THE NEWEST INCIDENT IN FRANCE.
THE newest incident in France is one of the most disastrous kind. It renders it almost impossible that in future justice should be done under the Republic. It has for some weeks been evident that the Court of Caseation, the supreme Tribunal of France, was preparing by an exhaustive examination of documents and witnesses for an impartial judgment upon the question of Captain Dreyfus's right under the laws to a revision of his sentence. It was rumoured, moreover, that this judg- ment would be in favour of the accused, at least as far as the illegality of his sentence was concerned, a rumour which was acceptable to a great many persons. It was pleasant to the grave men of probity who have all through asserted that in the end the superior Judges of France would in spite of all temptation and all terrorism do fear- less justice according to written law. It was pleasant to the Government, which believed that it could shelter itself from responsibility behind the ermine, and break the attack of its enemies by asserting that it was only carrying out the judgment of the highest Court. And it was pleasant to thousands upon thousands of average Frenchmen who are indifferent to the fate of Dreyfus, but who ever since the confession of Colonel Henry have doubted, like M. Hanotaux, whether the unhappy officer had not been the victim of a plot. It was, -however, most unpleasant to that section of the War Office which has staked its future on proving Dreyfus guilty, to the majority of officers who cannot even yet believe that a Court-Martial can be un- just, and to the masses of excited Parisians and provincials who are beguiled into believing that the whole affair is a Jewish plot intended to break up the solidariti of the Army. A furious campaign, therefore, began against the Court of Caseation, which was accused in so many words of being "Jewish," corrupt, and full of savage prejudice against the "one security of our Fatherland." The language employed surpassed anything in the literature of invective, indeed so far surpassed it that Englishmen refused to dignify it by that name, and called it demoniac drivel. The attack, however, fell a little dead. France had eaten of peppered tongue till it was a little sick of that diet. The Court of Caseation has nearly a hundred years of high repute behind it; even Frenchmen doubted if it was accessible to bribes ; the Court itself moved on in dignified silence ; and then—we had nearly written therefore—a new incident occurred.
The President of the Civil Division of the Court was M. de Beaurepaire, a man of great ambition, devouring egoism, and much astuteness, who had been pitchforked into the Court for real services to the Government in the Boulanger affair, and had been consequently boycotted, or at all events looked upon askance, by his colleagues. He had learned, as Frenchmen do when their amour propre is wounded by continuous slights, to hate and suspect them, especially the President of the Criminal Division, M. Loew, a great lawyer, said to be of Jewish origin ; and at last he saw a chance of making his spite effectual. The Court is practically trying Colonel Picquart as well as Dreyfus, and either thinks it expedient, or is inclined, to treat the former while a witness before it as a gentleman. The investigation is frightfully long, and the Judges pro- vided that during the recess the Colonel should be decently accommodated, should have something to eat, and even, it would appear from one incident; something refreshing to drink. The " Reporter " of the Court, or as we should say, the Commissioner, taking his tone from the Judges, on one occasion even addressed the Colonel in private as "My dear Picquart." M. de Beaurepaire, gathering these facts from the servants of the Court, who consider Colonel Picquart a traitor to the Army, was horrified, or as he prefers himself to phrase it, "stabbed to the heart." He suddenly resigned his important position, and poured out in letters and explanations—which it must have been difficult to print, the letter "I " is so predominant—a stream of charges against his colleagues, with his own deductions from them. The charges—our readers will hardly be- lieve us—we have given in their entirety, and the deduc- tions are these. The Court is given up to its own bad passions ; it has lost all claim to public confidence ; it has taken a side ; it is, in fact, composed of madmen, " but, thank God, their judgment will not be ratified by public opinion." " For me," says M. de Beaurepaire, "I defended my beloved judicature by separating its cause from that of the misguided Judges who are bringing it to disgrace and ruin. I have seen these madmen plying their per. nicious work in contempt of the duty laid down for them by our law, letting passions loose by their own excess of passion, stabbing to right and left till not even the flag was safe from their blows, and civil war was hovering near. Then I, the comrade who knew all but tolerated much, I, who placed esprit de corps before everything, I turned away in anger. In those colleagues my conscience saw enemies, because it saw deserters. It was a fight for the honour of our robes, of the officers of the Army, of every- thing respectable. I spoke unhesitatingly, and I spoke out loud, because in such a case amiability will be akin to treason. I was grieved to bear witness against colleagues, but I did my duty in thwarting their designs. If I have spoilt them I shall have the double pleasure of sparing them remorse and being useful to my country."
