Express and Telegraph (Adelaide, SA), Saturday 16 February 1895
THE DEGRADATION OF DREYFUS
A TRAITOR'S DOOM.
[From our Special Correspondent.]
London, January 12,1895.
The public degradation of the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus on Saturday morning last was a theatrical exhibition thoroughly after the Parisian heart. In England were such an inconceivable anomaly as a mean and treacherous British officer to be discovered he would simply be gazetted out of the army and "cut" by all respectable man and womankind. But in la belle France the community marks its wrath and disgust more ostentatiously. What Dreyfus has done no one outside the court which tried him actually understands. According to his own account the gallant officer fell into the pit which he was digging for some German spies. The French court could not, however, swallow that story. We may assume that remembering the fearful fate in store for him if found guilty his judges gave him the benefit of every possible doubt. Rumor alleges the charges were proved to the hilt, and Dreyfus (a Jew by the way) shown to have lived for years on the plans of fortresses, military statistics, &c., which he betrayed to the Germans. The fury of the Parisian populace against Dreyfus seems to have been almost delirious. They would have cheerfully boiled the traitor in oil or frizzled him on red-hot ploughshares. Physical torture being inadmissible in these enlightened times moral torture was applied and with considerable refinement of cruelty.
Foreigners were not admitted to witness the edifying spectacle which took place in the great quadrangle of the military school, but the Daily News correspondent viewed it from the windows of the officer's lodgings close by. Mrs. Crawford says:—"I never realised before what the feeling of Paris was when the cry, a hundred years ago, was raised that the country was in danger, and the King and Queen were sent to the scaffold as accomplices of the invaders of the French territory. Every soul who went to catch a glimpse of the ceremony or to hear the roll of the drums, which, it was announced, would drown Dreyfus's voice if he attempted to speak, was in a state of white heat excitement. To have any idea of what the feeling was, one should have been in the crowd that gathered outside or in the company which was enabled to look on from the points of vantage above alluded to. Anyone who expressed the faintest doubt or feeling of pity would have been looked upon with as much hatred and horror as the traitor. The latter would have certainly been killed had it not been for military discipline and the strong measures taken to keep order. Terrible as were the shame, the humiliation, the moral execution, the outcast situation of the convict, they did not nearly appease the hot anger that raged against him on all sides and in all classes. Had he been degraded in the Place de l'Arc de Triomphe, as terrible scenes as any that passed in the Place de la Revolution in 1793 must have been witnessed.
THE NIGHT BEFORE.
The night before this unique show careful preparations for its going off with full effect seem to have been made. On Friday Commander de Clam called on Dreyfus at the Cherche-Midi and asked whether he was still determined not to confess. Dreyfus replied that he was innocent. In the night, when the prisoner was fast asleep, a warder took his uniform to the prison tailor. The latter, a prisoner himself, unsewed all the distinctive marks of an officer — stripes, gilding, buttons, &c. — and sewed them back again loosely. The sword, a weapon held to be dishonored, was taken to the smith. The blade was cut in two and soldered. On awaking the captain looked at his clothes and was aware that his degradation was at hand. "Captain," he said to an officer present, "you are making yourself the instrument of the greatest injustice of the century." At 7 o'clock came a corporal, "Follow me," he ordered. Dreyfus remained seated. "Come on, now," said the corporal sharply to the captain, "Follow me." And Dreyfus was driven off in a prison van amid cries of "Kill him" raised by the crowds all along the way.
A PAINFUL SCENE.
It was, the correspondents tell us, a dark morning and bitterly cold, but excitement made the huge, angry-faced crowd insensible to its clammy frostiness. The Prefect of Police had a large body of men, but so threatening was the demeanor of the crowd and so suggestive of the stringing up of the culprit to the nearest post that he assured the spectators that his subordinates were instructed not to meddle with them so long as they did not suffer their just anger to carry them away. They would, he hoped, add to the solemnity of the ceremony by the cold calm of their demeanor, and thus accentuate the lesson which the degradation of the traitor was meant to convey.
At 9 o'clock a prison van drove up and a roll of drums was heard. "The infantry," writes Mrs. Crawford, stood at attention, the cavalry-men raised their swords and held their pistols ready for use. There was a cry of "Portez armes," and a small group issued from the inner courtyard at the north-west angle of the great one. It was formed of an adjutant-major of artillery, who was a military friend of the convict, a cavalry adjutant, a tall powerful man who was appointed to tear the signs of military rank from the uniform, and four artillerymen with swords drawn, who surrounded the prisoner. Dreyfus walked with firm step, and kept time to the quick march played by a band. As far as one could see with an opera glass Dreyfus was cool, collected, and seemingly indifferent, but military men who were close to him say that hatred glittered in his eyes, and that his countenance was awful to behold.
