The Dreyfus affair has advanced a step. On Monday the
French Cabinet, after a most exciting scene, during which M. Brisson was obliged to exert his whole moral force, and practically to coercelthree refractory colleagues, decided that the question whether Colonel Henry's forgery constituted a "new fact," and made a new trial of Dreyfus 'necessary, should be submitted to the Court of Caseation. That Court can either decide that it does, or settle that it does not, or in its search for evidence reopen the whole case from the beginning. The general idea in Paris is that it will adopt the third course, and the journals are already discussing, in language of almost lunatic violence, the conse- quences of Captain Dreyfus's return to Paris. Some threaten him with immediate death. The respectable papers all welcome the "return to the domain of legality," but we fear that they are a little premature. If the Court of Cassation decides against M. Brisson nothing will be changed, while if it decides for him the Army will consider that it has been defeated by the civil power. The soldiers and the populace will be enraged because they honestly believe that a corrupt faction or Syndi- cate, financed by Jews, is:attacking the Army, and the Staff will be enraged because they think their unscrupulousness will be made apparent, especially through the evidence of Major Schwartzkoppen, whom the German Emperor will permit to give his testimony. The Staff will, not stick at anything to prevent the whole truth from coming out.
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