Contribution aux Preuves
Contribution to the Evidence
Charles Péguy
The Petite République of Tuesday the first of January published this article:
VANISHING ACT
What can Commandant Cuignet be thinking? On the rather copious list of witnesses he has summoned, the name of M. Rochefort does not appear. Yet the latter was crying out only the other day with noble impatience: “We too have had enough. I ask Commandant Cuignet to call me as a witness either before the board of inquiry or before the assize court, and there I shall prove that Dreyfus had sent directly to the Emperor of Germany a bordereau on heavy paper; that this bordereau was annotated in the Emperor’s own hand, and returned to Paris with a letter of recommendation for Dreyfus; that it was this bordereau that was seized, and that afterwards it was traced onto tissue paper, omitting the notes inscribed by Wilhelm II.”
Our readers will certainly remember that a few days ago we quoted in extenso the passage from M. Rochefort’s article announcing these devastating revelations. The great polemicist of the General Staff will not accuse us of wishing to diminish his glory or to stifle the light. No sooner had he announced the terrible coup de theatre he was preparing than we summoned all the proletarians who read us: “Attention! and do not miss this spectacle.” We ourselves were waiting with feverish haste for the sublime Esterhazian impresario to raise the curtain on this great social drama.
Wilhelm II unmasked by Rochefort, Dreyfus crushed, the
Jean Jaurès
human conscience which has the weakness of now believing in the innocence of Dreyfus overturned, Henry rehabilitated, Boisdeffre glorified, Esterhazy canonised, all the friends of the traitor confounded and lying on the ground: what an event! The entire planet would have been shaken by it! And this time it would truly have been the end of the Dreyfus affair and of Dreyfusism; Loubet, president of treason, would have been driven from the Elysée, and all of us would have had nothing left to do but flee into exile, without even carrying on the soles of our shoes a little of this soil of France sold by us to the foreigner.
Alas! M. Rochefort was afraid of too much success; he was afraid of too much glory. And he shrinks with incomparable modesty from the formidable triumph of laughter and mockery, from the incredible apotheosis of jibes and jeers that the universe was preparing for him. Voltaire used to say: “These Parisians will make me die of pleasure”; M. Rochefort was afraid of being smothered beneath the joyous and tender demonstrations that his account was about to provoke from every quarter.
But how will he explain this silence? He was writing the other day — (it is the closing line of his article, and one knows that he always takes care with the closing line): “Patriotism now obliges us to speak.” How then does this patriot now consent to be silent?
He ventured an explanation. He told us, two days after the day on which he had announced these staggering revelations, that on reflection he would not show the annotated bordereau; for if he showed it, it would mean war.
But M. Rochefort, when he announced on Tuesday that he was going to speak, had surely foreseen the perils before which he retreats on Thursday: what then has happened?
Note that M. Rochefort puts France in a terrible position. We now know that the entire destiny of the fatherland depends on M. Rochefort and on M. Rochefort alone. M. Rochefort has, in a drawer of his writing desk, a mysterious and formidable bordereau, annotated in the Emperor’s hand. If he hides it, there is peace; if he produces it, there is war.
Should he decide to hide it, nothing assures us that one Saturday
CONTINUATION OF THE EVIDENCE
the idea will not seize him again to unleash the storm. A capricious old Aeolus, whose whitened forelock stirs in every wind, holds in his hands the bag of tempests. How could France sleep? Ah! for pity’s sake! let M. Rochefort throw wide open the bag of tumultuous secrets! Better the storm, better war than the state of mortal uncertainty and haunted insomnia to which France will be reduced!
I imagine that when M. Rochefort announced the production of the imperial bordereau, there was great alarm in the nationalist world. A universal order of silence immediately ran through the entire patriotic press. They looked at one another and fell silent, as one falls silent in a family when an old man more venerable than lucid makes an unfortunate remark. He was gently, patiently warned that he must not do it again, that it was better not to speak of these things. He seems to have understood, and if one takes the precaution of renewing the warning from time to time, it is probable that he will speak of it no more.
