THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DREYFUS CASE.
IT is, of course, very pleasant to hear that Alfred Dreyfus is happy at Carpentras, that he has some poor chance of regaining his health, and that he is writing charming letters to acknowledge the sympathy displayed for him all over the world ; but the question for Europe is whether the condition of affairs in France which allowed the Dreyfus case to occur is likely to continue. We fear greatly that it will. The impunity accorded to M. Guerin's impudent attempt to defy the law shows that M. Waldeck-Rousseau, however excellent and upright he may be, is not a pilot for bad weather ; while General de Galliffet's Report to the President in favour of a pardon, and his General Order declaring that "the incident is closed," and that there shall be "no reprisals of any sort whatever," indicate that even he, supposed to be such an iron man, has a lingering fear of his subordinates. There was no necessity for any General Order at all ; and if the Minister of War issued it without consulting his colleagues, he had no right whatever to promise that there should be no "reprisals,"—that is, no prosecutions of the officers whose misconduct alone could justify the verdict of guilty of treason with extenuating circumstances, or the President's pardon for an officer just convicted of instigating and encouraging war against his own country. General de Gralliffet has either acted as holding an authority independent of the civil power, or he has acted weakly ; and in either case one must abandon hope that this Government is strong enough to end the contest between militarism and civil order which for four years has been raging in France. The incident is not closed even in appearance, for even though the Ministry should ask for, and obtain, an Act of Indemnity prohibiting all future prosecutions "arising out of the affaire .Dreyfus," they cannot under the Constitution prevent the trial of M. Zola, who threatens to bring every- thing out, or the appeal of Dreyfus to the Court of Cassation on the "new fact" which his lawyers have discovered. In reality, of course, nothing is closed, The populace will not cease to be Anti-Semite, and while the populace is irritated there is always danger in Paris, where twenty thousand roughs, as the trial before the Senate shows, are willing to risk a descent into the streets, and to support a dynasty they abhor, if only they may have vengeance on a race which they believe, in the face of facts, to be universally prosperous and everywhere treacherous to France. The Church will continue to use Anti-Semitism as a weapon against the Republic in order to substitute for it a soldier who will overthrow Protestan- tism everywhere, as Mr. Kruger, according to the Osserva- tore Romano, is about to overthrow it in England ; and the Army will continue to resent the dominion of "those lawyers" to whom it attributes its present partial defeat. We cannot see in all that has recently occurred any sign of a true cure for the ailments which are disturbing France. The release of Dreyfus pleases the good and those who hold that justice is the only security of a State ; but how will it soothe the Army, which is fretting under obloquy and inaction ; or the Church, which is fretting because Protestantism triumphs everywhere, and seems likely, with the Greek Church, to master all the dark races; or the nation, which is fretting because she has lost the leadership in the world which she thinks her inalienable right ? Occasions for manifest- ing those irritated feelings can never be wanting, more especially in a country where the Press is more hysteric than the people, and where the Chamber accurately repre- sents all the foibles as well as all the forces of the national character. No Act of Oblivion can remove a dis- satisfaction which has its causes in the European situa- tion and the character of the people, and to which it is quite possible the Dreyfus case acted as a kind of safety- valve. There are many cases in surgery in which the closing of a purulent sore, though everybody so greatly desires it, means for the patient the development of more virulent disease.
But we shall be asked : Granting the irritability and restlessness and longing for some gratification of her pride which are all patent in France, what can she actually do except sit and swear at large, or perhaps rave ? She has not a man fit for the Dictatorship, and without a man she cannot make a revolution ; she has not a General whom all trust, and without such a General she cannot go to war ; she has not a statesman who originates or an idea which attracts, and without either an idea or an original statesman she cannot plunge into the whirlpool of social change. What actual step is she to take ? We do not know any more than our interlocutors, and they mistake our meaning if they think we are either endeavouring or presuming to predict events. What we are trying to do is to bring home to them the fact that none of the events which they think satisfactory, and which no doubt are satisfactory, bring any satisfaction to France. Her people do not desire, though La Croix does, to defeat a Protestant people because of their creed, or to avenge themselves on Germany because she is Teutonic, or to break up Italy because she is hostile, although a Latin Power. They desire before all things to make themselves felt, to be recognised as great, and even terrible, to have that veto on all movements in Europe which Frederick the Great declared that the master of France ought always to obtain. They feel this desire so strongly that it makes them savage, that it blinds them to facts, and that it tempts them to wild exaggerations, like the assertion that Eng- land is about to invade "half Africa" without asking the consent of Europe,—that is, of Paris. It is very easy for a people who when thoroughly angry grow silent to despise a temper of this kind while it expresses itself in rhetoric, but its existence is a very menacing fact for the Repub- lican Government, as well as for us, for Germany, for Italy. and for Spain. For France is and will remain a most formidable Power. Her character has for the time de- teriorated, and may deteriorate still further, but a nation of thirty-eight millions of brave men with every variety of capacity, able to bear an annual taxation of a hundred and sixty millions yet keeping her Three per Cents. above par, with two millions of drilled men of fighting age, and with borders which impinge on Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, and are only separated from our own by a steaming distance of two hours, must be a, formidable Power. She has no General ; but how many had she when Dumouriez fled across the frontier ? The obedience of her Army is uncertain ; but where was its obedience on the 18th Brumaire? Her supply departments are all unready; but how far were they ready when Napoleon crossed the Alps for the first time? Europe is changed, it is true, and changed to the disadvantage of France, but in the essential conditions of power France is still strong, at any rate as strong as she was before the Dreyfus case began. She has lost, no doubt, through the incidents of that case, the esteem of Europe, but has she lost it more completely than she had when the Abbe Edgeworth, exaggerating even on the scaffold, bade the "son of St. Louis ascend to heaven" ? It is the defect, as it is the merit, of Englishmen to exaggerate the political results of wickedness. We can see that France is morally rotten, or would be but for the faithful few who have just secured a triumph; but morally rotten States do not fall at once. Imagine the condition of Rome under Caligula. and remember the centuries during which she remained unquestionably supreme within the civilised world. The Dreyfus affair was a shocking one, worse, as we believe, than has yet been revealed; but France remains, and may in a wonderfully short space of time throw up a new group of rulers who will restore much of her energy, and possibly, though we are not hopeful, something of the probity which, except among Alsatians, seems almost to have disappeared.
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