а chronicle so amazing, so sad, so shameful, and in some of its aspects so grotesque, that if it were written down in the form of a romance, it would be pronounced impossible, beyond the limit of all reasonable imagination, and an insult to the reader's sense of proportion. It is certainly the most concrete case of truth being stranger than fiction that this generation has seen. The body of the man is confined thousands of miles from France, the voice of the man is stifled under official censorship, the personality of the man is shut out from the national life. The spiritual imagery of the Psalmist, setting forth the hopelessness and helplessness of him who is " as a dead man out of mind and "like a broken vessel," is in no way too strong in its symbolism to describe the position of the exile on the barren rock of the Ile du Diable. Yet this man has been to France for nearly two years, and is to France still, what the convulsing power of the internal fire of the earth is to the globe's surface, when it bursts forth in volcanic fury, breaking the works of nature and of man to pieces, and filling hearts with present fear and dire foreboding for the future.

The reader shall judge whether there is exaggeration in what has been said, and this without any fact which is really in dispute being relied on in argument. For although French journalism shows an absolute contempt for all reticence in regard to a matter that is under judicial consideration, and not only prejudges

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the cause before the inquiry is made, but insults in the most abominable manner judges who have not given any decision on assumptions as to what their decision may be,—that is an example which it is to be hoped will not be followed elsewhere. Therefore in speaking of this cause célèbre now, a certain amount of restraint and reserve is imperative. In what is to be said, those matters and those only about which there is no longer any dubiety will be dealt with. These, as it happens, are ample enough. deed in the picture point follows point with such cinematographlike rapidity and sharpness, that the looker-on may well be bewildered, and unable to follow clearly the moving scene, the mental eye being wearied by the succession of tableaux, and inclined to turn away fatigued, and so lose the sequence. such lookers-on, who are many, as one notices by personal intercourse every day, a short epitome of the facts, so ascertained that they cannot be gainsaid, may revive an interest in a matter which has assumed proportions that make it of worldwide importance. For the story of what can happen and has happened in a civilised country so near our own, and in a time so close to the end of a century which has not been characteristic for human modesty, forms a psychological object-lesson of which all nations may well take very serious note. France expects next year to celebrate the incoming of a new century by an Exposition so vast that the world has never seen its like,

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-the last for this century of those International Exhibitions which it was fondly supposed fifty years ago would contribute greatly to the peace of the world, smoothing the way towards millennial calm. This Dreyfus drama has come as a most ghastly forerunner to disclose what sort of a region the France is that expects to attract the world so gaily and with a light heart, in the year of our Lord 1900. There is much to be learned from this laying bare of the secrets of her prison-house, both by France and every other nation. It will not do to grow sick of this "interminable" Dreyfus drama, as one hears men say of it almost daily. They that would be wise before the event and never was there a time when this was more necessary-will do well not to weary in endeavouring to assimilate its facts; for if ever the things of to-day prophesied of to-morrow, now is the time when in France they do so, even like the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. Only there is this difference-no prophet is needed to interpret. The writing is plain, to be read of all who are not wilfully blind.

The ink was scarce dry with which the above lines were written when a new and most startling development has made the whole world stare. The evidence of the secret inquiry which was conducted by the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation has by some underhand means come into the possession of a Parisian journal, and has been published morning by morning. The disclosures

which are thus made of French methods in public departments, of French ideas of what is honourable and right, of French justice to a person accused, of French intrigue in its military bureaus, of French morality and sense of truth, not only justify but emphasise the words above used regarding the history, so far as known, before this new bombshell burst over the General Staff of France. "Shameful" and "grotesque were the words. These are indeed mild terms to apply to an official cesspool such as is now having its contents turned out to stink in the nostrils of a disgusted world. Every suspicion which, by reading between the lines of what was known before, suggested itself to the investigator, is to-day confirmed in hideous blackness. of fact. It is now made plain why all reopening of inquiry has been, and is being, resisted to the death by French officialism. It is because official persons realise that, be the result of the inquiry what it may to the poor individual now languishing in his stockade, the facts which which will inevitably come into the open light of day, if inquiry is public, must shatter reputations of men in high places, expose methods of action by epauletted officers, with the connivance, if not under the orders, of their superiors, that are outside all the bounds of professional and personal honour, and call for surgical excision of men in high places from the body military, if the "Vive l'Armée!" of today is not to become the " bas!" of to-morrow with the

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fickle and easily swayed populace of Paris and of France. A crumbling edifice undermined by false ways must be shored up by any and every prop, sound or rotten, that can be found, lest, being seen to totter, the French mob-that mob which delights in a crash -should rush to assister (as the French say) at the catastrophe, and yell in fiendish delight over the dead and the débris. It is a life-and-death matter to the principal builders of the edifice of anti-revision, built up of chicanery, suppression of truth, open fraud, and perjury, that it should be held up from behind, for those who defend it must perish with it when it falls. The acquittal of Monsieur Gohier, on his trial under Government orders for his exposure of the rotten condition of things in the French army, must make the desperate defenders of the exclusion of light still more desperate. If this were not a French crisis, prediction would

be easy. But in the case of a country where Thersites would be a probable Minister of State, and Titus Oates accepted as a martyr to patriotism, the difficulties of the prophet are not small.