We find it impossible to characterise such conduct and such language except in words from which the Spectator habitually refrains, and pass on to consider their effect. We cannot doubt that it will be most disastrous. M. de Beaurepaire is not addressing Philip sober, but Philip mad drunk with passion, with long-continued excitement, and with a sincere belief that he is a victim of atrocious treachery organised by a wealthy foreign caste. Already the resignation has so alarmed the Government that it has taken the inquiry out of the hands of .M. Loew—originally, no doubt, an unlucky selection on account of his name—and has entrusted it to M. Mazeau, a Judge of character and distinction, who holds the highest judicial post in France, that of General President of all divisions of the Court. Already it has stirred up the Anti- Dreyfusard Members of the Chamber to threaten the dismissal of M. Lebret, Minister of Justice, and we cannot doubt that the great object of M. de Beaurepaire is also attained, and the verdict of the Court of Caseation is discredited by anticipation. No amount of argument, no weight of evidence, no history of the Court of Casea- tion, will now convince the excited masses of France that a verdict in favour of Dreyfus was not due either to corruption, or to hatred of the Army, or to that frenzy of anti-social passion of which the mob are just now accusing all wealthy or intellectual men in France. Let us not be unjust to Frenchmen. Even in England if a "Red Judge" broke away from his colleagues during a criminal trial, and declared that they had resolved, for private reasons, on the acquittal of a detested prisoner, it would be nearly impossible to convince the crowd when he was acquitted that he had been fairly tried. In France it will be quite impossible, and until the public frenzy cools down, popular j ustice, the j ustice which recognises innocence and guilt, and sweeps away the stains left by accusation, will cease to exist in France. There are no longer means of investigation. Nobody believes there that Ministers will be unmoved by political considerations. Nobody quite trusts the inferior Judges when a verdict involves the chance of promotion or the certainty of neglect. And now the one Tribunal in which men still had confidence, the great Court which ranked among the first Tribunals of the world, is declared by one of its own Judges to bb so honeycombed with prejudice, so biassed by passion, so careless of evidence, that rather than be asso- ciated with such guilt he throws up a great position, forfeits a pension almost due, and retires to his library to make in peace " revelations" which, as he believes, will shatter all the legal world around him.
" What," asks the average Englishman, who finds in these incidents cause for stupefaction, "can be the matter with France ? and what can be the end of it all ? " To the first question our answer must of necessity be some- what vague. We believe, but of course cannot prove, that France is exasperated almost beyond her own control with the failure to build up an army such as she desired, an army sure of victory and worthy of all honour ; so exas- perated that she is ready to tear in pieces any one who reveals to herself proofs of her disappointment. She has paid for such an army, she has sacrificed her children for such an army, she fully believed that she had obtained such an army, and to tell her that it is not so, that there is rottenness at the very centre of her grand fabric, is more than she can bear, seems to her, indeed, like wilful insult. You may occasionally see a mother in that temper when her eldest hope has "gone wrong "; and France, with a man's courage and a man's energy, is after all a woman. To the second question, however, our answer, right or wrong, is at all events decided. If France is not to be shattered by a civil war, every man pointing a revolver at his neighbour's head, this horrible imbroglio will end in some severe dictatorship, which, by enforcing silence for ten years, will compel all Frenchmen to reconsider themselves, and allow the institutions neces- sary to society to go on. The struggle with the Catholic League ended so ; the wars of the Fronde ended so ; the Terror ended so ; and as the history of a State has always, like the history of an individual, some sort of coutinuity, the Dreyfus war will end so also. The factions have risen, or fallen, to the temper in which, as they are Southerners, blood-letting would delight them. Men are talking in Paris of the chances of a St. Bartholomew, and grave individuals, by no means timid, will discuss the prospects of their own assassination. Blows are exchanged in the Chamber, revolvers are produced in the street, no great meeting ends till the audience hear the steady tramp of riflemen,—there can be but one end to all that, and as the only strong institution left in France is the Army, we believe that the end will be military despotism.
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