For no worse disaster could befall the party of forgers than to explain themselves at last about the supreme forgery, the king of forgeries, the emperor of forgeries: the letter from Wilhelm. As soon as they had the imprudence to show the Henry forgery, nationalism fell gravely ill; what would happen if, led on by Rochefort, nearly as subtle as Cavaignac, they were to show the imperial letter?
The nationalists would very much like the agitation of the Dreyfus affair to resume in a vacuum, so as to divert the country, exhausted from the republican work it must accomplish. But they do not want at any price for the most abominable and the most inept of the forgeries fabricated by them to destroy the innocent to come to light.
For some time yet, and until the inevitable indiscretion that immanent justice has in store, we shall be reduced to conjectures about the date when the criminals fabricated this extraordinary document, about the precise role they intended for it, about the use they made of it. It was probably the visit made by M. de Munster to M. Casimir-Perier
Jean Jaurès
that suggested to Henry and his accomplices the idea of elaborating this document. Since the German ambassador, informed that the bordereau had been seized at his embassy, had come to complain to the President of the Republic and to demand that officially no allusion be made to the conditions under which the document had been taken, the forgers thought they could risk everything. They could fabricate a letter from Wilhelm, claim that it was the true bordereau that had been seized, and cover this audacious operation by alleging that the President of the Republic had had to disarm M. de Munster by substituting for the authentic bordereau a tracing on which the words written by the Emperor no longer appeared. The scoundrels counted on diplomatic secrecy to risk this inept legend.
Of course, they did not intend the document for publicity, any more than they had intended the Henry forgery itself for it. It was to be shown under the cloak, to frighten ministers in whom doubts might awaken, to confirm the wavering convictions of the senior military personnel themselves. It is infinitely probable that it was fabricated after the first discoveries of Colonel Picquart, and I am tempted to believe that at the precise moment when it was fabricated, they were convinced that the identity of Esterhazy’s handwriting with the handwriting of the bordereau, on which Dreyfus had been condemned, would be obvious to all eyes. They were therefore preparing, by a very bold change of strategy, to say mysteriously, as a terrible state secret, that the bordereau submitted to the judges of 1894, in which Esterhazy’s handwriting could be recognised, was not the true bordereau; that there was another, formidable one, impossible to produce publicly because Wilhelm II himself had annotated it. Needing to substitute for the bordereau on which Esterhazy’s handwriting blazed forth another bordereau, they had to explain why no one, not even the judges, had been shown this occult bordereau, and so they had to create an extraordinary circumstance. Hence the idea came naturally to the forgers of involving Wilhelm II in person in the bordereau. Who could then be surprised that a document which could be seen had been substituted for the original document, in which the German Emperor was personally compromised?
CONTINUATION OF THE EVIDENCE
The Henry-Rochefort bordereau was therefore probably fabricated in the first moment of disarray that followed, at the General Staff, the first discoveries of Colonel Picquart. It must have emerged at a moment when the General Staff, in a panic, did not believe it possible to deny that the handwriting of the 1894 bordereau was Esterhazy’s, and when it was therefore necessary to create another bordereau against Dreyfus.
But the General Staff soon abandoned this too perilous line of defence. First of all, it seemed decidedly too compromising to put Wilhelm II in the foreground of the affair; for that would provoke him to hand over to the French government the papers that the Berlin General Staff had received from Esterhazy. Furthermore, it was dangerous to admit, even in whispers, that the bordereau on which Dreyfus had been condemned in 1894 was a false bordereau: this could leak out, and that alone would entail the nullity of the verdict and a retrial.
And finally, why lose courage? Although the handwriting of the 1894 bordereau was manifestly Esterhazy’s, one could still save oneself. It was enough for Esterhazy to say, as he did in fact say at the court-martial, that Dreyfus had imitated his handwriting; and it was not impossible to find good experts devoted to the fatherland — Couard, Belhomme, and Varinard. So they gave up using the bordereau annotated by Wilhelm as their first line of defence. They gave up entering it officially in the secret dossier, and replaced it, for the benefit of ministers like Billot who needed their “conscience” reassured, with a more modest, less imperial document: the one now known in history as the Henry forgery. And if I am not mistaken, when Henry said, when his defenders repeated, that he had fabricated his forgery to serve as a substitute for another document that could not be shown, they inadvertently let slip what I have just conjectured.
