“Does it astonish you, then, that the council of war, after deliberation, was on the point of acquittal? Oh! gentlemen, I do not need the echoes that have reached my ears to convince me of it. We say that the countersign went forth; we say that a verdict was rendered in obedience to orders; but we do not suspect the honesty of the members of the council of war. If they obeyed orders, it was because they believed that they were obeying just orders. I admit that, had they known the order to be unjust and irregular, they would not have obeyed it. But, from the very fact that the order had been given, they at first concluded that it was just. Nevertheless, when the evidence was before them, and they saw that there was no proof of guilt, they were going to acquit, I do not doubt. They were going to acquit, because they had nothing but the bordereau before them; because the bordereau was the only document involved at the beginning of the trial; because nothing was left but the bordereau at the end of the trial, just as today there is nothing but the bordereau.
“I must demonstrate this to you, gentlemen, step by step. So you will pardon me for reading another document which seems to me indispensable. I borrow from ‘L’Autorité’—for I prefer to borrow from our enemies—the story of the public proceedings of the council of war of 1894. The account is indisputable, and, were it to be questioned, I have here also the account published by ‘La Libre Parole,’ which confirms it at every point.
The presiding judge orders the call of witnesses to begin. Then the representative of the government rises.
“By virtue,” he says, “of Article 113 of the code of military justice, which says that, if publicity appears dangerous to good order or to public morals, the council may order the trial to proceed behind closed doors, I move that the doors be closed. You know the documents that are included in the file. I do not need to insist; I know that it will be enough to appeal to your patriotism.”
M. Demange asks the floor.
The Judge.—“In giving the floor to the counsel, I ask him to confine himself to the question of closed doors, with which alone we are now concerned.”
The counsel then begins the reading of his motion, in which, after examining the legal texts permitting the ordering of closed doors, he declares that, since the legislator had in view no special case, it is necessary, whenever the question of closing the doors shall be raised, to inquire into the circumstances of the case, in order to ascertain whether any of them are of such a nature as to make a public trial dangerous to good morals or to good order. And he continues thus:
“In fact, from the point of view of the charge here preferred, whereas the only document” ...
But the judge abruptly stops him, and says in an imperious tone:
“I remind the counsel of my pressing invitation to make no reference to any document here involved.”