16th Sept. THE anti-Dreyfusite French papers, among which we fear we must include our French contemporary in Shanghai, are very angry with the English Press for devoting any attention to this miserable case. It has nothing to do with Great Britain, they say, why should Great Britain mix herself up in it? Great Britain pretends to be anxious for the maintenance of cordial relations with France, and yet takes on the Dreyfus case an attitude which is most insulting to France; what a hypocrite, a malicious hypocrite, Great Britain is, etc., ete. But it is just because the French are our neighbours and generally our good friends, because the first place that an Englishman who has got a holiday thinks of going to is Paris, because we want to be on good terms with the noblest part of France, that Great Britain does take such an interest in the Dreyfus case. Ifit had occurred in Russia, there would not have been ten lines about it in the English papers. It is because most of us like the French so much, that we are grieved to see France led into such a terrible mess by a few Generals, anti-Semites, and loud-voiced demagogues anxious to overthrow the Republic. The Dreyfus case is being used by the Druof the army and by the Church to overthrow the institutions which have raised France in twenty-nine years from the slough in which She was plunged by Napoleon LI. What the Republic has done for France is thoroughly appreciated by all thinking minds in Great Britain, and they naturally have no sympathy with a movement directed by the enemies of the Republic; while there are a vast number of men in Great but who are honestly shocked b y the Britain who care little for politics, terrible failure of justice that the Dreyfus case exhibits.
Many of our readers will perhaps be glad to have their memories refreshed by a brief history of the case. In 1894 report was circulated through the Fzench Press, that an officer of the General Svaff at Paris had been detected selling military secrets toa foreign Power. It came out that the guilty person was Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the Artillery, a Hebrew, and an oticer of the Second Bureau of the General Staff. He was brought before a court-martial, found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment for life in a fortress and public degradation before the Paris garrison. This sentence was carried out on the 3th of January, 1895, the prisoner throughout protesting' his innocence and bearing himself with dignity, but with no theatrical display. He was sent to solitary confinement in a little island off the pestilential const of French Guiana, where everything that could be devised was done to drive him into insanity or kill him. These are all admitted tacts.
It subsequently transpired that Dreyfus.was condemned on the evidence of a certain bordereau, which was alleged to have been found torn up into small pieces in the waste-paper basket of Col. von Schwartzkoppen, the German military attache at Paris. This bordeveau. was a memorandum of certain confidential documents which the writer had forwarded to the Colonel.. Experts in handwriting to whom it was submitted were divided in opinion, some saying that it was in the writing of Dreyfus, some that it was not. The only direct evidence against Dreyfus was that of Col. Henry, who testified that a diplomatist told him that Dreyfus was @ traitor. The court-martial was about to acquit Dreyfus when a secret dossier, or collection of incriminating documents, was shown to the members, but not to Dreyfus or his counsel, and Dreyfus was convicted.
After two years had passed, M. Bernard Lazaro, a well-known French journalist, inspired by the family of Dreyfus, wrote a pamphlet in which he asked why Dreyfus who had a large private come and was devoted to his profession and his family, should betray his country for a few
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.