SHOOTING OF DREYFUS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 301, 14 September 1908, Page 7

SHOOTING OF DREYFUS.

- ASSAILANT ACQUITTED. (bi teworaph—pbess associatxon—corraisrtT.) (Heo. September 13) 4.30 p.m.) Paris, September 12. A. jury of the-Department of the Seine acquitted Gregori, charged with attempting to murder Major Dreyfus, as cabled on June 4. MILITARIST SENTIMENT. • The outrage occurred when tlie remains of Zola, the champion of Major Dreyfus, and the so-called "insulter of the French army," were being translated to the Pantheon. Whiie in the Pantheon two shots were fired from a revolver at Major Dreyfus; the first shot took effect in the right forearm, the bullet burying itself in the wrist; tho second bullet, after grazing Major Dreyfus's w)rist, struck the stone Sags of the pavement. The President of France and the Ministers had just passed, and turned round sharply at the sound of the shots, but did not know what had happened till some time later, partly owing to the fact that the assailant draped a handkerchief over his revolvor as he fired. Dreyfus's assailant was M. Gregori, military writer for the "Gaulois." Dreytus's brother, Matthew, seized Gregori, but, after securing him, chivalrously stood between Gregori and the fury of the crowd, ivho attempted to lynch the assaildnt. Gregori, who was led after the outrage into tho nave of the Pantheon and summarily questioned, stated that he was 6G years old and a journalist on the staff of the Paris daily paper "le Gaulois." He seemed greatly excited,-and said, "I did not fire specially at Dreyfus, but at Dreyfusism generally." Interrogated again, he said he fired the shots because tho "glorification of Zola was an insult to France and her army." The verdict of the jury is probably the result of the survival of feeling against Dreyfus and Zola, revivified by the honour to Zola's remains. To some of the great families of France and to a section of the French public, the admission of Zola, the "traducer of tho French army and the French people," to the Pantheon is an act of desecration. Furtherpiore, it arouses once more all tho passions engendered in the years of bitter conflict about the Dreyfus case, with which Zola is for ever associated. ' . "