296 



FRANCE. 



absorbed 284,000,000 francs, that of Tonqum 269,- 

 000,000 francs. The Soudan since 1881 has swal- 

 lowed up over 200,000,000 francs, Madagascar 

 close to 15p,000,000 francs, Dahomey perhaps 75,- 

 000,000 francs since 1892, taking only the sums 

 appropriated in the annual budgets, which do not 

 cover the whole expense. Madagascar, for in- 

 stance, in the year of the expedition entailed an 

 expense of over 75.000,000 francs that does not 

 appear in the budget. The aggregate sum that 

 has been absorbed in colonial expansion since the 

 period of conquest began has been about 1,500,- 

 (MK) 000 francs. The annual exportation of trench 

 produce and manufactures to the colonies is only 

 a little over 119,000,000 francs, of which 36,000,- 

 000 francs w O to the American colonies, 41,000,000 

 francs to Africa, and 35,000,000 francs to Asia. 

 Foreigners sell 2(5.000,000 francs of goods in the 

 American. 42,000.000 francs in the African, and 

 (53.000.000 francs in the Asiatic colonies. The 

 trade of the colonies has in some instances de- 

 c-lined, in others it has passed into the hands of 

 foreigners, as the Germans on the Guinea coast 

 and "elsewhere the British. French exports to 

 Martinique have declined from 22,000,000 francs 

 in 1S58 to 15,000,000 francs in 1895, to Guade- 

 loupe from 18.000,000 to 9,000,000 francs, to Re- 

 union from 30,000,000 to 12,000,000 francs. The 

 importations from France of Senegal and the Sou- 

 dan have, on the other hand, risen from 9,000,000 

 to 19,000,000 francs, those of other African pos- 

 sessions from 2,000,000 to 13,500,000 francs, those 

 of Indo-China from 4,000,000 to 23,000,000 francs; 

 but from these totals should be deducted the 

 values of war material and stores destined for 

 the troops. Taking the colonies as a whole, 

 their purchases of French goods were 92,500,000 

 francs in 1858, and were only 28 per cent, greater 

 in 1895; but during this period the expenditure 

 of the French Government in the colonies has 

 grown 500 per cent. 



The Dreyfus Case. Spies of the secret intel- 

 ligence department of the army in September, 

 1894, discovered in the waste-paper basket of 

 Lieut.-Col. Von Schwarzkoppen, military attach^ 

 of the German embassy, fragments of a paper 

 which, when pieced together, formed a memoran- 

 dum of which this is the translation: 



" In the absence of any news indicating your 

 desire to see me, I nevertheless send you, sir, 

 certain information of interest: (1) A note on 

 the hydraulic brake of 120 (method of operating 

 this piece) ; (2) a note on the outpost troops 

 (a few modifications will be made in the new 

 plan) ; (3) a note on modifications in artillery 

 formation; (4) a note relating to Madagascar; 

 (5) the scheme relative to the manual of field 

 firing of March 14, 1894. This last paper is ex- 

 tremely difficult to procure, and I can have it 

 at my disposal only for a very few days. The 

 ministry has issued a definite number to the 

 corps, and these corps are responsible for them; 

 each officer is obliged to return his copy after 

 the manoeuvres. If, therefore, you wish me to 

 take from it whatever may interest you, and hold 

 it afterward at my disposal, I will take it, un- 

 less you want me to make a copy in extenso and 

 address it to you. I am just leaving for the 

 manoeuvres." 



It was evidently part of a treasonable corre- 

 spondence between a French officer and the for- 

 eign attach^. No one but an artillery officer, and 

 one connected with the general staff, it was 

 thought, could furnish the information enumer- 

 ated in this bordereau, or memorandum. Capt. 

 Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer of artillery at- 

 tached to the staff, who had made himself un- 



popular with his comrades by his inquisitiveness 

 regarding details of the service not connected 

 with his own duties, was suspected, and the chief 

 of his bureau affirmed that the handwriting of 

 the bordereau resembled that of Dreyfus. Spies 

 investigated his history for years past, and dis- 

 covered numerous facts pointing to his guilt. In 

 correspondence between the German and Italian 

 attaches in 1893 the former hinted at informa- 

 tion he expected to receive from some one on 

 the general staff; and, in a later letter, of re- 

 ceiving the military organization of the French 

 railroads, which could only come from the fourth 

 bureau, where Dreyfus was then at work on the 

 most important of the railroads, the one lead- 

 ing to Germany; and another suggested that the 

 spy should be careful not to speak to his chief 

 in the second bureau about a matter on which 

 information was desired, for the reason that the 

 foreign agent had openly made inquiries of the 

 chief regarding the same subject, and this letter 

 was written at a time when Dreyfus was em- 

 ployed in the second bureau. The Minister of 

 War had knowledge at the same time from an 

 independent source that there was a traitor in 

 the second bureau. A French agent employed 

 to furnish a foreign general staff with false in- 

 formation received a rude letter pointing out 

 that pretended disclosures were contradicted by 

 positive information derived from the map de- 

 partment of the Ministry of War, and another 

 French agent had oral "information that there 

 was at this time a traitor in the second bureau. 

 The bordereau was couched in the technical lan- 

 guage of the general staff, and exactly fitted 

 in with the work done in that office during the 

 summer of 1894. Another suspicious circum- 

 stance was the adoption by the German Govern- 

 ment of a shell much resembling one that had 

 been elaborated in the artillery school at Bourges 

 while Dreyfus was. there. After leaving the 

 school Dreyfus wrote to an officer there asking 

 for the details of later experiments with the 

 shell, falsely alleging that the professors at the 

 Ecole de Guerre desired the information. The 

 charging of melinite shells seems also to have 

 been revealed to a foreign power about the same 

 time. Still another fact was that Germany ob- 

 tained knowledge that batteries of No. 120 guns, 

 had been assigned to the Ninth Army Corps, the 

 note regarding which had been sent to the sec- 

 tion in the first bureau of the general staff in 

 which Dreyfus was then working, and the minute 

 taken down at the time had unaccountably dis- 

 appeared. The notes on the hydraulic brake of 

 gun No. 120 and on artillery formations could 

 only be furnished by an artillery officer, and the 

 language employed 'in the bordereau was such as 

 only an artillerist w r ould use. The word hy- 

 draulic instead of hydro-pneumatic, which is the 

 technical French designation of the gun brake, 

 was an exception, which could be explained by 

 the fact that the Germans applied to it the term 

 hydraulic, Dreyfus being perfectly conversant 

 with the German language, his mother tongue in 

 Alsace. The statement in the bordereau that 

 the firing manual was difficult to obtain wou'd 

 not probably be made by a line officer, but might 

 by one of the stagiaires of the staff, because these 

 passed the few copies furnished to them from 

 hand to hand, whereas any officer in the corps 

 could have a copy for himself. Information re- 

 garding the covering or outpost troops could only 

 come from the staff, and the fact that changes 

 were to be made was known only to the staff. 

 The announcement at the end of the bordereau 

 that the writer was going to the manoeuvres 



