Dreyfus Case

Feb 28, 2019

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The Dreyfus Case in Europe

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Background: Anti-Semitism in France

The last country in Europe to make use of the teachings of German anti-Semitism in its party politics was France. The fact that the movement should have struck root in a republican country, where the ideals of democratic freedom have been so passionately cultivated, has been regarded as one of the paradoxes of our latter-day history. As a matter of fact, it is more surprising that it was not adopted earlier. All the social and political conditions which produced anti-Semitism in Germany were present in France, but in an aggravated form due primarily to the very republican régime which at first sight seemed to be a guarantee against it. In the monarchical states the dominance of the bourgeoisie was tempered in a measure by the power of the crown and the political activity of the aristocracy, which carried with them a very real restraining influence in the matter of political honour and morality.

In France these restraining influences were driven out of public life by the republic. The nobility both of the ancien régime and the empire stood aloof, and politics were abandoned for the most part to professional adventurers, while the bourgeoisie assumed the form of an omnipotent plutocracy. This naturally attracted to France all the financial adventurers in Europe, and in the train of the immigration came not a few German Jews, alienated from their own country by the agitation of Marr and Stöcker. Thus the bourgeoisie was not only more powerful in France than in other countries, but the obnoxiousness of its Jewish element was accentuated by a tinge of the national enemy. The anti-clericalism of the bourgeois republic and its unexampled series of financial scandals, culminating in the Panama “Krach,” thus sufficed to give anti-Semitism a strong hold on the public mind.

Nevertheless, it was not until 1882 that the anti-Jewish movement was seriously heard of in France. Paul Bontoux (b. 1820), who had formerly been in the employ of the Rothschilds, 143 but had been obliged to leave the firm in consequence of his disastrous speculations, had joined the Legitimist party, and had started the Union Générale with funds obtained from his new allies. Bontoux promised to break up the alleged financial monopoly of the Jews and Protestants and to found a new plutocracy in its stead, which should be mainly Roman Catholic and aristocratic. The bait was eagerly swallowed.

For five years the Union Générale, with the blessing of the pope, pursued an apparently prosperous career. Immense schemes were undertaken, and the 123-fr. shares rose gradually to 3200 francs. The whole structure, however, rested on a basis of audacious speculation, and in January 1882 the Union Générale failed, with liabilities amounting to 312,000,000 francs. The cry was at once raised that the collapse was due to the manoeuvres of the Jews, and a strong anti-Semitic feeling manifested itself in clerical and aristocratic circles. In 1886 violent expression was given to this feeling in a book since become famous, La France juive, by Edouard Drumont (b. 1844). The author illustrated the theories of German anti-Semitism with a chronique scandaleuse full of piquant personalities, in which the corruption of French national life under Jewish influences was painted in alarming colours.

The book was read with avidity by the public, who welcomed its explanations of the obviously growing debauchery. The Wilson scandals and the suspension of the Panama Company in the following year, while not bearing out Drumont’s anti-Semitism, fully justified his view of the prevailing corruption. Out of this condition of things rose the Boulangist movement, which rallied all the disaffected elements in the country, including Drumont’s following of anti-Semites. It was not, however, until the flight of General Boulanger and the ruin of his party that anti-Semitism came forward as a political movement.

The chief author of the rout of Boulangism was a Jewish politician and journalist, Joseph Reinach (b. 1856), formerly private secretary to Gambetta, and one of the ablest men in France. He was a Frenchman by birth and education, but his father and uncles were Germans, who had founded an important banking establishment in Paris. Hence he was held to personify the alien Jewish domination in France, and the ex-Boulangists turned against him and his co-religionists with fury. The Boulangist agitation had for a second time involved the Legitimists in heavy pecuniary losses, and under the leadership of the marquis de Morès they now threw all their influence on the side of Drumont. An anti-Semitic league was established, and with Royalist assistance branches were organized all over the country.

