480
ANTI-SEMITISM
education, but his father and uncles were Germans, who from one end of the country to the other, although the had founded an important banking establishment in bans. alleged crime of the convict and the evidence by which was supported were quite unknown. Dreyfus was Hence he was held to personify the alien Jewish domina- it degraded and transported for life amid unparalleled scenes tion in France, and the ex-Boulangists turned against him public excitement. and his co-religionists with fury. The Boulangist agitation of The Case registers the climax not only of had for a second time involved the Legitimists in heavy French, Dreyfus but of European anti-Semitism. It was the most pecuniary losses, and under the leadership of the marquis ambitious and most unscrupulous attempt yet made to de Mores they now threw all their influence on the side of M. Drumont. An anti-Semitic league was established, prove the nationalist hypothesis of the anti-Semites, and in failure it afforded the most striking illustration of the and with Royalist assistance branches were _ organized all its dangers of the whole movement by bringing France to over the country. The Franco-Russian alliance in 1891, when the persecutions of the Jews by M. Pobyedonostzeff the verge of revolution. For a few months after the were attracting the attention of Europe, served to invest Dreyfus court-martial there was a comparative lull; but M. Drumont’s agitation with a fashionable and patriotic the highly - strung condition of popular passion was character. It was a sign of the spiritual approximation illustrated by a violent debate on “The Jewish Peril” in of the two peoples. In 1892 M. Drumont founded a daily the Chamber of Deputies (25th April 1895), and by two anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole. . With the outrages with explosives at the Rothschild Bank in Paris. organization of this journal a regular campaign for the Meanwhile the family of Dreyfus, absolutely convinced of discovery of scandals was instituted. At the same time a his innocence, were casting about for the means of clearing body of aristocratic swashbucklers, with the marquis de his character and securing his liberation. They were Mores and the count de Lamase at their head, set them- wealthy, and their activity unsettled the public mind selves to terrorize the Jews and provoke them to duels. and aroused the apprehensions of the conspirators. Had At a meeting held at Neuilly in 1891 M. Guerin, one of the the latter known how to preserve silence, the mystery would marquis de Mores’s lieutenants, had demanded rhetorically perhaps have been yet unsolved ] but in their anxiety to un cadavre de Juif. He had not long to wait. Anti- allay all suspicions they made one false step, which proved Semitism was most powerful in the army, which was the the beginning of their ruin. Through their friends in the only branch of the public service in which the reactionary press they secured the publication of a facsimile of a classes were fully represented. The republican law com- document known as the Bordereau—a, letter supposed to pelling the seminarists to serve their term in the army be in Dreyfus’s handwriting and addressed apparently to had strengthened its clerical and Royalist elements, and the military attache of a foreign power, which was alleged the result was a movement against the Jewish officers, to constitute the chief evidence against the convict. It of whom 500 held commissions. A series of articles in was hoped by this publication to put an end to the doubts the Libre Parole attacking these officers led to a number of of the so-called Dreyfusards. The result, however, was ferocious duels, and these culminated in 1892 in the death only to give them a clue on which they worked with of an amiable and popular Jewish officer, Captain Armaud remarkable ingenuity. To prove that the Bordereau was Mayer, of the Engineers, who fell, pierced through the not in Dreyfus’s handwriting was not difficult. Indeed, lungs by the marquis de Mores. This tragedy, rendered its authorship was recognized almost on the day of all the more painful by the discovery that Captain Mayer publication; but the Dreyfusards held their hands in had chivalrously fought to shield a friend, aroused a great order to make assurance doubly sure by further evidence. deal of popular indignation against the anti-Semites, and Meanwhile one of the officers of the general staff, Colonel for a moment it was believed that the agitation had been Picquart, had convinced himself by an examination of the dossier of the trial that a gross miscarriage of justice had killed with its victim. Towards the end of 1892, the discovery of the wide- taken place.' On mentioning his doubts to his superiors, spread corruption practised by the Panama Company gave who were animated partly by anti-Semitic feeling and a fresh impulse to anti-Semitism. The revelations were in partly by reluctance to confess to a mistake, he was a large measure due to the industry of the Libre Parole ; ordered to the Tunisian hinterland on a dangerous expediand they were all the more welcome to the readers of that tion. Before leaving Paris, however, he took the prejournal since it was discovered that three Jews were caution to confide his discovery to his legal adviser. implicated in the scandals, one of whom, baron de Harassed by their anxieties, the conspirators made further Reinach, was uncle and father-in-law to the hated communications to the newspapers; and the Government, destroyer of Boulangism. The escape of the other two, questioned and badgered in parliament, added to the revelaDr Herz and M. Arton, and the difficulties experienced in tions. The new disclosures, so far from stopping the obtaining their extradition, deepened the popular convic- Dreyfusards, proved to them, among other things, that the tion that the authorities were implicated in the scandals, conviction had been partially based on documents which and kept the public eye for a long time absorbed by the had not been communicated to the counsel for the defence, otherwise restricted Jewish aspects of the scandals. In and hence that the judges had been tampered with by the 1894 the military side of the agitation was revived by the Ministry of Whr behind the prisoner s back. So far, too, arrest of a prominent Jewish staff officer, Captain Alfred as these documents related to correspondence with foreign Dreyfus, on a charge of treason. From the beginning the military attaches, it was soon ascertained that they were hand of the anti-Semite was flagrant in the new sensation. forgeries. In this way a terrible indictment was gradually The first hint of the arrest appeared in the Libre Parole ; ■ drawn up against the Ministry of 4Y ar. The first step was and before the facts had been officially communicated to taken towards the end of 1897 by a brother of Captain the public that journal was busy with a campaign Dreyfus, who, in a letter to the minister of war, denounced against the war minister, based on the apprehension that, in Major Esterhazy as the real author of the Bordereau. The conspiracy with the Juiverie and his republican colleagues, authorities, supported by parliament, declined to re-open he might exert himself to shield the traitor. Anti-Semitic the Dreyfus Case, but they ordered a court-martial on feeling was now thoroughly aroused. Panama had prepared Esterhazy, which was held with closed doors and resulted the people to believe anything; and when it was announced in his acquittal. It now became clear that nothing short of that a court-martial, sitting in secret, had convicted an appeal to public opinion and a full exposure of all the Dreyfus, there was a howl of execration against the Jews I iniquities that had been perpetrated would secure justice
