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No. 13. Vienna, 1 April 1898. Second Year.

As a considerable number of subscriptions expired at the end of March, those concerned are reminded to effect their renewal in good time, so that no interruption may occur in the delivery of the paper. The Administration.

Dreyfus in Germany.

By S. Lublinski.

The Dreyfus case was bound from the very beginning to excite the greatest sensation precisely in Germany. For while the sack was being beaten, it was the ass that was meant, or rather the bête noire Germany, that hated hereditary foe which had taken back from the French two flourishing provinces, a plunder of former times. The German people, to be sure, desires for more than one reason to live at peace with the neighbouring nation, and therefore greeted with joy and glad astonishment every sign of a waning chauvinism. These signs had multiplied in the last few years, and the optimistic prophets already hoped for a touching official reconciliation before the eyes of an astonished Europe. But calmer natures also, who know very well that a good thing will take its time, followed this process of transformation in France with the most strained attention. They doubtless foresaw that the idea of a brotherhood of nations and of an anti-chauvinism was still far too young and too pliant to overcome the old powers and prejudices by storm. Men divined heavy defeats and violent struggles, which would, however, have this good in them, that they would calm chauvinism and perhaps also stir it a little to self-criticism.

Now came the Dreyfus affair, and brought this foreseen struggle much earlier than had been divined. The father of this espionage affair is beyond doubt chauvinism. Almost as much as the hatred of Jews, the hatred of Germans here had a hand in the game, in order to inflame the passions of the people and from the outset to spread abroad a temper hostile to the accused. In those days the French public still knew nothing of Russia, and would probably never have believed that the dearly beloved ally maintained spies in Paris. This version emerged only in the latest time, and amid very suspicious attendant circumstances, so that for the present one may well hold it for a fable. Four years ago, however, men in France thought only ever of Germany, and German spies were discovered. Chauvinism surged hotly up, and there was no need for astonishment that it at first gained the victory along the whole line. Free-thinking Frenchmen, too, had indeed no occasion whatever to take up the cause of a man who at that time must still have appeared to them a spy. In Germany, it is true, men were even at that time completely convinced of the captain's guiltlessness, and deeply regretted that this unwelcome incident should again destroy the budding understanding. For naturally the chauvinists made use of the alleged guilt of the "traitor" in order to agitate against Germany, which was said to have contrived even to corrupt the officers of the General Staff. Whether Mr. Paul Déroulède took the Dreyfus case as an occasion for launching a new poem of revenge is not known to me. But François Coppée at least suffered himself to be poetically inspired by the condemned captain, and created a play which, by the unanimous verdict of Parisian criticism, was very patriotic and very bad. And that Coppée, who also composed the verses of welcome to the Czar, belongs to the devourers of Germans sansphrase, may well be known to everybody. Germany had therefore every occasion to take the greatest interest in the very first act of the tragedy, in the condemnation of the captain. Through the surprising turn which then, four years later, made this frightful judicial crime appear in an entirely new light, the German interest was bound to become a deep and passionate sympathy.

One has only to think the situation through exactly, quite exactly, and to bring before oneself that, beside the bodily figure of the unhappy captain, there sat in the dock also the shadow of a great unknown — unknown, because he might not be named: Germany! Dreyfus was condemned and sent to Devil's Island — and with him the shadow. Thereupon a revision of the trial was urged from honourable quarters, and what was in question was the rehabilitation of two accused men, of two who in shamefully infamous fashion had been condemned though innocent — the captain and the shadow. And in this trial Germany was to take no interest? Germany, which had after all to say to itself that for its sake a guiltless man had been thrust like a wild beast into an iron cage! No, that was not possible, and in spite of the over-clever talk of realpolitical, baptized Jews, who imitate and misuse Bismarck, the sympathy for Zola broke through in elemental fashion.