THE RENNES VERDICT AND THE DREYFUS CASE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTA.TOR."]
SIR,—As it is some thirty - eight years since I con- tributed my first article to the Spectator, and since then you have not unfrequently done me the honour to insert various papers from my pen, perhaps you will bear with me if I venture to point out that your reviewer has rather curiously misconceived and misunderstood a recent article of mine which appears in the October number of the Fortnightly Review. So far is it from being my object in that article to limit the responsibility for the crime against Dreyfus "to Henry, Esterbazy, and Da Paty de Clam, and in a secondary degree to Mercier," that I have throughout endeavoured to trace the mischief to the prevalence of a malady which has entered into the blood of the French Army as a whole. I think that the actual blood-poisoning was in this instance due to a wound inflicted by a sordid and selfish crime in which Henry and Esterhazy were probably, so far as any evidence exists, alone engaged ; but I maintain throughout that the reason why these two men were able to divert suspicion from themselves and to fasten it falsely on Dreyfus, was that the blood of the Army was, for certain reasons which I have alleged, already iu an unhealthy condi- tion.—I am, Sir, &c., THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.
[We mast again express our regret that the very great pressure on our space allows us to publish only a part of the letter sent us by a much valued contributor.—ED. Spectator.]
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