THE POLITICAL MORAL OF THE DREYFUS ACQUITTAL.
THE end of the Dreyfus case, which is perhaps best summed up in the letter from the Colonel of the 12th Artillery announcing that Dreyfus will be cordially received by his brother-officers, and in the statement that General Picquart is soon to command a division, reflects great credit on the organisation of the Republic. We do not mean only that the Government, the Court of Cassetion, and the Chambers have shown a disposition in difficult circumstances to do complete justice to a greatly wronged soldier. It was only reasonable to expect that. The Government stood pledged to " appease " the frightful amount of feeling developed by l'Afaire, and no such appeasement was possible without the reinstatement of the innocent. The Court of Cassation was certain to do justice, that Court being of all others in France the one least influenced by political prejudice. Its Judges are too proud of their long record of rectitude to allow themselves to be swayed by any fear of exciting bitterness in the Army or religious prejudice among the people. As for the Chambers, the new majority, as is evident from their recent votes, were convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus, and being convinced, had no motive to abstain from giving the Nationalist minority another reprimand. All that can be said upon that portion of the subject, therefore, is that the French Government and Courts have at last done somewhat tardy justice to a sufferer who, unlike most such sufferers, had been deliberately wronged. Dreyfus had been a subject of persecution in its very worst sense, and it is difficult to acquit the more fervent Roman Catholics of France of the charge of joining and exulting in it on " religious " grounds.
Something, however, comes out from this final revision which politically is of more importance even than the inclination to be just shown by great tribunals. The Republic has faced, and has survived, a threat of coercion by its own Army. In the beginning the Church and the high reactionaries banded together to use the Army as an instrument for coercing the Republic, and for a moment, through the strength of the feeling roused by the Dreyfus trials, they very nearly succeeded. They had, no doubt, weak points in their case. They had no leader, no success- ful general, no popular dynast in whose name to make a coup d'etat, and they were terribly hampered throughout by the difference of feeling which has existed for at least thirty years in the barracks of France between the officers and the peasant soldiery. The latter, as Marshal MacMahon once pointed out, are in the abstract, and by a great majority, in favour of the Republic. Still, the influence of the body of officers is very great; the dislike of Jews is widespread, especially in Paris ; and it may fairly be said that in the beginning of the affair the weight of opinion in the barracks was dead against Dreyfus, and the horror of his alleged crime was so great that protest in his favour was regarded as almost treason to France. This feeling was intensified, among officers at all events, by the violent suspicion thrown upon the good faith of successive Courts-Martial, which, there is now no doubt, were played upon and wilfully deceived by indi- viduals in great position. Honourable men are slow to believe that their enemies resort to such weapons as forgery and murder, and in the acquittal of Dreyfus both crimes are assumed as possibilities. The Republic neverthe- less survived. There is no reason to believe that the final verdict will excite any military bitterness, or that the conduct of the Senate in exceptionally honouring Zola and Picquart will be considered in any way an insult to military dignity.
This means something very serious indeed. If the Republic has conciliated or controlled the Army in such circumstances as those which surrounded the Dreyfus case, it must be recognised that the Republic is not only a determined but an enduring power. The three forces which it has been supposed might declare against it have been the Church, the Socialists, and the Army. The Church has been beaten, as in France she in- variably is when she descends into the political arena, for though the scepticism of Frenchmen may easily be exaggerated, their Anti-Clericalism is not denied even by the faithful; and the Church, it must not be forgotten, is a great force guided by subtle brains. The English latent feeling that a Roman Cardinal must necessarily be a sort of knavish incompetent is just as much and as little justified as the English Radical belief that an English Duke is necessarily a stupid kind of oppressor. The Socialists, on the other hand, have been more or less absorbed into the Republican mass, the really influential men among them having in practice become Radicals who would make taxation fall rather heavily upon the classes possessed of property,—a point already nearly reached by the Radicals in Great Britain. The third force is the Army, which never quite approves the absence of a personal Commander-in-Chief; which is administered by men who are, owing to tradition, more or less reactionary ; and which suspects all Republicans of a view held only by a section of them,—that a mobile Army is not absolutely necessary to the defence of France, that the country could, in fact, be defended, so long as it seeks a pacific policy, by the Swiss organisation. If, therefore, the Army, taken as a body, has been both conciliated and controlled, the Republic may proceed on its course with as little dread of internal enemies as is felt by the still greater Republic across the Atlantic, and this applies at least as strongly to its external policy as to its policy in interior affairs. There never has been any question as to the Republicanism of the Fleet, which has been more or less Liberal ever since the days of the Revolution.
It is an interesting phenomenon to the student of history this fidelity of conscript armies. There can be no serious doubt that a conscript army in any great country could if it pleased, at least for a period, control the government of that country, and make terms for itself, as the armies of the Roman Empire did, and as Wallenstein tried to do. It is usual to explain this fidelity by a liberal use of the words "loyalty," "discipline," and " patriotism " ; but the explanation is not quite complete. The terrible discipline of the Roman armies lasted through the whole history of the Empire. Their loyalty to successive Imperial houses repeatedly baffled the efforts of insurgents, and the patriotism of the Roman soldier became latterly a kind of religion. Yet the armies were constantly appointing new Governments. We incline to believe that the real explanation is to be sought in the development of modern intelligence, which renders the idea of purely military government abhorrent even to soldiers ; in the fact that conscription leaves the army still a part of the regular population, and therefore under the influence of its general ideas ; and in the weak point of every system of conscription,—namely, the necessity of renewing the ranks at short intervals with men who would rather avoid the military life. Other reasons might be given by observers more familiar with the interior life of the barracks ; but these are on the surface, and they release the Governments of modern States from fear of being assailed by their own most powerful instrument. In France, Germany, and Italy the soldiers can be as much depended upon as the civil staff; and even in Russia it is not clear yet that the indiscipline which undoubtedly prevails for the moment in a portion of the armed force is not caused as much by barrack grievances as by any antagonism to the reigning political system. We suspect., though we know the opinion will be unpopular, that with better and more regular food, the extinction of corruption among the Supply Depart- ments, and a competent Czar, the Russian Army would be as obedient to the autocracy as the German is to the dynasty or the French to the Republic. The Russian Government attributes all its military troubles to the influence of agitators ; but agitation is not so potent a weapon as that. There can be no agitation so impressive, so persistent, and so eloquent as that of the ministers of the Gospel, and yet their one complaint is that they cannot drive their disciples on the path into which, week by week and day by day, they are endeavouring to persuade them. It is not through the soldiers that modern civilisa- tions will perish, the State being respected even when, as in this Dreyfus case, the Army considers the honour of its great corporation to have been unfairly assailed.
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