Vol. 63

Tf}~Outlooklllublisl)tb hlttkl!l

September 9, 1899 No.2

The Dreyfus Trial In spite of the chargefrom the French Supreme

Court to the Rennes court martial thatevidence could be taken only on the ques­tion, Did Dreyfus betray army secrets toa foreign power? that court martial hascontinued to fulfill the desires of the pros­ecution by taking evidence upon fourcharges of guilt. These are: (1) The au­thorship by Dreyfus of the bOl'dereau (ormemorandum of French army secretsfound in 1894 at the German embassy) j

(2) the communication by Dreyfus ofthese secrets; (3) the addi tional prooffound in the secret dossier, or bundle ofpapers bearing on the case j (4) the allegedconfession of guilt by Dreyfus. As to thefirst of these matters, the authorship ofthe bordereau, last week's testimony borespecially on the notes in that documenton the pneumatic brake of the" 120 gun,"and on a firing manual for field artillery.As to the 120 gun, Lieutenant Bruyereand Captain Carvalho both said that its in­spection was easy for any officer to obtain,and that detailed explanations concerningthe brake were given to the officers pres­ent when the gun was fired. On two suchoccasions Lieutenant Br'uyere noticed the.presence of a group of non-artil.lery offi­cers. As to the firing manual,. not onlywas a copy given to each: Qattery, but allofficers- could obtain as . many copies asthey li){e(!... Each.yii~n~ss -had boughtcopies. Major-HaFtm-;tnn, of the artillery,whose testirn()llY before the -Court of Cas­sation. is sUPlJOsed to hav.e influen.ced thatCourtisdecisio'n as, much as' a'ny,' affirmed

" that 'the aJ-ithor of ',the bordereau did notknow what lle was writing about, since hespoke of the" 120 short gun," when hemeant the" 120 long gun." Major Hart­mann's evidence was to the effect thatDreyfus was not the author of the bor­dereau, and that the artillery informationmentioned in it was accessible to many

officers of all arms. General Deloye,I'irector of French Artillery, showed thatan officer like Dreyfus would not havemade the technical blunder of referring tothe hydro-pneumatic brake as the" hy­dr:lulic " brake, as the author of the bor­dereau did. General Sebert, of the MarineArtillery, criticised the bordereau from aprofessional standpoint, doubting that itsauthor could be an artillery officer becauseof the empioyment of expressions whichan artilleryman could not have used.General Sebert closed his testimony asfollows:

I reassert most emphatically that the bor­dereau was not written by an artillery officeror by an officer who passed through the Poly­technic School. I have been sustained 111

giving my eviden~e by my firm belief in theentire innocence of Dreyfus, and 1 am glad 1have had strength enough to bring here ·thestone which 1 have to lay on the edifice ofreparation which you are constructing so care­fully and conscientiously.

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The formal indictmentThe Communication of Dreyfus as the be­

of Secretstrayer of army secrets

to a foreign power (by which phrase Ger­many is understood) contains the followingpassage:

As regards the journeys of Captain Dreyfus,it is clear from his answers l,lndeF cross-exam­ination that ne could go to Alsace by stealthalmost whenever he wished to do so; and thatthe German authorities shut their eyes to ~ispresence there. This faculty of clandestmetravel may properly be made a charge againsthim.As a matter of fact, whenever Dreyfusdesired to visit his old home, once theFrench Mulh'ouse, but, since the war of1870 now the German Miihlhausen, hewas ~bliged to apply to his superior officer,who forwarded a request to the Germanauthorities for a passport. Without suchauthorization, any French officer attempt­ing to enter Alsace would have been