The Franco-Russian alliance in 1891, when the persecutions of the Jews by Pobêdonostsev were attracting the attention of Europe, served to invest Drumont’s agitation with a fashionable and patriotic character. It was a sign of the spiritual approximation of the two peoples. In 1892 Drumont founded a daily anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole. With the organization of this journal a regular campaign for the discovery of scandals was instituted. At the same time a body of aristocratic swashbucklers, with the marquis de Morès and the comte de Lamase at their head, set themselves to terrorize the Jews and provoke them to duels. At a meeting held at Neuilly in 1891, Jules Guérin, one of the marquis de Morès’s lieutenants, had demanded rhetorically un cadavre de Juif. He had not long to wait. Anti-Semitism was most powerful in the army, which was the only branch of the public service in which the reactionary classes were fully represented.

The republican law compelling the seminarists to serve their term in the army had strengthened its Clerical and Royalist elements, and the result was a movement against the Jewish officers, of whom 500 held commissions. A series of articles in the Libre Parole attacking these officers led to a number of ferocious duels, and these culminated in 1892 in the death of an amiable and popular Jewish officer, Captain Armand Mayer, of the Engineers, who fell, pierced through the lungs by the marquis de Morès. This tragedy, rendered all the more painful by the discovery that Captain Mayer had chivalrously fought to shield a friend, aroused a great deal of popular indignation against the anti-Semites, and for a moment it was believed that the agitation had been killed with its victim. (1)

The History of the Case

Towards the end of 1892, the discovery of the widespread corruption practised by the Panama Company gave a fresh impulse to anti-Semitism. The revelations were in a large measure due to the industry of the Libre Parole; and they were all the more welcome to the readers of that journal since it was discovered that three Jews were implicated in the scandals, one of whom, baron de Reinach, was uncle and father-in-law to the hated destroyer of Boulangism. The escape of the other two, Dr Cornelius Herz and M. Arton, and the difficulties experienced in obtaining their extradition, deepened the popular conviction that the authorities were implicated in the scandals, and kept the public eye for a long time absorbed by the otherwise restricted Jewish aspects of the scandals.

In 1894 the military side of the agitation was revived by the arrest of a prominent Jewish staff officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on a charge of treason. From the beginning the hand of the anti-Semite was flagrant in the new sensation. The first hint of the arrest appeared in the Libre Parole; and before the facts had been officially communicated to the public that journal was busy with a campaign against the war minister, based on the apprehension that, in conspiracy with the Juiverie and his republican colleagues, he might exert himself to shield the traitor.

Anti-Semitic feeling was now thoroughly aroused. Panama had prepared the people to believe anything; and when it was announced that a court-martial, sitting in secret, had convicted Dreyfus, there was a howl of execration against the Jews from one end of the country to the other, although the alleged crime of the convict and the evidence by which it was supported were quite unknown. Dreyfus was degraded and transported for life amid unparalleled scenes of public excitement.

The Dreyfus Case registers the climax not only of French, but of European anti-Semitism. It was the most ambitious and most unscrupulous attempt yet made to prove the nationalist hypothesis of the anti-Semites, and in its failure it afforded the most striking illustration of the dangers of the whole movement by bringing France to the verge of revolution. For a few months after the Dreyfus court-martial there was a comparative lull; but the highly strung condition of popular passion was illustrated by a violent debate on “The Jewish Peril” in the Chamber of Deputies (25th April 1895), and by two outrages with explosives at the Rothschild bank in Paris. Meanwhile the family of Dreyfus, absolutely convinced of his innocence, were casting about for the means of clearing his character and securing his liberation.

They were wealthy, and their activity unsettled the public mind and aroused the apprehensions of the conspirators. Had the latter known how to preserve silence, the mystery would perhaps have been yet unsolved; but in their anxiety to allay all suspicions they made one false step, which proved the beginning of their ruin. Through their friends in the press they secured the publication of a facsimile of a document known as the Bordereau—a list of documents supposed to be in Dreyfus’s handwriting and addressed apparently to the military attaché of a foreign power, which was alleged to constitute the chief evidence against the convict. It was hoped by this publication to put an end to the doubts of the so-called Dreyfusards. The result, however, was only to give them a clue on which they worked with remarkable ingenuity.

