argumentative document, and which, in this case, is from beginning to end a pleading for the accused. Any person, without having legal training, can see this at once. It is a key to the whole conduct of the proceedings, and led up to Picquart's indignant ejaculation when before the Esterhazy court-martial, "It seems, then, that it is I who am on my trial!"

But the significance of the occurrences at this time does not centre on the investigation itself, but is to be found in the surrounding circumstances. It is now definitely ascertained, and indeed admitted by the actors in the farce, that while the inquiry was going on into the matter, two emissaries from the War Department were holding daily clandestine meetings in secretly arranged rendezvous with Esterhazy. Esterhazy states that a signal, by a wave of a handkerchief and a password, was prearranged. Thus he clandestinely met these officers of the French army, they being well muffled up, and disguised with blue spectacles and false beards. They concocted letters to General Billot, suggesting that Dreyfus had imitated Esterhazy's writing in the bordereau. Again, a letter was made up to be sent directly to General de Boisdeffre. And lastly, a violent letter was written to President Faure, in which Esterhazy states that if he is not supported he will appeal to his family chief, the Emperor, he being by birth an Austrian. That these letters were admitted to have been made up by Du Paty de Clam was sworn to in the Esterhazy Court of Inquiry, and Du Paty had

practically to admit that they were. Thus Du Paty de Clam and Henry, the subordinates of De Boisdeffre, were, with or without his connivance, it matters little which, clandestinely meeting with and prompting a person suspected of treachery how to bully the War Minister and the head of the State. Further, there was handed to Esterhazy a photographic copy of the "Ce canaille de D letter, it being arranged that it was to be represented that he received it from a veiled lady, who met him by appointment in a secret place behind the palisades of the Alexandre III. Bridge. The story was that this lady had been, as Esterhazy said at his trial, "animated by an imperious motive to defend an unfortunate man against false machinations." His cousin, Count Christian Esterhazy, a young man who was used as a gobetween with Henry and Du Paty de Clam, now avows that Esterhazy got him to write the veiled-lady letters. He declares that he saw Du Paty de Clam hand the sealed packet to Esterhazy; and the farce was then gone through of Esterhazy handing in the document to the War Office, a formal receipt being given for it by General Billot. All this was intended to help Esterhazy and smite Picquart. For the purpose was to suggest that the veiled lady was a friend of Picquart's, and that she as a matter of conscience had got hold of this document when Picquart was asleep, and had delivered it to the falsely accused man Esterhazy-the suggestion being that Picquart, who was attacking Esterhazy's repu

tation, knew that Dreyfus was guilty. But there was a further purpose, and that was to put Billot in Esterhazy's power by enabling Esterhazy to expose the use of the secret document.

The effect of Matthieu Dreyfus's accusation was that a different theory became necessary to account for what was manifest on the face of the bordereau. It was so certain that men who knew Esterhazy's writing-a class of witnesses much more valuable than experts-would declare the bordereau to be his, that it was imperative to adopt a new line-viz., that the writer of the bordereau had copied or even traced Esterhazy's writing. That this was arranged between him and his co-conspirators in the War Office is certain. It was a desperate change of front, considering that Dreyfus's conviction had proceeded on the allegation that it was in his own writing, and this had been proclaimed by the 'Matin' as "clear." Every day, as the preliminary inquiry proceeded, Esterhazy was kept informed as to all that was going on, and carefully instructed by his friends in the blue spectacles and false beards, either directly or through his cousin and his mistress by notes. Of course these notes were to be destroyed; but equally, of course, they were not, and lately some of them have been revealed. An analysis of one recently published in facsimile would be interesting, but this is not possible here. Suffice it to say that it is palpably the letter of a conspirator against truth and justice.

Esterhazy was brought to trial, and experts examined to

prove that the bordereau was not in his handwriting. Counterevidence in abundance was produced. As already stated, the indictment was a pleading for the accused. If what is above written be correct, the result was a foregone conclusion. That it is correct is definitely substantiated under Du Paty's own hand in the letter above referred to. So compromising was this letter, that when Esterhazy's conduct was inquired into later by directions of M. Cavaignac, a letter was written by Colonel Kerdrain to say that unless this letter of Du Paty de Clam's was returned at once, Esterhazy's advocate Tézevas would not be allowed to appear.

Next came the Zola manifesto and the Zola trials, both full of interest, but which cannot be noticed here, except to say that they produced so much agitation that it was felt necessary to try the effect of another parliamentary announcement. M. Cavaignac, the new Minister of War, had attacked the previous Ministry for "weakness and hesitation." He was not weak, and he did not hesitate. He did not go back on the bordereau. He had new material. He quoted the "Canaille de D- letter and another letter which also referred to D, and then read a letter, which he said formed part of a complete correspondence, in which Dreyfus is mentioned by name, and spoken of as "ce juif." This announcement was received tumultuously by the Chamber. It was ordered to be posted in the 36,000 communes of France.

Thus once more it was supposed that an end had come. But Colonel Picquart promptly, in a letter to the Premier, declared that he could prove that the two letters with Dcould not apply to Dreyfus, and that the Dreyfus letter bore all the characteristics of a forgery.

Well, the two documents did not apply to Dreyfus, and the third was a forgery. Henry was compelled to admit that he forged it, and died the same night by his own hand, or by the hand of another.

