876 



FRANCE. 



bordereau, which was the only material evidence, 

 nothing connected it with him except the similar- 

 ity of handwriting. Five experts gave testimony, of 

 wlioin two declared that the writing was not that of 

 I>reyfus, three that he had written the bordereau, 

 but'of these latter two held that he had written it 

 in a disguised hand, introducing strokes and fea- 

 tures essentially different fn>m his own, though no 

 motive was apparent for such a proceeding, and one 

 put forward a theory that he had traced or copied 

 nidi won! from other documents written by a per- 

 son whose writing resembled his own. Dreyfus 

 from his island prison wrote piteous letters to his 

 wife and family, adjuring them to spare no efforts 

 to establish his innocence and save his honor. His 

 brother Mathieu spent half his fortune in endeav- 

 ors to reopen the case. The officials of the War 

 office iH'came more and more stubborn in resisting 

 the proposal of revision, more emphatic in their con- 



justice; jurists and lovers of freedom that arbitrary 

 military power should override the barriers protect- 

 ing the life and liberty of the individual. On the 

 other hand, Clericals, Monarchists, Boulangists, 

 some of the Radicals and Socialists, all those who 

 believed that the republic was undermined by 

 financial corruption or that it had rendered France 

 weak through its rulers' incapacity and want of 

 authority, and who looked to the army to establish 

 a more authoritative regime, made a political issue 

 of the Dreyfus case and by an abusive press cam- 

 paign stirred the passions of the multitude against 

 all who favored a retrial by tales of an international 

 Jewish syndicate for the deliverance of Dreyfus, of 

 foreign political machinations to insult and demor- 

 alize the army. The indictment presented against. 

 Dreyfus in November, 1894, as drawn up by Major 

 Bexon d'Ormescheville, intimated that Germany 

 was the foreign power to which he had sold mili- 



PRISON Or CAPT. DREYFVS, ON ILE DU T>IABI,E, COAST OF FRENCH GUIANA. 



victious of the prisoner's culpability. In answers 

 t<> interpellations and in scmi-oHicial notes in the 

 press it was hinted that there were grounds for their 

 belief more certain than the evidence of the bor- 

 dereau. Inquiring statesmen were told in confidence 

 that the verdict was not only just, but well founded, 

 because secret documents carrying absolute proof 

 wen- .-how n to the judges in their chamber, docu- 

 ments which for reasons of state could not be pro- 

 duced in the courtroom, even behind closed doors. 

 This staggered jurists still more than the idea that 

 hasty aim prejudiced military men, unskilled in 

 weighing evidence, had convicted an innocent man. 

 The logical French mind, wedded to legality and 

 the safeguards of IHierty, was disturbed at the 

 thought that any one could be convicted in a French 

 court on evidence with which the accused was not 

 confronted and which he and and his counsel had 

 no opportunity to rebut. Patriots were annoyed at 

 the thought that fears of war or foreign complica- 

 tions should interfere with the course of French 



tary secrets, mentioning as a suspicions circmr- 

 stance his visiting relatives in Alsace without the 

 interference of the German authorities. Premier 

 M61ine and Gen. Billot, when the agitation bei-aim- 

 violent for and against revision toward the c!o- 

 1897, took the ground that the matter was chott 

 jugie, not subject to discussion or appeal except in 

 the improbable case of new evidence bein^' ili- 

 covered, denouncing those who asked for a rectifi- 

 cation of the judicial irregularities as assailants of 

 the authority of the law and the honor of the army. 

 Some of the documents and facts that left no 

 doubt in the minds of the army chiefs of the 

 of Dreyfus, but which they refused to publish. wei 

 letters of Col. von Schwarzkoppen to the Italian 

 attache, Col. Panizzardi, found in the early part 

 of 1H94, one of which referred to a person desig- 

 nated by his initial D. as having brought " a num- 

 ber of very interesting things," another to plans of 

 one of the French fortresses furnished by the "Ca- 

 naille de D." Another, dated in November, 18H 



