The Dreyfus Case.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XVI, Issue 2899, 21 December 1898, Page 4

The Dreyfus Case.

■■—__♦ ~ ESTERHAZY'S ALLEGED CONFESSION. . ABANDONMENT OF A LIBEL ACTION. Pabis, Dec. 18. Major Esterhazy, who has been prominently connected with the Dreyfus case, is said to have abandoned his intended action for libel against the London Observer, in connection with the statements published by that journal with reference to his alleged visit to London and his confession bearing on the case. The day after the French Cabinet resolved to sanction an application to the Court of Cassation for the revision of the Dreyfus case, the Observer published the details of an inview with Esterhazy by Mrs Rachael Beer, the directress of the journal. The substance of the story told by the French officer on that occasion was that he wrote the famous bordereau—which was intended to constitute the material proof of Dreyfus' guilt—at the request of Colonel Sandherr. There was considerable moral proof against Dreyfus before his trial took place; but there was no material proof. Colonel Sandherr, who was an Alsatian, like Dreyfus, but intensely anti-Semitic, deter-' mined to forge this proof. He was personally convinced cf the accused man's guilt. . . . Since the circumstantial evidence was not enough, it was not necessary for the court-martial that documents should exist. " I wrote the bordereau because Sandherr told me to do so," concluded Esterhazy. " I knew the purpose it was intended to serve, and that I was committing a forgery."