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[163] 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[164] 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[165] 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[166] 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.”[167] 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[168] 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[169] 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[170] 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.
