Emile Zola was not Jewish, and by his own description, had hardly been an admirer of the Jewish people for most of his life. But the prosecution of Dreyfus and the powerful and ugly wave of anti-Jewish sentiment it elicited shocked him.
Furthermore, in his summary remarks, Zola declared that the case went far beyond the guilt or innocence of Alfred Dreyfus. And when the conviction was set aside, on technical grounds, and the case was retried, that July, he and Perrenx were again convicted. Accordingly, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail - — a penalty Zola evaded by fleeing abroad. Here Zola, in the urgency of the moment — and all the moments, until Dreyfus was finally vindicated in , were urgent — writes to Dreyfus himself on his calling card , about a document which, if Zola is to sign it, must be sent him at once.
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Prior to the court-martial three so-called and miscalled experts in handwriting had been consulted by the government. Theic was the military man, du Paty de Clam, who had no skill in the difficult science of graphology; there was M. Gobert, a person sometimes employed by the Bank of France, who expressed an opinion that the handwriting of the bordereau might very well be that of some other person than Dreyfus; and there was M. Precisely this hypothesis, which he thus set aside, became afterward the Dreyfusian theory of the case.
It was not materially strengthened by three other witnesses, of like qualifications, who appeared before the court-martial, and of whom one was for Dreyfus and two were against him.
Now the facsimile gave this zealous friend his opportunity, and M. Lazare immediately sought the judgment of leading graphologists in France and in other countries. As a result he published twelve favorable opinions in a volume, in which he also gave facsimiles of the handwriting of Dreyfus in parallel columns with facsimiles of the bordereau.
By all this examination it was established that between the handwriting of the borderean and that of Dreyfus there was a general resemblance, but with certain distinct differences. Some letters were said even to stand the test of superposition. Hence originated the suggestion that these letters had been traced, and other parts had been originally written with intentional variations; also that the bordereau was a combination of the writing of Alfred Dreyfus and that of his brother Mathieu.
The paper of the bordereau was of a texture which admitted tracing. The Dreyfusards sneered at so laborious and so clumsy a resource, and said that the combination of close likeness with slight yet essential differences was precisely what would be expected in the case of a forgery. They asked pertinently, Since Dreyfus was an Alsatian, familiar with the German language and writing, why, if he was writing to Germans, did he not safely use the German script?
They urged that the peculiar paper of the bordereau was of German manufacture, and that none like it was found at the house of Dreyfus. Also they asked the fundamental question, Why should Dreyfus have increased the danger by sending this useless bordereau at all? Why not have simply dispatched the documents which were named in it?
They also criticised the failure to produce the persons who brought the bordereau, when it was upon their act that the whole superstructure of the case rested. Against this, however, was the firm principle forbidding such use of government detectives. It was almost a matter of course that there should be legends of confession. Of these, the earlier one was almost certainly false ; but the later one is not quite so easily disposed of.
In the Zola trial, Forzinetti, commander of the prison, being interrogated by M e Labori as to a confession, was forbidden to answer; but elsewhere he had strenuously denied any such occurrence. It is very difficult to believe that a confession was made. If it had been, the government could have quieted this whole perilous excitement by merely stating the fact, without infringing upon the secrecy of their detective service. Moreover, the consistent and persistent behavior of Dreyfus indicates great resolution in asserting innocence.
On the other hand, such efforts were made to lead him into the blunder of confessing that, if they had succeeded, the confession would have lost much of its natural value. A vital question was, whether or not Dreyfus had access to the documents named in the bordereau. Apparently, no evidence was offered to this point, except that in the Ministry of War he was known as a prying character, accustomed to ask questions and to look over the shoulders of other employees.
Now a precise investigation revealed that as to one document he could have got knowledge only by inquiry from the Artillery Bureau, and it was alleged that the officers of that bureau affirmatively testified that they had never been questioned by him.
Of another document only a limited number of copies had been issued for distribution to the army corps, and the government had kept careful trace of each one of these, without being able to bring one home to him.
Money, however, seemed more satisfactory, and stories were circulated that Dreyfus was a gambler and a dissolute liver; but he was neither the one nor the other, and he was rich. If the bordereau had been given out in the hope of silencing the Dreyfusards, all this criticism showed that it had signally failed.
Reasons of state and la haute politique compelled profound secrecy. Some persons even believed that if its contents should leak out, the German army would start the next day for Paris. The situation now was substantially this: the admission that this secret letter was necessary tn induce conviction involved the admission of the insufficiency of the bordereau; but the fact that in the letter there was only an initial left that also inconclusive ; finally, the placing of secret evidence before the judges created a great storm of indignation; it was a violation alike of technical law and substantial justice.
Persons who were neither Jews nor lovers of Jews, even some who thought that Dreyfas might very well be guilty, now demanded a revision of his case; and these recruits came largely from the more intelligent and thinking classes. A majority in the Chamber of Deputies sustained this position; and the great multitude of the people, strong in their hatred of Judaism, remained well pleased.
Nevertheless, the situation was by no means satisfactory. Now some newspapers revived an interesting story. It was remembered that N. The tale told by le Rappel was, that N. Now, if the President did in fact receive these communications, he could do absolutely nothing except refer them to his ministers; and when the ministers refused to act on them he was in a false and humiliating position, out of which he might naturally get by precisely that act of resignation which had appeared so singular.
Probabilities seem to favor the truth of this story; and if it was false, there could be no objection to contradicting it. He said that it was his duty not to tell the whole truth. Probably out of this German story grew the suggestion that the treason of Dreyfus had moved, not toward Germany, but toward Russia; and this, as many persons conceived, might explain the unwillingness to make public the secret letter.
There is no way of absolutely disproving this theory; but not one particle of evidence supports it, and it stands as an arbitrary and gratuitous fancy.
Moreover, much must be explained away before it can be admitted. How came the bordereau in the German waste-paper basket? Why, when some one who knew the whole story gave out the evidence, did he state that the communications had been made to Germany?
In the procession of sensations, the next to arrive was that of Esterhazy. Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, after eager investigation, had satisfied himself that this man was the real criminal. He stated his discoveries to Mathien Dreyfus, who in turn formally denounced Esterhazy to the Minister of War. Esterhazy was not only a bad man in the ordinary sense of the term, but he was a thorough villain.
Certain letters written by him some time before were now made public, and rendered it entirely probable that he might be a traitor. As his latest book points out, it is possible to make a direct link — in both personnel and attitudes involved in the Dreyfus case — to the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the World War II Nazi occupation of France.
Indeed, events in wartime France, where foreign born Jews were deported to death camps in Poland by the thousands, was, in many ways, a tragic ideological rerun of the battles that Zola took part in during the arguments about the Dreyfus case, says Rosen. He introduced a new kind of politics, and also ushered in a cultural shift in France and the wider world — especially for those on the left.
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