Chapter M: Zola’s Letter to President Faure Relating to

THE DREYFUS CASE, AND A FULL REPORT OF THE
FIFTEEN DAYS’ PROCEEDINGS IN THE ASSIZE
COURT OF THE SEINE, INCLUDING TESTIMONY
OF WITNESSES AND SPEECHES OF COUNSEL

NEW YORK
BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER
1898

COPYRIGHT
BY BENJ. R. TUCKER
1898

☞ The advantages of the method of typography employed in the composition of this volume, in which the “justification” of lines is dispensed with, are undeniable. From the standpoint of æsthetics it is an improvement, because by it absolutely perfect spacing is secured. From the standpoint of economy it is almost a revolution, since it saves, in the case of book work, from twenty to forty per cent. of the cost of type-setting, according to the grade of the work. If adopted in all printing-offices, it would effect a daily saving of the labor of about two hundred thousand men.

THE OFFENCE.

On January 10, 1898, some three years after the secret trial and conviction, by a council of war, of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, then a staff officer of the French army, of having sold French military secrets to a foreign power, in consequence of which he was stripped of his uniform in a degrading public ceremony and sent for life to Devil’s Island, a French penal settlement situated off the coast of French Guiana, where he is now confined under guard, a second council of war convened in Paris for the trial of Major Marie Charles Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, a French infantry officer temporarily relieved from active service on account of poor health, the charge against him--preferred by Mathieu Dreyfus, brother of Captain Alfred Dreyfus--being that he was the real author of the _bordereau_, or itemized memorandum, supposed to have been written by Captain Dreyfus, and on the strength of which the latter was convicted.

The trial was conducted publicly until the most important witness, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, of the Fourth Algerian Sharpshooters, was reached, when the council went into secret session, remaining behind closed doors until the evening of January 11, when the doors were thrown open and General de Luxer, the president of the council, announced a unanimous vote in acquittal of the defendant.

Two days later--January 13--“L’Aurore,” a daily paper published in Paris under the directorship of Ernest Vaughan and the editorship of Georges Clemenceau, and having as its _gérant_, or legally responsible editor, J. A. Perrenx, published the following letter from Emile Zola, man of letters, to Félix Faure, president of France: