Dreyfus, Alfred, captain of artillery and general staff-officer in the French army, was born of a Jewish family in Mulhouse, Alsace, in 1859. In Oct., 1894, he was arrested on a charge of communicating military documents to a foreign Government, supposed to be Germany; and at a secret court-martial, which sat in December, he was condemned to public degradation and lifelong imprisonment. Early in 1895 he was sent to the Île du Diable (Devil's Island), near Cayenne, to undergo his sentence. About the middle of the same year Colonel Picquart became head of the Intelligence Department, and in the course of his official duties discovered various circumstances tending to throw doubt on the correctness of the court-martial's decision, and pointing to another officer, of the name of Esterhazy, as the real traitor. Picquart was superseded by a Colonel Henry in Nov., 1897, and in the following January Esterhazy, charged by a brother of the condemned man with having written the bordereau, or memorandum, which was the chief document relied on by the prosecutors of Dreyfus, was acquitted by a court-martial. Two days later M. Zola, the eminent novelist, in a letter headed J'accuse published in the Aurore, made serious charges against the general staff and the Government in connection with the Esterhazy court-martial. He was prosecuted, and condemned to pay a heavy fine and undergo a term of imprisonment. In June, 1898, M. Brisson succeeded M. Méline as Prime Minister, and next month M. Cavaignac, his War Minister, read to the Chamber several documents which he regarded as conclusive proof of the guilt of Dreyfus. The chief of these was soon admitted by Colonel Henry to have been forged by him, and M. Cavaignac at once resigned. In June, 1899, the Cour de Cassation ordered a fresh court-martial. The court-martial, which sat at Rennes, found Dreyfus guilty with extenuating circumstances. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but was pardoned by President Loubet almost immediately. In 1906, when Clemenceau was Prime Minister, the sentence was annulled, and Dreyfus was reinstated in the army (as major). He was shot at by a reactionary journalist in 1908, but escaped without serious injury. In Sept., 1919, Lieutenant-Colonel Dreyfus was publicly presented with the insignia of an officer of the Legion of Honour. Several times during the progress of the case France seemed on the verge of revolution.—Cf. J. Reinach, Histoire de l'affaire Dreyfus.
Driffield, Great, a town, England, Yorkshire, at the head of a navigable canal communicating with the Humber at Hull. It lies in a fertile district, has an ancient parish church, and manufactures linseed-cake and manures. Pop. 5676.
Drift, in geology, a term applied to earth and rocks which have been conveyed by flood-action, glaciers, or floating ice and deposited over the surface of a country. It is sometimes used in a wider sense to denote all post-Pliocene sands, gravels, and clays, such as the superficial deposits shown on the 'drift' maps of the Geological Survey.
Drift, in mining, a horizontal tunnel or passage excavated underground that follows the course of a vein or stratum. Drift, in musketry, is the lateral deviation of the bullet after it has left the barrel of the rifle; it is due to the spin of the bullet and the resistance of the air.
Drift Sand, sand thrown up by the waves of the sea, and blown when dry some distance inland until arrested by obstacles, round which it gradually accumulates until the heaps attain considerable dimensions, often forming dunes or sand-hills. Coast-land sometimes requires artificial protection from encroachment by drift-sand.
Drill, a tool used for boring holes in wood, metal, stone, ivory, &c. It consists of a sharp spindle to which a circular motion is communicated by various contrivances. Drills are of various designs. For rock-boring the diamond rock-drill, an instrument with cutting edges made of bort or black diamond, is now generally adopted. See Boring.—Cf. Dana and Saunders, Rock Drilling.
Drill is the A B C of all military movements. In the Training Manuals of the British army the word is defined as "the training of the soldier to perform certain movements as a second nature". It follows, therefore, that drill is an essential part of the training of every soldier, more especially in the early days of his training, in that without it, and without the power of movement in obedience to the expressed will of a superior given by it, a body of soldiers would be merely a collection of armed men who, however willing individually, would be incapable of carrying out collectively an order given for the general good. In the early days of our history, when fighting was largely individual, and the whole duty of a soldier was 'to do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you—and do it first' (with a club), drill, as we know it, was unknown; each man armed himself as he thought fit, and, beyond getting into some formation for the
actual purpose of the assault, a battle was largely a go-as-you-please affair. In Saxon days the normal formation for the battle was the wedge; that is two men at the point followed by three, and so on till the available number was used up. This, of course, formed a solid pointed mass with considerable weight, and was used both for attack and defence. But once this formation was broken it was next to impossible to reform it. An instance of this weakness occurred at the battle of Hastings. The English were in this one and only wedge formation, officers and the better armed men at the point, and the less skilful and more indifferently armed at the base. Doubtless the troops had been got into this formation after much exertion in the way of pushing and vituperation, and, once in it, had been told on no account to break it. At a certain stage in the battle the heavily armoured Normans pretended flight; this was too much for the English, who broke their ranks and gave chase, each after his own particular source of ransom. This ended the battle; the Normans turned, and, owing to the entire inability of the English to re-form their ranks, the wedge, and with it the English army, ceased to exist: the result of want of discipline and absence of drill.
Drill and discipline are complementary to each other. In one of the battles of the Peninsular War, the 28th (now the Gloucestershire Regiment) were being hotly attacked in front by a French column. The regiment was firing in two ranks—the front rank kneeling and the rear rank standing—when suddenly a fresh attack developed from the rear. It was a matter of seconds for the commanding officer of the 28th to order the rear rank to turn about; drill and discipline did the rest, and the rear rank turned round, knelt down, and beat off the new attack. Since then the 28th has worn its badges both front and rear of its head-dresses.
Drill is an aid to discipline in that it teaches men that there is a right and a wrong way of doing a thing. Drill and the spirit arising from it has a great steadying effect on the nerves, as when in the European War the Guards Division, after being almost decimated during a German 'push', was brought out of the line and kept to steady drill for a week. To those who did not understand this appeared harsh and futile; to those who did it appeared, as it was, the best means of steadying men tried beyond endurance, and of preparing them for further efforts. Our English drill has passed through many phases in its time; but from the days when large bodies of men performed complicated manœuvres at the executive command of one man, through the times when drill, perhaps, was considered to be the be-all and end-all of the soldier, to modern days when it is recognized as a means to an end, the guiding principle remains the same, viz. that one of the first essentials for a soldier is that he shall be so trained by drill that he shall know instinctively how to do the right thing at the right time and in the right way. Even now, when drill movements are no longer performed in face of an enemy, accuracy and attention to detail are insisted on in all parade-ground movements as part of the education of the soldier and as an aid to discipline. Drill for the soldier takes the place of the five-finger exercises for the musician. Neither of them, in itself, is of any particular value, but each adds to the efficiency of those who practise it.