Then, after censuring the press and the riff-raff of Paris, which supported the evil-doers, Zola declared it was a crime to poison the minds of the poor and lowly, to inflame reactionary passions and intolerance, sheltered the while behind that odious anti-Semitism of which France—the great France of the Rights of Man—would die if she were not cured of it. "It is a crime," he added, "to exploit patriotism for works of hatred, and finally it is a crime to make the sword one's God, when all human science is working for the coming sway of truth and justice." Next he praised M. Scheurer-Kestner, the great, good, upright man who, in his honest simplicity, had believed that a statement of the truth would suffice for justice to be done, and who was cruelly punished for his delusion. In like way Colonel Picquart, in reward for his scrupulousness and respectfulness, was covered with mud by his superiors. "One even saw this ignoble thing," said Zola, referring to Colonel Picquart, "a French tribunal, after allowing the prosecuting counsel to heap charges on a witness, to accuse him publicly of every kind of transgression, ordered the court to be cleared directly that witness was called in to explain and defend himself. I declare that this is one crime the more, a crime which will rouse the public conscience. Decidedly, the military tribunals have a strange idea of justice!"
Then after a final appeal to President Faure, who if he were the prisoner of the Constitution and his entourage, still had to discharge the duties of a man, Zola declared that he in no wise despaired of triumph, for truth was on the march and nothing would stop it. The Affair was only beginning. On one side were the guilty who wished to withhold the light; on the other the servants of justice who would lay down their lives in order that it might appear. When truth was buried underground, it gathered strength there, acquired such explosive force that on bursting forth it blew up everything. One would see, then, if present secrecy had not prepared the most resounding of disasters for some future date. And Zola concluded:
"I accuse Lieutenant-Colonel du Paty de Clam of having been the diabolical author of the judicial error, unconsciously I am willing to believe, and of having defended his baleful work for three years by the most absurd and culpable machinations. I accuse General Mercier of having rendered himself an accomplice, at least through want of firmness, in one of the greatest iniquities of the century. I accuse General Billot of having held positive proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus, and of having suppressed them, of having perpetrated this crime against humanity and against justice with a political object, and in order to save the compromised Staff. I accuse General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of having become accomplices in the same crime, the former doubtless from clerical passion,[13] the other, perhaps, from that esprit de corps which makes the War Office a sacred and unassailable ark. I accuse General de Pellieux and Major Ravary of having made a wicked inquiry, that is an inquiry of the most monstrous partiality, of which we have, in the latter's report, an imperishable monument of naïve audacity. I accuse the three handwriting experts,[14] Sieurs Belhomme, Varinard, and Couard, of having made lying and fraudulent reports, unless medical examination should prove that they suffer from diseased sight and judgment. I accuse the War Office of having carried on in the press, particularly in 'L'Éclair' and 'L'Echo de Paris,' an abominable campaign in order to mislead public opinion and screen its transgressions. Lastly I accuse the first court-martial of having violated the law by condemning an accused man on a document which was kept secret; and I accuse the second court-martial of having covered that illegality by order; in its turn committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty person.
"In preferring these charges I am not ignorant of the fact that I expose myself to the penalties of Clauses 30 and 31 of the Press Law of July 29, 1881, which punishes libel. And it is voluntarily that I expose myself. As for the men whom I accuse, I do not know them. I have never seen them. I have no resentment or hatred against them. They are for me mere entities, spirits of social maleficence. And the act which I accomplish here is only a revolutionary means of hastening the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion—one for light, in the name of humanity, which has suffered so much, and which has a right to happiness. My passionate protest is but the cry of my soul. Let them have the courage to bring me before an Assize Court, and let the inquiry be held in broad daylight! I wait."
This manifesto threw Paris into a state of uproar. Three hundred thousand copies of the number of "L'Aurore" containing it were sold,[15] and long extracts were reproduced by "Le Siècle," "La Petite République," and the few other newspapers which supported the cause of Dreyfus: the great bulk of the press, it should be mentioned, being on the other side. The Clericalists in particular now threw off all disguise. That same afternoon Count Albert de Mun, the Papal Nuncio's henchman, "interpellated" the government in the Chamber of Deputies, and by 312 votes against 122 carried a resolution calling on the authorities to put a stop to "the attacks on the honour of the army." The Prime Minister, M. Méline, announced on this occasion that it had been decided to prosecute Zola, but this hardly satisfied the more ardent Clericalists, one of whom, M. de Pontbriand, deputy for Nantes and an acolyte of the Archbishop of Paris, suggested a few days afterwards that all the members of the Dreyfus family and the leaders of the "Jew Syndicate"[16] should be cast into Mazas at once! Moreover, a public meeting held at the Tivoli Hall was largely attended by priests, Christian brothers, and seminarists of Saint Sulpice, who were granted special leave for the occasion; and long and eager were the shouts of "Down with the Jews!" raised by these ecclesiastics, who were finally routed by some Anarchists among the audience.
