. For once the absolute devotion
and sacrifice of a noble woman met with gratitude, and was not in vain.
In general all the family of Captain Dreyfus has stood by him, with a
loyalty beyond praise. Mathieu Dreyfus, his brother, did not allow the
slightest opportunity to escape by which he could defend the accused
man. He worked at it with a patience and an energy worthy of the highest
commendation, and never allowed himself to be discouraged in his
efforts. It was he, also, who uttered the best definition of his
brother’s case. When asked once whether he did not feel happy in the
knowledge that such a powerful party (to which belonged the most
distinguished men in France) had taken up the cause of Captain Dreyfus,
he replied that, of course, he could not but feel flattered by it, but
that perhaps his brother would have obtained the justice which was due
to him sooner, if it had not been to the interest of so many people to
drag his case out as long as possible, in order to reap personal
advantages from it which they would never have obtained without the
opportunity which he had given to them, at the cost of so much suffering
and so much unnecessarily borne shame.