The Dreyfus Tragedy page 4

This masterpiece of forging and word-play - doubly brilliant because the faked annotation took off the Kaiser's style to a "t" - or a "v," rather - was executed - need it be said? - by Ferdinand Esterhazy.

On Febreuary 23, 1898, Zola was found guilty of criminal libel and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. The novelist, however, escaped to England.

The old guard had won again. A wave of pogrom swept over the country. The spirit of old France was very near extinction. But the opponents of stupid militarism and militant stupidity saw one significant process, steadily working towards the truth amidst this welter of sentiment, prejudice and lies. The original tissue of falsehood had been considerably torn by the successive trials and inquiries. To keep their case against Dreyfus plausible the prosecution had always to produce patches - in the form of forged documents. Now, after the Zola trial, the chauvinist case was held together by one manuscript - le document liberateur. Because the camarilla had no other evidence but this against Dreyfus, it focused every spotlight of publicity upon the forgery. The Minister of War, Cavaignac, had read it out in a dramatic speech in the chamber;_ the government had caused it to be posted outside every mairie in France. That was all very well - but supposing this document also were proved a forgery?

On the evening of August 13, six months after the Zola trial, a Captain Guignet was sitting in his office at the Intelligence Bureau classifying the documents in the Dreyfus case. Guignet was certainly no Dreyfusard; but a discovery he made in that file showed him to be no anti-Dreyfusard either. For Cuignet was indiscrete enough to abstract the document liberateur and examine it. He held it up to the light and made the curious discovery that while the edges of the document were bluish, all the middle part, which contained the damning evidence, had a red tinge. There was no doubt the famous find was composed of different pieces of paper stuck together.

In the old days, when General Mercier was Minister of War, when Boisdeffre and Du Paty de Glam were pulling the strings, the discovery would have gone no further - would never had been made in fact. But Cavaignac, though he was War Minister with an anti-Dreyfus portfolio, so to speak, and though he had boomed the document liberateur all over the country, could not be compromised by a revelation that the evidence was forged, for Gavaignac had really believed it was genuine.

So Gavaignac recalled Henry from leave and mercilessly interrogated that "blunt, straightforward" man. Henry's bluff, downright game that had worked so well in the past broke down now. At last he confessed he had forged the document. The "Dear Friend" and the signature were genuine - they had been stuck on to a forged message.

Gavaignac did not attempt to hush up an investigation that was certain to lead to his fall from power. Henry was arrested and sent to the fortress of Mont Valerien. He was found next day with his throat cut.

There was no longer any doubt of a re-trial after this. But the man - or what had been a man - on Devil's Island had many more months to wait yet before he was shipped back to the land of his adoption. The Henry revelation led to the fall of his original enemies - Boisdeffre and Du Paty de Clam. But the army was solid - not against Dreyfus - he had been forgotten years ago - but against revision of the Dreyfus verdict. The prestige of the army - that chosen race of people - must not suffer. France was split into two camps, and for many months a coup d'etat seemed imminent. The President of the Republic, Felix Faure, was against revision, so was Zurlinden, Minister of War after the fall of Cavaignac. But against these two diehards stood Brisson, the Minister-President. This man went over the head of a commission appointed by the government to inquire into the question of a revision and won over the Cabinet to grant a petition for Dreyfus's re-trial.

So Dreyfus was bundled back from Devil's Island to stand on trial again at Rennes. Throughout those three years in his hell of solitude one thought had beaten in Dreyfus's brain - or, rather, deep in his being, hammering like a heart-throb, "My innocence will be established." As the cruiser bore him towards France, as the train carried him to Rennes, ship's pistons, rail rhythm, repeated, "now my innocence will be established."

It was not to be - not then. The Rennes trial was a repetition of all the others. If differed from the original court-martial in this respect - that then there had been a man in the dock, now there was a corpse, and where formerly in the witness-box the solid Henry had stood only his ghost hovered now. Otherwise everything was the same. There was, of course, a new crop of ministerial names - new since the fight to obtain a re-trial - and the Waldeck-Rousseau government with the staunch General de Galliffet as War Minister was all for Dreyfus. But what did these mushroom governments count when Mercier was still in a position to marshal and impose upon the public mind all the lying evidence the imminent danger to his reputation inspired him to procure?

All the old tricks prevailed again. Mercier played the well-thumbed "Kaiser annotation" card. An assassin shot down and seriously wounded Dreyfus's lawyer, Labori; the government was intimidated. Dreyfus was found guilty of treason. Whether the original bordereau scavenged by Mme. Bastian was written by accused or not, Dreyfus had supplied the information mentioned in that covering note. That was the dreary verdict and that was what stirred the majority of French people at that time to demonstrations of hysterical glee.

The thing - for it was still not a man - in the dock could not understand. It had repeated its innocence again and again. It articulated as a wronged individual, not realising that it had long ago become extinct as an individual, that what was being fought out at the trial was a conflict of ideologies - chauvinism against democracy. All through the proceedings Dreyfus laboured under the delusion that the man he had most to thank for his recall was General de Boisdeffre.

Despite the handful of honest men who had worked all along for truth, the affair became like the Mad Hatter's teaparty. For what was the truth? That Dreyfus was innocent. After the Rennes trial nearly every one recognised that. Those who did not were clearly incapable of recognising anything. Yet the verdict condemned Dreyfus to ten years more imprisonment. The judgment was produced on mirage evidence, evidence for the most part of men feverishly thirsting for lies, men serving up for facts sv.ch fiction as Lebrun-Renault's drunken declaration of a "confession"; as the Serb Czernuski's tale "he had been told" Dreyfus was a spy; as the story that a search of Dreyfus's flat revealed a Staff College syllabus with a part torn out that corresponded to portions found in the German military attache's office (no matter that the missing pages had afterwards turned up in Dreyfus's rooms - the sequel must be suppressed).

The trial over, the mirage faded. In the light of what reason remained to France it was seen the verdict could not stand. But Mercier and his men had saved a rout and made a treaty possible.

Dreyfus was not imprisoned. He accepted an amnesty that allowed him his freedom but denied him rehabilitation. Seven years were to pass before France was in a healthy enough condition publicly to acknowledge the wrong it had done to a citizen who by every law of logic, by every dictate of abstract justice and every shread of impartial evidence was as innocent of treason as any soldier who had fought for the Republic in the heydey of its history.

At long last all the lies are nailed - Mercier and Lebrun-Renault confess to the forgeries; there was no Kaiser annotation, no confession before the first Court-Martial - everything was fabricated "in the interests of France." At long last Dreyfus is rehabilitated, decorated with the Legion of Honour, Picquart becomes Minister of War, Zola is interred in pomp. To all outward appearance vice is punished and virtue rewarded. Yet in fact the murky history does not end so cleanly. After the Rennes trial Picquart and his lawyer, Labori, became embroiled with the Dreyfus family and Dreyfus himself, because the Jews were content to wait and would not fight for rehabilitation. At Zola's burial in 1908 a Frenchman shot at Dreyfus and wounded him. In 1917 Georges Glemenceau, ardent and active Dreyfusard at Zola's trial, turns upon Caillaux, who had fought with him then, and arrests him for high treason The whirligig spins, but Pilate jests on.