To prove that the Bordereau was not in Dreyfus’s handwriting was not difficult. Indeed, its authorship was recognized almost on the day of publication; but the Dreyfusards held their hands in order to make assurance doubly sure by further evidence. Meanwhile one of the officers of the general staff, Colonel Picquart, had convinced himself by an examination of the dossier of the trial that a gross miscarriage of justice had taken place. On mentioning his doubts to his superiors, who were animated partly by anti-Semitic feeling and partly by reluctance to confess to a mistake, he was ordered to the Tunisian hinterland on a dangerous expedition. Before leaving Paris, however, he took the precaution to confide his discovery to his legal adviser. Harassed by their anxieties, the conspirators made further communications to the newspapers; and the government, questioned and badgered in parliament, added to the revelations.

The new disclosures, so far from 144 stopping the Dreyfusards, proved to them, among other things, that the conviction had been partially based on documents which had not been communicated to the counsel for the defence, and hence that the judges had been tampered with by the ministry of war behind the prisoner’s back. So far, too, as these documents related to correspondence with foreign military attachés, it was soon ascertained that they were forgeries. In this way a terrible indictment was gradually drawn up against the ministry of war. The first step was taken towards the end of 1897 by a brother of Captain Dreyfus, who, in a letter to the minister of war, denounced Major Esterhazy as the real author of the Bordereau. The authorities, supported by parliament, declined to reopen the Dreyfus Case, but they ordered a court-martial on Esterhazy, which was held with closed doors and resulted in his acquittal. It now became clear that nothing short of an appeal to public opinion and a full exposure of all the iniquities that had been perpetrated would secure justice at the hands of the military chiefs.

On behalf of Dreyfus, Émile 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. 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. Clémenceau, 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 Valérien under arrest, cut his throat. (2)

After the case and the Anti-Semitic environment in France

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 anti-republican 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 life-or-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. Déroulède to induce the military to march on the Elysée 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.

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 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 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 rehabilitation of Dreyfus, however, 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 Déroulède’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. Jules Guérin, 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 these 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 Guérin 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’Instruction in the Petit Temps, 1st November 1899). (3)

Government action

The government now resolved to strike at the root of the mischief by limiting the power of the religious orders, and with this view a drastic Association bill was introduced into the chambers. This anti-clerical move provoked the wildest passions of the reactionaries, but it found an overwhelming support in the elections of 1902 and the bill became law. The war thus definitely reopened soon led to a revival of the Dreyfus controversy. The nationalists flooded the country with incendiary defamations of “the government of national treason,” and Dreyfus on his part loudly demanded a fresh trial. It was clear that conciliation and compromise were useless.

Early in 1905 M. Jaurès urged upon the chamber that the demand of the Jewish officer should be granted if only to tranquillize the country. The necessary faits nouveaux were speedily found by the minister of war, General André, and having been examined by a special commission of revision were ordered to be transmitted to the court of cassation for final adjudication. On the 12th of July 1906, the court, all chambers united, gave its judgment. After a lengthy review of the case it declared unanimously that the whole accusation against Dreyfus had been disproved, and it quashed the judgment of the Rennes court-martial sans renvoi. 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 once the Bordereau was discovered they availed themselves of the anti-Jewish agitation to throw suspicion on Dreyfus.

Thus ended this famous case, to the relief of the whole country and with the approval of the great majority of French citizens. Except a knot of anti-Semitic monomaniacs all parties bowed loyally to the judgment of the court of cassation. The government gave the fullest effect to the judgment. Dreyfus and Picquart were restored to the active list of the army with the ranks respectively of major and general of brigade. Dreyfus was also created a knight of the Legion of Honour, and received the decoration in public in the artillery pavilion of the military school.

Zola, to whose efforts the triumph of truth was chiefly due, had not been spared to witness the final scene, but the chambers decided to give his remains a last resting-place in the Pantheon. When three months later M. Clémenceau formed his first cabinet he appointed General Picquart minister of war. Nothing indeed was left undone to repair the terrible series of wrongs which had grown out of the Dreyfus case. Nevertheless its destructive work could not be wholly healed. For over ten years it had been 145 a nightmare to France, and it now modified the whole course of French history. In the ruin of the French Church, which owed its disestablishment very largely to the Dreyfus conspiracy, may be read the most eloquent warning against the demoralizing madness of anti-Semitism.

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 anti-Semitic 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. (4)

Resources

Notes and References

Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)
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