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By Root 1026 0

From Norway the composer Grieg wrote refusing an invitation to conduct his music at the Théâtre Chatelet because of his “indignation at the contempt for justice shown in your country.” The English, riding at the time a wave of anti-French feeling because of Fashoda, were most indignant of all. Hyde Park rang with protest meetings, newspapers denounced the “insult to civilization,” industrial firms and cultural societies urged boycott of the Exposition as a means of bringing pressure on the French Government, travelers were urged to cancel proposed visits, a hotel-keeper in the Lake District evicted a honeymooning French couple and one writer to the editor asserted that even the question of the Transvaal “pales into insignificance before the larger questions of truth and justice.” The Times, however, reminded readers that many Frenchmen had risked “more than life itself” to prevent the defeat of justice and could not be expected to abandon the struggle to redress the wrong of Rennes.

The fight did in fact go on, but public opinion was worn out. The Affair was one of those situations for which there was no good solution. Waldeck-Rousseau offered Dreyfus a pardon which, despite the fierce objections of Clemenceau, was accepted on grounds of humanity—since Dreyfus could go through no more—and with the proviso that it would not terminate the effort to clear his name. Galliffet issued to the Army an Order of the Day: “The incident is closed.… Forget the past so that you may think only of the future.” Waldeck introduced an Amnesty Bill annulling all pending legal actions connected with the case and angering both sides: the Right because Déroulède was excluded; the Dreyfusards because Picquart, Reinach and others who had suffered injustice or had been sued could not clear themselves. Waldeck was adamant. “The amnesty does not judge, it does not accuse, it does not acquit; it ignores.” Debate nevertheless continued furious and lasted for a year before the bill became law. Animosities did not close over. Positions taken during the Affair hardened and crystallized. Lemaître, who had entered it more for sensation than from conviction, became a rabid royalist; Anatole France moved far to the left.

The battle shifted from the moral to the political; from Dreyfus to the Dreyfusian Revolution. It remained the same battle but the terms changed. The issue was no longer Justice and Revision but the effort of the Government under Waldeck and his successor, Combes, to curb clericalism and republicanize education and the Army. The fight was waged as fiercely as ever over Waldeck’s Law of Associations directed against the Religious Orders and over the affair of General André and the fiches when it was disclosed that the overzealous Minister of War in 1904 was using reports from Masonic officers on Catholic brother-officers to guide him in matters of promotion. Persistent and unrelenting efforts by Mathieu Dreyfus, Reinach and Jaurès succeeded against all obstacles in achieving a final Revision and a “breaking” of the Rennes verdict by the Cour de Cassation. On July 13, 1906, the eve of Bastille Day, almost twelve years after Dreyfus’ arrest and seven years after Rennes, a bill restoring Dreyfus and Picquart to the Army was carried in the Chamber by 442–32, with de Mun still among the negatives. Dreyfus, decorated with the Légion d’Honneur, was promoted to Major and Picquart to General, the ranks they would have reached by the normal course of events. In 1902 Drumont failed of reelection to the Chamber; La Libre Parole declined and in 1907 was offered for sale with no takers. Zola died in 1902 and at his funeral Anatole France spoke the just and noble epitaph of the man who “for a moment,… was the conscience of mankind.” In 1908 Zola’s ashes were transferred to the Panthéon. In the course of the ceremony a man named Gregori shot at Dreyfus, wounding him in the arm, and was subsequently acquitted in the Assize Court. In 1906 Clemenceau became Premier and named Picquart his Minister of War. Picquart in the seat of Mercier, “that’s something to