On 13th July 1898 Colonel Picquart was arrested and put in prison, and he still remains an untried prisoner to this day, now on a charge of forgery of the petit-bleu which has been made against him. But he has the consolation that if there has been corruption in the General Staff he has probed it, and if there was misleading of the nation he has corrected it. He it is above all others that has made the refusal of consideration of the question of revision an impossibility. Not to prejudge a case still under inquiry, no more will be said here on the charge against Picquart.

The

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exposed made it desirable that the reporter should not be selected from those who had families. They have been grossly insulted by a President of another division, who cynically avows himself a partisan in the matter they are inquiring into, and then accuses them of partisanship, and without word to them by way of inquiry, accepts all the miserable tattle of lobby attendants, and makes a weapon out of any trifle that can be twisted into an accusation. It is needless in this country to characterise such conduct. It was intended as a political move of a strong partisan to excite public opinion against the criminal judges, but it has fallen flat, and is utterly discredited. It was too absurd even in a country where absurdity seems to pass for logic and reason.

At the present moment extraordinary matter is coming to light in the publication of the evidence taken before the Criminal Chamber. This may not be commented on now, or until all is known.

The reader will now have some idea of what is the state of France. It is lamentable

man of any standing who in connection with this affair is not under the stigma of imputed falsehood and dishonour, and those who can shake off the stigma can only do so by transferring it to the shoulders of their traducers. Society is at war. Judges accuse other judges. Magistrates impugn the good faith of other magistrates. Officers of rank and important public officials openly

charge each other with lying and fraud. No reputation is safe. A violent press denounces and threatens those who are independent enough to refuse to have opinions forced upon them, or to shape their course in duty in subservience to dictation. Men held in the highest respect are deprived of public offices because they ask for revision; others are expelled from the Order of the Legion of Honour for no other offence. Life is made almost unendurable to unoffending citizens for no other reason than that they are Jews, or if not Jews because they demand that a Jew shall have the same justice as a Christian or an infidel. The supreme judges of the land are held up to public execration, not for giving a judgment, but for inquiring into a matter brought before them as the law binds them to do. Jurors are threatened with ruin if they act otherwise than as the mob dictates at the request of those who call themselves the army. Religious rancour and infidel truculence join hand in hand against the liberty of the subject. The social fabric is shaken to its foundations. And the cause of all this is Dreyfus, the helpless prisoner on the other side of the world. He is indeed the negative ruler of France. France has a Government and it has officials, but their work is paralysed and their efficiency marred by him. Because of him men are breaking every moral law, and shattering all social peace. For him the Statute law of the land has been changed twice, once to

aggravate his punishment, and once to take away his appeal from the Constitutional Tribunal which was investigating it. Since he was deported, France has had no tranquillity. Riotous murder, pillage, terrorism, duelling, suicides, public uproar, forgery, fraud, lying, slander, threatenings, vituperation, outrage on individual liberty, scandals in the administration of justice, and countless other evils, have made her a sorry spectacle to gods and men. And of all this Dreyfus is the negative cause. Helpless in his durance vile, he is the most potent factor in France's life to-day. He is indeed her ruler negatively. What is to be the end? Dreyfus has a place in history that few other Frenchmen of the last decade of this century will have. All who love the truth will earnestly hope that his last chapter in that history, whether it tells of due confirmation of his guilt or of a great wrong being righted, may speak of justice. If it does not, the chapters that follow may be terrible reading. For the demon of Revolution would seem to be in the air.

these disclosures. Rather, as the reader will have observed, have some points been emphasised in a very marked manner. It is not possible to notice all of these, but it is necessary to state that a new and very serious development has taken place which gives a more than ever painful aspect to the Affaire. The surviving officer who was put in charge of the accusation against Dreyfus and the exculpation of Esterhazy now accuses the generals over him of conduct dishonourable and in defraud of justice, declar ing that all he did was done by order. But, worse still, two of the principal departments of State-the War Office and the Foreign Office-have exhibited themselves to their country and to the world as accusing one another of the grossest bad faith. The War Office accuses the Foreign Office of having altered the reading of a deciphered telegram, after having given a particular version of it to the War Department. The Foreign Office retorts that this is a calumnious accusation, as can be proved by obtaining the original telegram from the

Ministers of Posts and Telegraphs. The War Office replies that, having applied to the Post Office Department, the telegram could not be obtained, such documents not being preserved beyond a certain time. To this the Foreign Office answers that no such reply could have been given, as all

once

official telegrams are preserved indefinitely, that on applying for a copy from the Postal Department it was was at supplied, and that it demonstrates the truth of the statements made by the Foreign Office. All this would be painful enough, but this dispute has brought another fact to light. The War Office had inserted in the secret dossier, as being a copy of the telegram, a paper which was not a copy at all, but a fictitious copy, made made up after the original copy had been either lost or as is more likely-destroyed, a considerable time before. This made-up copy is so completely unlike the original, and so directly contrary to its sense, which is altogether favourable to Dreyfus, that the Foreign Office authorised its representative to state to the Court of Cassation that not only was it erroneous to a discreditable extent, but that it must be a fabrication! M. Paléologue, of the Foreign Office, made this statement in evidence :

"My conscience and my instructions compel me to go further, and to affirm that no error of memory could justify the divergence between the two texts [of the telegram]-that remade up by the Ministry of War and that preserved at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is not only an

error, it is a falsification.

"The document No. 44 is not only incorrect, it is false."

Under this accusation the War Office remains silent. What next?