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92 The Outlook [9 September

apprehended as a spy. A groom namedGermain depo ed to seeing Dreyfus at theGerman army manell\·ers. Germain tes­tified that he had been employed in aJivery stable at M ulhouse, had saddleda horse for the prisoner, and that he knewhim to be Captain Dreyfus, as Majord'lnfreville had told bin' so. Maitre lle­mange, senior counsel for the defense,inquired whether the witness had not beenprosecuted for embezzlement. At fi rstGermain denied this, but afterwards ad­mitted it, whereupon the counsel also;,howed that he had been sentenced asecond time for the same crime. Ihey­fus's comment was as follows:

Every year, both while studying and at­tending the Gunnery and Artillery TrainingSchools, I passed one or two months at Mul­house. But I can positively affirm that Inever was present either in an official or semi­official capacity at the German maneuvers.The prisoner's testimony, however, wasnot altogether necessary, so far as thisparticular witness was concerned, forGermain's employer testified that Dreyfushad never hired a horse at that liverystable, and that all the groom had saidwas untrue. Major d'Infreville followed,and declared that he ney,er knew Dreyfusat all, and hence could not have identifiedhim.

The" Confession" Last week's work atRennes had not much to

do with the secret dossier. As that bundleof papers has already been found to con­sist of perjuries and forgeries, its apolo­gists wisely let it largely alone. Theymade their great stand, however, on thefourth and final charge against Dreyfus,namely, that he had made a confession ofhis guilt t.o Captain Lebrun-Renault, ofthe Republican Guard, who had been in­trusted with the task of conducting Drey­fus from his prison to the courtyard ofthe Mjl;~ary School where he was de­graded. The wording of this confession,whicl-. nas been printed and reprintedever sir.ce January, 1895, is: ".If I havegiven up documents to a foreign power,they were of no consequence, and weredelivered in order to obtain more impor­tant ones." On the first day of the pres­ent trial Dreyfus declared that, while hecontinually protested his innocence, he didtell Captain Lebrun-Renault that Colonel

du Paty de Clam came to him in his cell,urging him to admit that, if hegave docu­ments, it was in order to obtain others.This suggestion Dreyfus had emphaticallyrepudiated. As stated before the courtlast week, Captain Lebrun-Renault's ac­count of the prisoner's \\'ords, after thedegradation, reads: "r am innocent. Inthree years my innocence will be acknowl­edged. The Minister knows it well. Hetold ))u Paty de Clam to tell me so, somedays ag-o in my cell. He said to me that,if I had communicated documenl,> to Ger­many, they were of no importance, andthat they were gil'en to obtain more seri­ous and more important ones." On this., confession" Dreyfus commented thus:

I have already explained the meaning ofthese words concerning the Minister. It wasthe answer I gave when Colonel du Paty deClam visited me in prison, when 1 also said 1was innocent. 'I completed this declaration bya letter which I wrote to the Minister in re­sponse to this visit, again asserting my inno­cence. Colonel du Paty de Clam asked me ifI had given up documents without importancein the hope of obtaining others of more im­portance. I told him no; that I wanted thefullest investigation.

Permit me to express my emotion on seeingthat, after five years, a person who heard wordsof mine beginning with a protestation of inno­cence, . . . transformed those words in re­peating them to his superiors, without askingof me, the person most i::terested, a clear andsuccinct explanation, a proceeding which mustrouse in any honest man a sense of shame.Where did Captain Lebrun-Renault get theidea that this was a confession? 1£ that washis idea, why did he not make it certain by adirect question? Why, if my words made nodefinite impression on his mind, did he permithis superiors, without any protest on his part,to pervert and transform them into a formalavowal of guilt? I say that this is an actionagainst which the conscience of all honestmen must protest!In reply to this denunciation CaptainLebrun-Renault had not' a word to say.

