THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN DREYFUS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11320, 2 September 1899, Page 6

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN DREYFUS.

London Times, July 3. After more than four yeara of punishment which would have bßen severe even had he been incontestably proved guilty of the things laid to hie charge, Captain Dreyfus, against whom no evidence of the slightest value has vet been given, has been permitted to return to France. Ignorant as he is of the events that have convnlsed France 1 during his absence, he mast have been amaz-d and bewildered by the extraordinary circumstances of his arrival. No hero of melodrama ever appeared npoa the scene with more elaborate preoau« tions than those which the Government of a great nation has thought it necessary to take in bringing a single help less prisoner home for a new "trial. A cruiser hanging abont. for days off the French coast, (toother vessel carrying to her mystorjouj messages under pretext (if . experiments in pigeon-flying, the landing of the prisoner at no port and in no ordinary way, bat in an open boat at a tiny fishing village in the small hours of a stormy morning, the barouche into whioh he was harrldd And driven to the railway station, the train stopping nt a level crossing some distance from Bennes, the fresh oarriages that met it there, the general atmosphere of mystery fluag round what, after all, was an open secret, the serio-oomio importance assumed by every one connected with the business, and even the final touoh of a sanitary officer trying to upßot everything with an officious demand for quarantine— Jo not all these things remind one irresistibly of a procession of stage con«plratora in a Surrey melodrama P Th) nnfortnnate prisoner must have wondered whether the whole affair was not some gigantic mystifiostioD, and whether he had Dot been simply kidnapped to be marooned on some exotic island. We have to rub our eyes and remind ourselves that this is a State prisoner whose conviction bas been quashed by the highest Court in France, and who is being brought back from exile by the Frenoh Government in order to ba retried for the authorship of a bordereau which that Oourt declares to have been written by Bsterhazy. AH this in France, which e&rries the torch of intelligence, which has proclaimed the rights of man, which has esprit, and in wbioh ridicule is supposed to kill. All this takes place under an Administration which ib exceptionally endowed with moral courage and haa set before itself the task of sweeping away the tangle of dishonest intrigue that has well-nigh swamped the Republic We see Franoe, as it were, at her beat certainly at a higher point than she haa ever touched tinoo the Dreyfus affair b?gaD, nnd even ao Franoa bohavos as if her policy were direated by some kind of cecond-rate M. Lecoq. But if the whole affair is a comedy for thoße who think, it is a tragedy for those who feel. It is a tragedy for the unhappy man who by no fault of his own beoame tb.e symbol of reactionary concentration, who without his knowledge haa been made the focus of a hundred converging streams of ohlcan- I cry and Intrigue, and who is hated at I this moment with a blind and bigoted I ferocity of which few people In this country have formed an adequate conception, l'here la no power that can give back to him these wasted years of his life, that can compensate him in the remotest degree for the vindiotive cruelty of bis persecutors, that oan pluck from his memory the rooted sorrow of his degradation and his long" drawn torture, or that can repair the ravages bodily and mental of these terrible years in the lie dv Diable, He Is sad not to be so greatly altered as might have been expeoted. His devoted wife, who even now in»y not speak with him save In the presenoe of an official, aeema to have been agreeably surprised to Had that he had corns through the ordeal better than she ventured to hope. Captain Sauge, who saw him before his exile, finds him but little altered, and others testify that his spirit seems unbroken. We are heartily glad to find that such verdicts are possible, but whatever an indomitable will may do to repress the signs of mental anguish, no m»u in his senses will believe, that these four awful years have failed to Infliot irremediable injury. Only extraordinary physical and infolleotual strength oould have availed to bring him through with reason un« impaired. Many msn would have died, many more would have loat their reason, but no man, however knit and compacted, can come unscathed through such misery and despair. We must not forget tbat by a refinement of callous cruelty Captain Dreyfus had been kept In total ignorance of the events of the last two years. No whisper wasalhwed to reaoh him of, the efforts b'iing made for hi* rehabilitation, unless perhaps we may suppose that the tsrdy interrogatories of the Court of Cassation Bhed some ray of hope upon his gloom. If the affair has been a tragedy for the prisoner, it has no losb been a tragedy for Franoe. Never has a graat gation presented a more deplorable and pitiable speotaole to the world than has France throughout this long struggle | ) A thousand times must the reoltal of j current events have reoalled to men's minds the bitter epigram in which Voltairo summed up bis oountrymen. Everything that Is noble, generous, and of good repnte baa been dragged In the mire. Every institution by whioh a nations position in the world o»n be judged haa been degraded, dishonored, and befouled. The ohiefs of the army have sunk themselves beneath contempt. The mouthpiooee of the Churoh have been foremost In openly Inflaming the basest passions and In oeorttly intriguing on the side of Injustice and wrong. The magistracy has shown Itself too weak to withstand the most pitiful politioal in* fluencos, and the Court of Cassation itself has barely snooeeded in maintaining the high level expooted from tht> eupreme expression of justice and law. Of successive Oabinetß, and of suaoessive Ministers of War who sought to stifle irqniry by avowing a convlotion of the piisoner'a guilt whioh Wft' merely _ the expression of aninteres'ed opinion, it Is ft hardly negeißßty to speak, Finally, the

bulk of the Prenoh Press, the mtrror from day to day of the thoughts and the impulses of the French paopifl, have taken the lead in emphasising EreDoh decadence by pouring upon every honest mau and every yet uucorrupted insti'u- | tlon, from the President downwards, a torrent of the fouleßt and most mendaeions abase. Oa one side melodrama judoet 1 , but on the other tragedy.