Trance, said Sir James Stephen, has committed every crime except
that of being dull. She has certainly not been dull this week. The Chamber was expected when its sittings recommenced on Tuesday to be either furiously warlike or reasonably pacific about Fashoda, but when the sitting began nobody said anything about Fashoda or England. All minds were occupied with Dreyfus, that is, in reality, whether France is to rule herself or the Army is to rule her. So far the Army has proved the stronger, and the Brisson Ministry has fallen, nominally because it did not prosecute calumnia- tors of the Army, really because it had sanctioned the transfer of the Dreyfus case to the Court of Cassation. The President is, of course, consulting about the formation of a new " Ministry of Concentration "—a Ministry of Concentra- tion is a menagerie charged not only to live quietly in its cage, but to defend the barnyard against wolves—but no name of a Minister of War is so much as reported. He will, 1' is said, be a civilian ; but will any civilian take the post ? The inner truth of the situation is that everybody waits to see whether the Army will obey, or will take the government avowedly into its own hands.