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M. F ' . Following this testimony

aJor orzmettt .. came that of Major For-

zinetti, Governor of the Cherche-Midiprison when Dreyfus was confined there.Major Forzinetti testified that, while inprison, Dreyfus always seemed to have thebearing of an innocent man, and alwaysasserted his innocence. Immediatelyafter his degradation, ho\'{ever, Dreyfusgave way to such despair that it was neces­sary for the witness to remain with himuntil three o'clock in the morning. Drey-

1899J The Week'-

93

fus admitted that, after his degradation, hewanted to commit suicide, but that, if hesucceeded in enduring all the torture in­flicted then and later,.it was owing to hiswife, who made him understand his duty.He then added;

It is also to Forzinetti lowe that I -am hereto-day.' I determined, after my condemnation,to commit suicide. It was Forzinetti whopointed out to me what my duty was. It washe who told me to walk with my head highat the execution of tbe sentence and cry outmy innocence. _Major Forzinnetti further deposed thatColonel du Paty de Clam asked him tosurprise Dreyfus in his sleep, catching himoff his guard by throwing the light of abrig:lt lamp in his face. The witnessalso testified that Captain Lebrun-Renaultdenied any admission of guilt made byDreyfus to him. Captain Lebrun-Renaultadmitted this, explaining it by GeneralRisbourg's order to him to deny it toeveryone. The sum of the week's testi­mony was thus' distinctly favorable toDreyfus.

Alleged New Evidence othing about themanagement of the

Dreyfus case by the accusers on theGeneral taff has been more significantthan the fact that as each piece of evi­dence alleged to tell against the prisonerhas been examined, and its futility ex­posed by the defense, some quite newand apparently startling evidence hasbeen produced, in its turn again to bebrought to naught. On Monday of thisweek, when the trial was coming towardits end, the public was startled by theassertion that an entirely new secretdossier existed, which is now called thegeneral espionage dossier. Secret sessionswere ordered to be held to examine thislate-in-the-day evidence.. Still another sur­prise was sprung upon the defense on Mon­day in the testimony of a witness who calledhimself Cernuschi, but who is said bysome late despatches to be an irresponsibleand hardly sane person of another name.This witness says that in '1894, in Paris,where he was staying as a political refugee,he was told by the Austrian militaryattache at Paris (Colonel Schneider) thatDreyfns and three other French officerswere systematically snpplying foreign em­bassies with the military secrets of France.

Why such a dangerous and injurious state­ment should have been made by theattache to a person who was practically astranger does not appear, The defensedemanded an opportunity to investigatethe antecedents and character of the wit­ness. Moreover, this introduction by theprosecution of foreign testimony led M.Labori to demand that the defense should.have the opportunity to introduce testi­mony from foreign sources, which wouldabsolutely deny, not only this particulartestimony, but all alleged evidence show­ing that Dreyfus communicated secrets.

Catherine Harbor Russia is not only start-ling the world by such

great transportation enterprises as, iil

railways, the Trans-Siberian and the Cen­tral Asiatic systems, and, in canals, theinternal waterway which is to connect theBlack and the Baltic Seas j she has alsonearly completed another adjunct of trans­portation, namely, the new ice-free portof Catherine Harbor on the Arctic Ocean,to which a railway from St. Petersburgwill be built at once. The naval andcommercial advantages of this last mani­festation are important. The Russian fleetin the Baltic is always compelled to passthrough narrow and easily blocked chan­nels, but now a nav?.! station will shortlybe opened to which war-ships may sailfrom the open ocean, and from which aeven-day journey will bring them to theforth Sea. On the coast immense shoals

of fish, especiaily cod and herring, comein spawning-time. Next to the fishingtrade expected, the Government hopesthat a hunber trade will be developedfrom the hitherto almost inaccessible for­ests of Olonez and Archangelsk. Theseforests stretch from Lake Onega to theUral Mountains j they are mostly pine.At Catherine Harbor the sun does notrise at all for two months in winter butduring the entire year the harbor is keptfree from ice by the warm Gulf Stream.vVhen work began at Catherine Harborthere were no inhabitants there. TheRussian Government, however, followingIts magnificent if sometimes oppressiveautocracy, erected dwelling-houses andthen transported the entire population ofthe nearest town, Kola, forty lIliles north,to the new town.