The Picquart affair may prove worse than the Dreyfus business.
The Army chiefs, with General Zurlinden, now Governor of Paris, at their head, are evidently determined to -crush him, nominally for forgery, really for, as they think, betraying their secrets to the public and the Courts, and they have one terrible weapon to use. The Army in France governs itself, a Court-Martial being as much beyond the control of the civil Executive as a Court of Justice is. The Staff -officers therefore think that the Ministry in interfering in the trial of Colonel Picquart is exceeding its functions, and they might conceivably decide upon resistance. The Ministry -evidently think they would, for they refused on Monday to postpone the trial, though they know that it is to be hurried only that Colonel Picquart's evidence may be discredited, and he himself prevented for a term from defending himself and Dreyfus. M. de Freycinet and the Premier, M. Dapuy, threatened to resign if the Chamber differed with them, and the Chamber therefore gave them a vote of 437 to 73. The -excuse offered by the Ministry is that they must not interfere with military Courts any more than with civil ones, and that the Court of Cassation can postpone the trial by calling for the papers upon which it is based, as needed for the Dreyfus Inquiry. That hint, however, is much more tricky than courageous, and the general impression in Paris is that the Government is afraid of provoking the Army into action. We believe that to be the truth, and that the fear has a foundation.
