carrying on a rascally investigation whence knaves come transfigured and honest people sullied. Then the council of war was convened.

How could it have been expected that a council of war 5 would undo what a council of war had done?

I say nothing of the selection which is always possible of judges. Is not the dominating idea of discipline, which is in the very blood of the soldiers, enough to destroy their power to do justice? Who says discipline says obedience. Io When the minister of war, the great chief, has publicly established, amid the applause of the nation's representatives, the absolute authority of the judgment, do you expect a council of war formally to contradict him? Hierarchically that is impossible. General Billot gave a hint to the judges 15 by his declaration, and they passed judgment as they must face the cannon's mouth, without reasoning. The preconceived opinion that they took with them to their bench is evidently this: "Dreyfus has been condemned for the crime of treason by a council of war; then he is guilty, and we, a 20 council of war, cannot declare him innocent. Now, we know that to recognize Esterhazy's guilt would be to proclaim the innocence of Dreyfus." Nothing could turn them from that course of reasoning.

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They have rendered an iniquitous verdict which will weigh forever upon our councils of war, which will henceforth tinge with suspicion all their decrees. The first council of war may have been stupid; the second is clearly criminal.

excuse, I repeat, is that the supreme head had spoken, declaring the judgment unassailable, sacred, and superior to 30 men, so that inferiors could say naught to the contrary. They talk to us of the honor of the army; they want us to love it, to respect it. Ah! certainly, yes, the army which would rise at the first threat, which would defend French soil; that army is the whole people, and we have for it 35 nothing but tenderness and respect. But it is not a question of that army, whose dignity is our special desire, in our

need of justice. It is the sword that is in question; the master that they may give us to-morrow. And piously kiss the sword-hilt, the god. No!

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I have proved it, elsewhere; the Dreyfus case was the case of the war offices: a staff officer, accused by his comrades of the general staff, is convicted by the pressure of the chiefs of the staff. Again I say, he cannot come back innocent, unless all the staff be admitted to be guilty. Consequently the war offices, by all imaginable means, by press campaigns, by communications, by influence, have 10 covered Esterhazy simply to ruin Dreyfus a second time. Ah! with what a sweep the republican government should clear away this band of Jesuits, as General Billot himself calls them! Where is the truly strong and wisely patriotic minister who will dare to reshape and renew all? How 15 many of the people I know are trembling with anguish in view of a possible war, knowing in what hands lies the national defence ! And what a nest of base intrigues, gossip, and waste has this sacred asylum, entrusted with the fate of the country, become ! We are frightened by the 20 terrible light thrown upon it by the Dreyfus case, this human sacrifice of an unfortunate, of a dirty Jew." Ah! what a mixture of madness and folly, of crazy fancies, of vile police practices, of inquisitorial and tyrannical customs, the good pleasure of a few persons in gold lace, with their boots on 25 the neck of the nation, cramming back into its throat its cry of truth and justice, under the lying and sacrilegious pretext of reasons of state!

And another of their crimes is that they have accepted the support of the unclean press, have suffered themselves 30 to be championed by all the knavery of Paris, so that now we witness knavery's insolent triumph in the downfall of right and simple probity. It is a crime to have accused of troubling France those who wish to see her generous, at the head of the free and just nations, when they themselves are 35 hatching the insolent conspiracy to impose error in the face

of the entire world. It is a crime to mislead opinion, to utilize for a deadly attack this opinion that they have perverted to the point of delirium. It is a crime to poison the minds of the lowly and the humble, to exasperate the pas5 sions of reaction and intolerance, by seeking shelter behind odious anti-Semitism, of which France, great, liberal France of the rights of man, will die, if she is not cured. It is a crime to exploit patriotism for works of hatred, and, finally, it is a crime to make the sword the modern god, when all 10 human science is at work on the coming temple of truth and justice.

