“Everything seems to be against me,—the two chambers, the civil power, the military power, the journals of large circulation, the public opinion that they have poisoned. And with me there is but an idea, an ideal of truth and justice. And I am perfectly at ease; I shall triumph.
“I did not wish my country to remain in falsehood and injustice. Here I may be condemned; but some day France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.”
Speech of M. Labori.
M. Zola was followed by his counsel, M. Labori, who summed up his case with the following elaborate argument:
“Gentlemen of the jury, though this trial has already lasted more than two weeks, I have still to call upon you for a last, and perhaps, alas! a long, effort. I feel that you appreciate, and perhaps better than ever after the words that have just been spoken, the grandeur of this trial, and that you will forgive me for counting on your devotion as citizens and on your kindly and impartial attention as judges. I do not think that there was ever an affair that more deeply stirred the public conscience. None has caused more clamor, the excuse of which, in the case of many, is that they who utter it know not what they do. None has given rise to more decided courage and conviction. Between the determination of some and the outcry of others the mass of the people, insufficiently enlightened, but of good faith (and it is on this good faith that I rely), still hesitates in uncertainty before the unchained passions, on the one hand, which uselessly invoke, though neither is involved, the honor of the army and the safety of the country, and, on the other, before all that France possesses of independence and elevation of mind. It suffices, gentlemen, to take at hazard from the list the names of those whose thought accompanies the great citizen here before you,—Anatole France, Duclaux, Gabriel Monod, Michel Bréal, Jean Psichari, Réville, Frédéric Passy, de Pressensé, Havet, Séailles, and that admirable Grimaux whom the army cannot deny. For years he has been the teacher of a great number of its most brilliant officers. But M. Grimaux, in spite of all threats, came here to proclaim, with an eloquence that moved us all, his conviction that we are in the path of truth, justice, and right.
“Ah! gentlemen, between these two parties, not equal yet in numbers, I know in which direction this great people would lean, if the public powers, misled by their temporary interest, sustained by those who were yesterday, who will be tomorrow, who are even today, their worst adversaries, did not disconcert the country by their attitude and unproved declarations. Everybody says everywhere that there are three hundred deputies in the chamber, and one hundred and fifty or two hundred senators in the senate, who consider revision a necessary thing, but will not say so until after the elections. But it is not enough, gentlemen, that our governors, who ought to be the nation’s guides, separate themselves from this phalanx of chosen men, some of whom I have just named. It is necessary also that these chosen men, every day and twice a day, should be insulted and defamed, I do not say only by the newspapers that make a trade of calumny, but even by those organs of public opinion from which we are accustomed to expect a little more moderation and a little more justice.
“The insult that is thrown in their face may be summed up in one word: they are members of that syndicate formed to sustain the Jews and ruin the country. Syndicate! an ingenious word, an invention of talented pamphleteers,—whose excuse is that at bottom they are too often children through the very puerility of their credulity. An ingenious word, but an infamous word for those who launch it, hoping that it will make its way. And, gentlemen, has it not made its way, when we see it approved here by the attorney-general? An infamous word for those, a childish word for those others who believe that such things are possible. Oh! if they simply mean that a family will spend all that it possesses, will sacrifice not the immense fortune which has been spoken of, but its abundant ease, to save the man whom it knows to be innocent, and if they mean that some friends will help them, I say quite frankly that I see nothing in that which is not respectable. But, if they mean that M. Zola has sold himself, I say as frankly: it is a lie, or, rather, it is childishness. Sold? Let them say it; it is a matter of indifference to him. If he defends himself, if those who assist him defend him and themselves with him, it is in the interest of the cause that they represent. No, gentlemen, there are no money syndicates that can produce movements like those which you have witnessed, or powers of resistance such as those which we endeavor to display. It is not money that brings here citizens like Scheurer-Kestner, Trarieux, Jaurès; politicians—I take them from all parties—like Charles Longuet and—I say it, though I raise a protest in the court-room—like Joseph Reinach himself, whom we should not be afraid to mention here in praise of his perseverance and the dignity of his attitude; artists like Clairin, Eugène Carrière, Claude Monet, Bruneau, Desmoulins, who accompany M. Zola to this court every day, in spite of the threats with which he is surrounded; and publicists like Quillard, Ajalbert, Victor Bérard, Lucien Victor-Meunier, Ranc, Sigismond Lacroix, Yves Guyot, and Séverine, who said to us: ‘Do not call me as a witness; proclaim loudly what I think; I serve you better where I am.’ She is right, for do you know what she assures us with her articles in ‘La Fronde’? The support of a cohort of French women, who are with us, and will remain with us, and who instil at the fireside the ideas that we have scattered through the country.
“Well, gentlemen, all those whom I have enumerated, all those whom I forget, we must thank and salute, not in the name of M. Zola,—for his personality, however eminent it may be, disappears from the case,—but in the name of something higher, for they will be entitled some day to the country’s gratitude. And do you know why? Because in a moment when it required some courage these men placed truth and right above everything. Belonging, most of them, to the educational world,—and it is to the honor of the French university,—they understood that, teaching the eternal ideal, they had no right, in the hour of danger, to pursue a line of conduct not in harmony with their teachings. Defending liberty and the eternal rules of justice, they were bound to practise both.
“The truth is, whatever may be said, that the verdict against Dreyfus in 1894 has never ceased to weigh upon the public conscience. I do not mean by that that the majority of citizens suspect the legitimacy of the sentence. How could I say it, when I very well know that at the present hour the majority is against us, or seems to be, for many timid consciences are silenced by the uproar which is mistaken for an expression of the general sentiment. But I grant that at present the majority is still against us.
“Many, nevertheless, have been disturbed, disturbed from the very first by the darkness of the prosecution, by the moving scene of the degradation, by the persistence of the condemned man in proclaiming his innocence. When the verdict was rendered, the majority, knowing nothing, were moved for a moment by the obscurities in which the case was wrapped. But their emotion was soon smothered in the floods of lies that were poured forth, and all rested in the confidence that the verdict necessarily inspired.