These disclosures have added much to the sum of ascertained fact, and make it absolutely impossible, if there is any sense of justice still existing in France, that revision of the Dreyfus case shall not take place. Even if the court intrusted with the investigation were base enough to truckle to the General Staff, or weak enough to yield to the intimidation of vile threats of anonymous letter - writers and

unscrupulous newspaper bullies, and were, being so base or so cowardly, to violate their oath of office to do even-handed justice between the citizen and the State, it is quite impossible that there should be an end. The case is too flagrant, and is too clearly seen to be so by honest men, both in France and throughout the world. What was done in the past will not stand. A plainly revealed mass of

"fraud and impudence and lies"

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cannot be suffered to pollute the world's atmosphere. It will certainly sooner or later be swept out, if not by the hand of justice, then surely by the besom of destruction. nation can no more than an individual outrage moral sense without having sooner or later to repent or to harden in wickedness, on which Nemesis will advance with certain tread. Which shall it be in the case of France, and those who have sullied her good name? she bravely purge out the old leaven and become a new lump? Her neighbours will anxiously look out to see, clinging to hope that ere it is too late she will take courage and do the right.

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The reader shall judge for himself whether these things which have been said are just. What is now to be stated may be taken as fact, no longer open to dispute, except in those instances where it is stated that any matter is alleged only on strong prima facie grounds, calling for inquiry.

In 1894, and for some time before that, there was reason to believe that information on con

fidential military matters in France was being conveyed to foreign Powers. A French spy brought to the War Office fragments of a document containing a list-technically called a bordereau of military papers, which the writer was supplying to the German military attaché. They were said to have been found in a waste-paper basket. As the paper referred to some technical artillery matters, it was supposed to have come from an artillery officer, and Alfred Dreyfus, who was in the War Office, was suspected. On being arrested, he was taken by the orders of General Mercier to a military prison, and detained there in solitary confinement for many days, and constantly examined by Colonel du Paty de Clam, and made to write in different positions-standing, sitting, lying down, with gloves and without gloves. It is noteworthy that, when brought to the prison, General Mercier gave orders that he was to be fed on the fare appointed for condemned prisoners, and that it was only on the prison governor pointing out that he would be responsible for the illegality of such an outrage upon justice that the order was not carried out. Some weeks before the trial General Mercier conveyed to a Paris Paris newspaper, and that newspaper published, his assurance that the accused was undoubtedly guilty, thus publicly stamping him as a condemned man before his defence had been heard. The court-martial was conducted in secret, and the accused was convicted of being the writer of the bordereau, there being no evidence to support any other

charge made against his character. It is alleged, and not denied, that before the decision a document or documents were either read or shown to the court - martial, which the accused and his counsel were not permitted to see, and therefore could neither speak to nor lead evidence upon. As this is a very crucial point in the question of revision or no revision, it may be proper here to state that M. Dupuy, who was at the time Prime Minister, has sworn that he had heard of a secret document being used at the court-martial; and that M. Cavaignac, ex-Minister of War, said in evidence that he did not think it would be possible to affirm that the bordereau could have been the sole element of the first trial. The document secretly used was a letter passing between two persons not examined at the trial, and therefore could not, according to any possible rules of evidence in a civilised country, be an admissible document at all. It could prove nothing, any more than it would be proof against an accused person that somebody said something about the prisoner to some one else upon the street. This alone would vitiate any trial in a country where there is regard paid to justice and the citizen. Further, if the document could have been competent evidence it would have been worthless. It did not bear on the face of it to refer to Dreyfus, the only important words in it being, "Ce canaille de D—— devient trop exigeant." The grammar is bad, the meaning is obscure, and the person spoken of is not

identified. The context of the letter further shows that the Dreferred to could not be Dreyfus. Thus, if disclosed in full to the court-martial, it could not be of any weight against the accused: on the other hand, if only part of it was disclosed, those who used it to influence the court were doubly corrupt. The letter, therefore, was not evidence, and its contents, if admissible, did not constitute evidence; and if they were looked at as evidence in their entirety, were not in any sense effective evidence against the accused. To defend the secret use of it, whether wholly or partially disclosed, its acceptance as competent, its contents as having any bearing on the case, are things all equally impossible upon any principle of legal rule or ordinary justice. On the other hand, to defend its being used behind the back of the accused and his advisers requires an official effrontery that cannot be described otherwise than as brazen. If such use of any document was made, the members of the court-martial acted corruptly, and are liable to criminal punishment. If they were called on to commit this criminal act by their military superiors, that may be some palliation of their offence, but any superior who so acted is a still worse criminal.

Degradation followed on the conviction, Dreyfus at the parade loudly maintaining his innocence, and carrying his head erect. On the same day he appealed in pathetic terms to his counsel and all dear to him to continue searching for the truth. Then, at the instance of the Government, the Legislature passed a law empowering the State to subject such prisoners to more terrible punishment than the existing law permitted, and by a clause making it retroactive included the unfortunate Dreyfus in its meshes. Thus laws were broken and laws were made with the one object of ensuring condemnation and aggravating its penalties.

The Dreyfus family emulated the courage of their relative, and resolutely set themselves to search matters to the bottom. Their efforts roused the wrath of the Roman Catholic and Anti-Republican journalists,

and Anti Republican society, both Royalist and Bonapartist, the army being mainly officered from these factions. Dreyfus was a Jew, and his defence was an attack upon the General Staff, therefore a virulent press, clerical and political, entered upon a course of wild vituperation, false accusation, and incentive to violence, of which the watchwords were

À bas les Juifs!" and "Vive l'Armée!" Any one who, however calmly, asked that light should be thrown on an episode of doubtful legality and justice, was held up to public obloquy as a traitor forming one of a "Syndicate of Treason" in the pay of the foreigner, whether