How distressing it is then to see this truth, this justice, for which we have so ardently longed, buffeted thus and become more neglected and more obscured. I have a sus15 picion of the black despair there must be in the soul of M. Scheurer-Kestner, and I really believe that he will finally feel remorse that he did not, on the day of interpellation in the senate, acting in revolutionary fashion, by thoroughly ventilating the whole matter, topple everything over. He 20 has been the highly honest man, the man of loyal life, and he thought that the truth was sufficient unto itself, especially when it should appear as dazzling as the open day. Of what use to overturn everything, since soon the sun would shine? And it is for this confident serenity that he is now 25 so cruelly punished. And the same is the case of LieutenantColonel Picquart, who, moved by a feeling of lofty dignity, has been unwilling to publish General Gonse's letters. These scruples do him the more honor because, while he respected discipline, his superiors heaped mud upon him, 30 working up the case against him themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous fashion. Here are two victims, two worthy people, two simple hearts, who have trusted God, while the devil was at work. And in the case of LieutenantColonel Picquart we have seen even this ignoble thing, 35 French tribunal, after suffering the reporter in the case publically to arraign a witness and accuse him of every

a

crime, closing its doors as soon as this witness has been introduced to explain and defend himself. I say that is one crime more, and that this crime will awaken the universal conscience. Decidedly, military tribunals have a singular idea of justice.

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Such, then, is the simple truth, Monsieur le Président, and it is frightful. It will remain a stain upon your presidency. I suspect that you are powerless in this matter,that you are the prisoner of the constitution and your environment. You have none the less a man's duty, upon which 10 you will reflect, and which you will fulfil. Not indeed that I despair, the least in the world, of triumph. I repeat with more vehement certainty: truth is marching on, and nothing can stop it. To-day sees the real beginning of the affair, since not until to-day have the positions been clear on the 15 one hand, the guilty, who do not want the light; on the other, the doers of justice, who will give their lives to get it. I have said elsewhere, and I repeat it here: when truth is buried in the earth, it accumulates there, and assumes so mighty an explosive power that, on the day when it bursts 20 forth, it hurls everything into the air. We shall see if they have not made preparations for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.

But this letter is long, Monsieur le Président, and it is time to finish.

uncon

I accuse Lieutenant-Colonel du Patay de Clam of having been the diabolical workman of judicial error, sciously, I am willing to believe, - and of having then defended his calamitous work, for three years, by the most absurd and guilty machinations.

I accuse General Mercier of having made himself an accomplice, at least through weakness of mind, in one of the greatest iniquities of the century.

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I accuse General Billot of having had in his hands certain proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus, and of having stifled 35 them; of having rendered himself guilty of this crime of

lese-humanité and lese-justice for a political purpose, and to save the compromised staff.

I accuse General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of having made themselves accomplices in the same crime, one 5 undoubtedly through clerical passion, the other perhaps through that esprit de corps which makes of the war offices the Holy Ark, unassailable.

I accuse General de Pellieux and Major Ravary of having conducted a rascally inquiry, I mean a monstrously par10 tial inquiry, of which we have, in the report of the latter, an imperishable monument of naive audacity.

I accuse the three experts in handwriting, Belhomme, Varinard, and Conard, of having made lying and fraudulent reports, provided medical examination does not prove them 15 diseased in eyes and judgment.

I accuse the war offices of having carried on in the press, particularly in "L'Eclair" and in "L'Echo de Paris,” an abominable campaign, to mislead opinion and cover up their faults.

I accuse, finally, the council of war of having violated the 20 law by condemning an accused person on the strength of a secret document, and I accuse the second council of war of having covered up this illegality, in obedience to orders, and in committing, in its turn, the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.

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In preferring these charges, I am not unaware that I make myself liable under Articles 30 and 31 of the press law of July 29, 1881, which punishes defamation. And it is wil

fully that I expose myself thereto.

As for the people whom I accuse, I do not know them, I have never seen them, I entertain against them no feeling of revenge or hatred. They are to me simple entities, spirits of social ill-doing. And the act that I perform here is nothing but a revolutionary measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.

I have but one passion, the passion for the light, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much, and which