M. Trarieux.—“I suppose you refer to the visit of M. Demange?”
M. Labori.—“Yes.”
The Judge.—“Is this in relation to the Dreyfus case?”
M. Labori.—“It is in relation to a document involved in the Dreyfus trial.”
The Judge.—“I ask you to say nothing about it.”
M. Labori.—“Yesterday General Mercier thought it his duty to refer to the Dreyfus case in words which, like all those that come from a certain direction here, are incomplete. They were received with very violent manifestations, but I have not been able to obtain anything additional, because it is an understood thing here that in this matter anyone can say anything that will injure us, but no one has a right to say anything that can help us.”
The Judge.—“Pardon me, M. Labori, I believe that I preside here with all the independence desirable. If I prevent M. Trarieux from speaking of the Dreyfus case, it is because there has been a decree of the court. You remind me of what General Mercier said yesterday. Permit me to add that, if the general said it, it was because I did not have time to stop him. He spoke too quickly; otherwise I would have prevented him. You ask questions that violate the decree which we have rendered.”
M. Labori.—“I shall ask all the questions that I think useful to my offence, whatever your opinion of them may be. You will pass upon them, Monsieur le Président,—and the court with you, for you are not the sole master,—as you see fit.”
M. Clemenceau.—“I think that the court misunderstands. None of us intend to violate its decrees. What we wish to point out is that, in spite of you, Monsieur le Président,—you yourself have said it,—General Mercier made a certain declaration yesterday. We desired to bring out today either a contradiction or a confirmation of the words uttered by General Mercier, and, by virtue of a decree of the court, you say to us: ‘That is not possible.’ The jurors will observe that for a court of justice this is a singular situation. The charge may be made, but it may not be contradicted.”
M. Trarieux.—“The charge, whether against M. Scheurer-Kestner or against M. Mathieu Dreyfus, that they are responsible for the existing agitation and disorder is quite erroneous and ill-founded. In fact, there are two ways of obtaining the revision of a judicial error, and Article 443 of the code of criminal examination defines them. The first is this: once a condemnation has been pronounced, if it be discovered that the facts on which this condemnation rest were committed by some other person than the person condemned, this other person may be prosecuted, and, if a condemnation is secured, this condemnation being contradictory of the previous condemnation of an innocent man, a revision of the judicial error becomes imperative. Thus these two condemnations necessarily bring about, ipso facto, a revision of the trial. The second method is provided by a law passed by the present legislature on June 6, 1895, under the government to which I had the honor to belong. It provides that, if, after a condemnation, a new fact be discovered which was unknown at the time of the condemnation, and which is of a nature to establish the innocence of the party condemned, the matter may be laid before the minister of justice to induce him to procure a revision of the case. The minister of justice is asked to lay the matter before the court of appeals, which is judge in such a matter. Now, it is indisputable that M. Mathieu Dreyfus took the first method, for, by preferring a formal complaint against Major Esterhazy, he hoped to secure a condemnation of him, the immediate consequence of which would have been a revision of his brother’s case. The question is whether he would not have done better to take the second method. It seems to be the opinion that he should have applied to the minister of justice and asked him to lay the matter before the court. I think that this is a mistaken opinion. Suppose, instead of making the complaint against Major Esterhazy, M. Mathieu Dreyfus had applied to the minister of justice for a revision, what new fact could he have pointed out to induce the minister of justice to lay the matter before the court of appeals? There was only one,—the similarity of Major Esterhazy’s handwriting to that of the bordereau attributed by the verdict of 1894 to Captain Dreyfus. If this had been pointed out to the minister of justice, it would have been necessary to draw the immediate conclusion that the author of this handwriting, M. Esterhazy, was the guilty party. It would have been impossible to lay the demand for revision before the court of appeals prior to a decision upon this question after a confrontation with M. Esterhazy. No revision of the judicial error of which Dreyfus was the victim could have been ordered, until it had been established in the presence of the party directly interested, M. Esterhazy, that this error was committed by him, or that it was the result of his crime, and that he was the author of the bordereau unjustly attributed to Dreyfus. Therefore the minister of justice would have had to prosecute M. Esterhazy. But this he could not have done himself, for the simple reason that M. Esterhazy, being a soldier, is responsible only to the military courts, and consequently the minister of justice would have had to hand the matter over to the minister of war, who would have been charged with the prosecution. If, then, M. Mathieu Dreyfus had chosen the method of appealing to the minister of justice, not only would nothing have been gained, but time would have been lost, for the same result would have been reached by a circuitous route.”