He was deadly pale, unless when passing flushes reddened his face. The group walked diagonally towards a general on horseback in the middle of the square; Dreyfus saluted him. All seven suddenly stood still. There was a roll of drums. A civil officer advanced and read in the loudest possible tone the judgment of the court-martial. The general then thundered out "Alfred Dreyfus, you are unworthy to bear arms. In the name of the law we degrade you." The cavalry adjutant, without saluting, advanced to Dreyfus, who stood stiff with hands close to his thighs and toes turned out. The gold, braid and buttons, epaulettes, and trousers stripes were held on by mere threads. The tearing off of the symbols of rank began with the kepi. Dreyfus neither recoiled nor advanced, but when his kepi was pulled over his eyes he raised his hand high as if swearing, and said, "By my wife and children I swear I am innocent. Vive la France!" The buttons fell next, then the epaulettes, then the red stripes, and finally the sword was taken out of the scabbard and the belt torn off. When the adjutant broke the blade he threw it on the ground. Dreyfus was then entirely in black and tattered clothes and shapeless kepi. His shirt showed. He next had to walk round the hollow square to come back to the corner, where the black van awaited him. He kept on saying, "I am innocent! I am innocent!" Military discipline kept the soldiers silent, but their eyes showed scorn and hatred. When the convict was in front of the journalists he cried, "Tell all France I am innocent." M. Gaston Mery, of the "Libre Parole," broke bounds by exclaiming, "Filthy Jew! Traitor! Judas!" Then, "Judas" was echoed even by the soldiers.
Outside, the roars of "Death," "Death," drowned the notes of the Sambre et Meuse quick march. The fury of the multitude was indescribable. As the convict neared the ditch and railing, a group of officers carried away by the prevailing feeling, hooted Dreyfus. With wonderful self-command he said, "Strike, but don't insult me. I am an innocent man." And at the outer gate, as the gendarmes were putting on the handcuffs, he recognised his fellow officers of the 39th Infantry, "Believe me, gentlemen, I am a martyr." It appears that Dreyfus said to one of his warders that it was true he had given several pieces of information to Germany, but that was merely in order to bait the Germans, and he saw his way to obtain from Berlin documents of the utmost importance. Dreyfus may have made this statement. The practice of baiting foreign spies in the manner Dreyfus mentions is continually employed at the Paris and Berlin Foreign Offices. The rule is that an officer thus dallying with the enemy should give notice to the Minister, but this rule is not always observed.
Dreyfus donned yesterday the prison clothes in coarse wool of a dark color. It is said that he drew back as if in disgust when they were laid before him. His cell, which is like that of all criminals awaiting transportation, is furnished with an iron bed and one mattress. There is a wooden stool chained to the wall, and a small plank .which can be let down from the wall to act as a table. Near the ceiling is a skylight heavily grated. Dreyfus's dietary is as follows:—Lunch at 10 o'clock, consisting of soup and a piece of boiled beef; dinner at 5, consisting only of a bowl of dried vegetables. For drink, water. Dreyfus asked leave to get an extra dish at his own expense, but this favor was refused. Should, however, his health break down he would be allowed something extra. Dreyfus spent a rather sleepless night. This morning he was called at the usual hour. A warder opened the little window in the door and ordered him to sweep up his cell and make his bed, a task which, after a momentary repugnance, the prisoner set quietly about. At 10 the little window opened a second time and lunch was passed through, Dreyfus scarcely touching the food. Ho has asked his relatives for underclothes, the regulations allowing him to wear them. The prisoner's manner is still haughty and distant.
IS HE GUILTY?
I may add that great doubts exist amongst Englishmen concerning the guilt of Dreyfus, who seems to have endured this appalling ordeal with a stoicism much more compatible with conscious innocence than with conscious culpability. The London papers unanimously call for a precis of the evidence on which the man was convicted. The prisoner's own statement, since published, is, to say the least, striking. He declared the only evidence against him was a paper found in the drawer of a Foreign Embassy announcing that four documents would be sent. Three experts pronounced the paper to be his writing and two were of an opposite opinion. Dreyfus himself asks what possible inducement he could have to turn traitor. He had a magnificent military career before him and was rich, with an income of £2,000 a year in the immediate future. "I have never," he said, "run after the fair sex, nor betted, nor touched a card in my life." Certainly it sounds strange for such a man voluntarily to turn spy. But it is not impossible. Danger is of itself a tremendous fascination to some men, and such often find a terrible delight in dallying with damnation and playing with utter ruin.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/208835875/22918722
