THE DREYFUS CASE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 195, 17 July 1935, Page 6

THE DREYFUS CASE.

Towards the close of last century France was convulsed by the trial and conviction of one of her officers on a charge of selling military secrets to Germany. The accused was Colonel Alfred Dreyfus whose death has lately taken place, but under vastly different circumstances from what could have been anticipated had the original sentence in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice the world has ever known been allowed to stand. The son of Jewish parents, Captain Dreyfus as he then was became suspect of selling his country’s military secrets to the Germans in 1894. He faced a court-martial which found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment on that most horrible of all places, Devil’s Island, in French Guiana. From one end of France to another there was a howl of execration against the Jews, and the case convulsed French political life for many years. But Dreyfus was not'without friends who believed him 1o have, been wrongly dealt with, the victim of evidence which should have sent others to penal servitude in the ghastly prison where he lay r . The eminent novelist, M. Zola, wrote the historic “J’accuse” in which he formulated the case against the French general staff in so dramatic a manner as to startle more than the French people themselves. In 1899 Dreyfus was brought back to face another trial by court-martial, but so strong was the wave of antiSemitism in military circles that another verdict of'guilty was returned, though this time “extenuating circumstances” were found in the evidence. Ten days later the President had pardoned the unfortunate man. Within a few years fresh facts had been garnered, but it was not until 19UG that the Government yielded t to the requests for a fresh trial which completely 'exonerated Dreyfus, finding that he had been earlier convicted on a forgery and that the real culprits were Major Esterhazy and Colonel Henry, whose names arc indelibly associated with the scandal. He was rehabilitated, restored to active military rank, and publicly decorated with the I .region of Honour. In this way his country righted a great wrong, but the repercussions of the case were many. The issues it involved were military prestige as against civil liberty, anti-Semitism, the relations of Church and State, and the very existence of the Republic as against a growth of monarchical sentiment. Through it all Dreyfus remained detached, especially in 1929 when the publication of German evidence, not until then available, made it abundantly clear that no stigma attached to his name. It is not an episode to which Frenchmen cure to refer.