During the ensuing fortnight demonstrations and riots took place in various parts of France, notably in cities where the priestly cause was strongly represented: Lyons, the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières; Marseilles, the city of Notre Dame de la Garde; Nantes, which had sent the anti-Semitic Pontbriand to represent it in parliament, and Bordeaux, where clericalism likewise numbered many adherents. Still more serious disturbances followed in Algeria, where Jews were beaten, wounded, in a few cases actually killed, their houses and shops sacked, and a quantity of their property burnt, or, in some instances at Algiers, thrown into the sea. Meanwhile Paris was in a state of turmoil, full of shouting crowds who, when they were not demonstrating before some Dreyfusite newspaper office, acclaimed every uniform with the cry of "Vive l'armée!" and pursued every suspicious nose with that of "Down with the Jews!" Zola was hooted under his windows, a few of which were broken, and the police had to protect his house. At the same time, while there was no little ferocity and violence, a great deal of Chauvinisme, as well as abundant hypocrisy and cowardice in certain political and bourgeois circles, the Esterhazy court-martial had quite disgusted a number of sensible, educated, thinking people, and ten members of the Institute of France, eight professors of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, a dozen of the Sorbonne, the Collège de France, and the École Normale, who were joined by numerous professors of provincial faculties and a good many scientific and literary men, now for the first time declared in favour of a revision of the Dreyfus case, thus bringing a welcome support to the cause for which Yves Guyot, Jean Jaurès, Francis de Pressensé, Georges Clemenceau, Joseph Reinach, Raoul Allier, and others were fighting in the press. This accession of strength to the Dreyfusite cause was greeted with sneers by the professional Jew-baiters, the Clericalist leaders, and the retrograde littérateurs of the Brunetière coterie who led or influenced the majority of the Parisians. They nicknamed their adversaries "the intellectuals," applying the word derisively; but it was a welcome nickname, and one well deserved by the little party of sensible men which counted in its ranks such notabilities as Bréal, Berthelot, Duclaux, Giry, Grimaux, Réville, Havet, Trarieux, Monod, Ranc, Passy, Paul Meyer, Anatole France, and Leroy-Beaulieu.
On January 20 Zola at last received a copy of the citation, which at the suit of the War Minister, General Billot, summoned him and M. Perrenx, the nominal manager of "L'Aurore," before the Assize Court of the Seine to answer, not the long string of charges contained in the letter to President Félix Faure, but only fifteen lines of it—those which denounced the Esterhazy court-martial for having acquitted the major "by order." All the rest was ignored. The desire of the military authorities was evident, they still wished to prevent any discussion of the Dreyfus case. Zola thereupon wrote to General Billot reiterating all his charges, but the only effect of this letter, which appeared in "L'Aurore," was to induce the three handwriting experts, Belhomme, Varinard, and Couard, to bring an action against the novelist claiming damages for libel. On January 22 the conduct of the military authorities in shirking Zola's principal accusations was raised in the Chamber of Deputies,[17] and wild uproar and fighting ensued until order was restored by the military guard. Two days later Count von Bulow, the German Foreign Secretary, declared in the Reichstag: "Between Captain Dreyfus and any German organs or authorities, no relations of whatever kind have ever existed." The Italian and Austrian governments made similar declarations; but nothing could check the folly of the French Militarists, or even of the Government, which well knew through the diplomatic agents of France abroad that in every court and chancellery of Europe Dreyfus was regarded as innocent and Esterhazy believed to be guilty. The foreign press shared that view, and expressions and testimonials of sympathy began to reach Zola from all parts of the world.[18] He received them gratefully; but could the sympathy of foreigners afford adequate solace when four out of every six Parisians were covering him with mud? Besides, that very sympathy led to yet more virulent attacks on him. It was fitting, said his enemies, that he should be supported by foreigners, who for the most part rejoiced to see the French army attacked and insulted! Well, he was welcome to their support. France cared nothing what foreigners might say. She would settle her own affairs in her own manner, regardless of the opinions of this man Zola, who was himself a foreigner, some kind of dirty Italian.
Penn, from the Garden—É. Zola, Miss & Mrs. Vizetelly