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By Root 1865 0

speak out loud and clear—otherwise it would forfeit what is its essential prerogative. Cock and bull stories will no longer suffice. We must appoint judges to try Dreyfus. And that will be an easy matter because, although we have acquired the habit in our beloved France, where we love to speak ill of ourselves, of thinking or letting it be thought that in order to hear the words Truth and Justice it is necessary to cross the Channel, which is very often only a roundabout way of reaching the Spree, there are judges to be found outside Berlin. But once the machinery of Government has been set in motion, will you have ears for the voice of authority? When it bids you perform your duty as a citizen will you take your stand in the ranks of law and order? When its patriotic appeal sounds, will you have the wisdom not to turn a deaf ear but to answer: ‘Present!’?”

M. de Norpois put these questions to Bloch with a vehemence which, while it alarmed my old schoolfriend, flattered him also; for the Ambassador seemed to be addressing a whole party in Bloch’s person, to be interrogating him as though he had been in the confidence of that party and might be held responsible for the decisions which it would adopt. “Should you fail to disarm,” M. de Norpois went on without waiting for Bloch’s collective answer, “should you, before even the ink has dried on the decree ordering the retrial, obeying I know not what insidious word of command, fail, I say, to disarm, and band yourselves in a sterile opposition which seems to some minds the ultima ratio of policy, should you retire to your tents and burn your boats, you would be doing so to your own detriment. Are you the prisoner of those who foment disorder? Have you given them pledges?” Bloch was at a loss for an answer. M. de Norpois gave him no time. “If the negative be true, as I sincerely hope and trust, and if you have a little of what seems to me to be lamentably lacking in certain of your leaders and your friends, namely political sense, then, on the day when the Criminal Court assembles, if you do not allow yourselves to be dragooned by the fishers in troubled waters, you will have won the day. I do not guarantee that the whole of the General Staff is going to get away unscathed, but it will be so much to the good if some of them at least can save their faces without putting a match to the powder-barrel. It goes without saying, of course, that it rests with the Government to pronounce judgment and to close the list—already too long—of unpunished crimes, not, certainly, at the bidding of Socialist agitators, nor yet of any obscure military rabble,” he added, looking Bloch in the eyes, perhaps with the instinct that leads all Conservatives to try to win support for themselves in the enemy’s camp. “Government action is not to be dictated by the highest bid, wherever it may come from. The Government is not, thank heaven, under the orders of Colonel Driant, nor, at the other end of the scale, under M. Clemenceau’s. We must curb the professional agitators and prevent them from raising their heads again. France, the vast majority here in France, desires only to be allowed to work in orderly conditions. As to that, there can be no question whatever. But we must not be afraid to enlighten public opinion; and if a few sheep, of the kind our friend Rabelais knew so well, should dash headlong into the water, it would be as well to point out to them that the water in question is troubled water, that it has been troubled deliberately by an agency not within our borders, in order to conceal the dangers lurking in its depths. And the Government must not give the impression that it is emerging from its passivity under duress when it exercises the right which is essentially its own and no one else’s, I mean that of setting the wheels of justice in motion. The Government will accept all your suggestions. If there should prove to have been a judicial error, it can be assured of an overwhelming majority which would give it some elbow-room.”

“You, sir,” said Bloch, turning to M. d’Argencourt, to whom