A N T I-S E M I T I S M at the hands of the military chiefs. On behalf of Dreyfus, M. Zola, the eminent novelist, formulated the case against the general staff of the army in an open letter to the president of the republic, which by its dramatic accusations startled the whole world. The letter was denounced as wild and fantastic even by those who were in favour of revision. M. Zola was prosecuted for libel and convicted, and had to fly the country; but the agitation he had started was taken in hand by others, notably M. Clemenceau, M. Reinach, and M. Yves Guyot. In August 1898 their efforts found their first reward. A re-examination of the documents in the case' by M. Cavaignac, then minister of war, showed that one was undoubtedly forged. Colonel Henry, of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, then confessed that he had fabricated the document, and, on being sent to Mont Yalerien under arrest, cut his throat. In spite of this damaging discovery the War Office still persisted in believing Dreyfus guilty, and opposed a fresh inquiry. It was supported by three successive ministers of war, and apparently an overwhelming body of public opinion. By this time the question of the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus had become an altogether subsidiary issue. As in Germany and Austria, the anti-Semitic crusade had passed into the hands of the political parties. On the one hand the Radicals and Socialists, recognizing the antirepublican aims of the agitators and alarmed by the clerical predominance in the army, had thrown in their lot with the Dreyfusards; on the other the reactionaries, anxious to secure the support of the army, took the opposite view, denounced their opponents as sans patrie, and declared that they were conspiring to weaken and degrade the army in the face of the national enemy. The controversy was, consequently, no longer for or against Dreyfus, but for or against the army, and behind it was a lifeor-death struggle between the republic and its enemies. The situation became alarming. Rumours of military plots filled the air. Powerful leagues for working up public feeling were formed and organized; attempts to discredit the republic and intimidate the Government were made. The president was insulted; there were tumults in the streets, and an attempt was made by M. Deroulede to induce the military to march on the Elysee and upset the republic. In this critical situation France, to her eternal honour, found men with sufficient courage to do the right. The Socialists, by rallying to the Radicals against the reactionaries, secured a majority for the defence of the republic in parliament. M. Brisson’s Cabinet transmitted to the Court of Cassation an application for the revision of the case against Dreyfus ; and that tribunal, after an elaborate inquiry, which fully justified M. Zola’s famous letter, quashed and annulled the proceedings of the court-martial, and remitted the accused to another court-martial, to be held at Rennes. Throughout these proceedings the military party fought tooth and nail to impede the course of justice; and although the innocence of Dreyfus had been completely established, it concentrated all its efforts to secure a fresh condemnation of the prisoner at Rennes. Popular passion was at fever heat, and it manifested itself in an attack on M. Labori, one of the counsel for the defence, who was shot and wounded on the eve of his cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution. To the amazement and indignation of the whole world outside France, the Rennes court-martial again found the prisoner guilty; but all reliance on the conscientiousness of the verdict was removed by a rider, which found “extenuating circumstances,” and by a reduction of the punishment to ten years’ imprisonment, to which was added a recommendation to mercy. The verdict was evidently an attempt at a compromise, and the Government resolved to advise the president of the republic to pardon
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Dreyfus. This lame conclusion did not satisfy the accused ; but his innocence had been so clearly proved, and on political grounds there were such urgent reasons for desiring a termination of the affair, that it was accepted without protest by the majority of moderate men. The explanation of the whole case is that Esterhazy and Henry were the real culprits; that they had made a trade of supplying the German Government with military documents; and that, when the Bordereau was discovered, they availed themselves of the anti-Semitic agitation to throw suspicion on Dreyfus. The rehabilitation of Dreyfus did not pass without another effort on the part of the reactionaries to turn the popular passions excited by the case to their own advantage. After the failure of M. Deroulede’s attempt to overturn the republic, the various Royalist and Boulangist leagues, with the assistance of the anti-Semites, organized another plot. This was discovered by the Government, and the leaders were arrested. M. Jules Guerin, secretary of the anti-Semitic league, shut himself up in the league offices in the Rue Chabrol, Paris, which had been fortified and garrisoned by a number of his friends, armed with rifles. For more than a month the anti-Semites held the authorities at bay, and some 5000 troops were employed in the siege. The conspirators were all tried by the Senate, sitting as a high court, and M. Guerin was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The evidence showed that the anti-Semitic organization had taken an active part in the anti-republican plot (see the report of the Commission d’lnstruction in the Petit Temps, 1st November 1899). This vigorous action of the Government, together with the moral effect of the Dreyfus Case, has seriously weakened the anti-Semitic movement in France, and it has now completely lost its hold on the public outside Paris. In sympathy with the agitation in France there has been a similar movement in Algeria, where the European population have long resented the admission of the native Jews to the rights of French citizenship. The agitation has been marked by much violence, and most of the antiSemitic deputies in the French parliament, including M. Drumont, have found constituencies in Algeria. As the local anti-Semites are largely Spaniards and Levantine riff-raff, the agitation has not the peculiar nationalist bias which characterizes Continental anti-Semitism. Before the energy of the authorities it has lately shown signs of subsiding. While the main activity of anti-Semitism has manifested itself in Germany, Russia, Rumania, Austria-Hungary, and France, its vibratory influences have been felt in other countries when conditions favourable to its extension have presented themselves. In England more than one attempt to acclimatize the doctrines of Marr and Treitschke has been made. The circumstance that at the time of the rise of German anti-Semitism a premier of Hebrew race, Lord Beaconsfield, was in power Britain first suggested the Jewish bogey to English efc. political extremists. The Eastern Crisis of 1876-78, which was regarded by the Liberal party as primarily a struggle between Christianity, as represented by Russia, and a degrading Semitism, as represented by Turkey, accentuated the anti-Jewish feeling, owing to the anti-Russian attitude adopted by the Government. Violent expression to the ancient prejudices against the Jews was given by Sir J. G. Tollemache Sinclair (A Defence of Russia, 1877). Mr T. P. O’Connor, in a life of Lord Beaconsfield (1878), pictured him as the instrument of the Jewish people, “ moulding the whole policy of Christendom to Jewish aims.” Professor Goldwin Smith, in several articles in the Nineteenth Century (1878, 1881, and 1882), sought to synthetize the growing anti-Jewish feeling by adopting the nationalist theories of the German anti-Semites. This movement did not fail to find an S. I. — 61