It was indeed because they had given up using the letter from Wilhelm that they had fabricated, that the
Jean Jaurès
forgers had fabricated another document, less difficult to handle, less explosive — the Henry forgery — which no longer directly involved an emperor, but only military attaches. It is possible that Henry, upon the discovery of one of his forgeries, thought that the others, including the imperial letter and the annotated bordereau, would also be found out; the situation seemed desperate to him, and he killed himself, as much from fear of the confessions he still had to make as from the anguish of the confessions he had already made.
But the forgers, when they gave up incorporating the letter from Wilhelm and the bordereau annotated in his hand into the secret dossier, did not destroy these extraordinary documents for all that. No one knew what was going to happen, and they kept in reserve, as a supreme means of defence, the forgeries of the first magnitude which they had hesitated to use at the outset. In the meantime, they circulated them, they circulated photographs of them among important persons, such as Rochefort, whose critical faculties were well known. And they made all the more impression on certain minds because they carried within them something terrible and mysterious. Rochefort was so stirred by them that the other day, without meaning to, he spoke of them aloud.
Thus this secret document begins to surface — the most extraordinary, the most inept, the most staggering in this prodigious tale of treason, stupidity, and crime. It erupted on Rochefort. It was like a hidden humour circulating in the blood: it blossomed into a boil on Rochefort’s nose.
At once, all the alarmed patriots gathered around the innocent polemicist: “Hide,” they said to him, “that nasty sore that would set tongues wagging.”
And that is why, neither at the Cuignet trial nor elsewhere, will Rochefort show the tip of the nose he was lifting the other day with an air of defiance.
JEAN JAURES
Captain Alfred Dreyfus had written on Wednesday 26 December to the president of the council a petition that we read in the Petite République of Saturday:
Wednesday 26 December 1900
Monsieur le président du conseil,
I am accused, by a certain press, of having sent, in 1894, to the Emperor of Germany, an infamous letter which, annotated by that sovereign, was allegedly stolen from an embassy and which is said to be formal proof of the crime for which I have been, twice, unjustly condemned.
The bordereau that was produced at the trials of 1894, 1898, and 1899 would be merely a copy of it.
This new lie cannot, given its source, be treated with contempt.
The journalist who propagates it, who takes it up again despite ten official denials, did not invent it.
According to this journalist, he is merely the echo of confidences brought to him, along with impudent forgeries, by an emissary of General de Boisdeffre.
The photographs of the forged letters from the Emperor of Germany and of the annotated bordereau have been shown on several occasions; this other false version has been told many times; tomorrow, for many deceived minds, the inept legend would be the truth.
Alfred Dreyfus
My innocence is absolute; I shall pursue the judicial recognition of this innocence until my last breath, through a retrial.
I am no more the author of the bordereau annotated by the Emperor of Germany, which is nothing but a forgery, than of the original, authentic bordereau, which is by Esterhazy.
Except for Henry, all the principal authors of my iniquitous condemnation are still alive. I am not stripped of all my rights; I retain the right of every man, which is to defend his honour and to have the truth proclaimed.
I therefore retain the right, Monsieur le président, to ask you for an inquiry, and I have the honour of requesting one.
Please accept, Monsieur le président, the assurances of my deepest respect.
ALFRED DREYFUS
One of our former subscribers sent us this contribution to the Evidence:
Paris, 10 January 1901
My dear Péguy,
Since you are among those who hold that there is still a Dreyfus affair, you must think it useful to continue studying it in order to clear up its obscurities. I therefore submit to you a hypothesis that will no doubt seem to you, as it does to many others, to resolve numerous difficulties.
It concerns the forged Wilhelm letter — that is to say, a bordereau on heavy paper, with an autograph annotation by the Emperor of Germany, in which that scoundrel Dreyfus is named. Rochefort has seen it and nearly showed it out of patriotism. It is also an established fact that General Mercier possesses the original or a facsimile, that he makes use of it among his friends, and that he attaches the greatest importance to it.
Now Jaurès, the other morning, in his latest speculative article on the affair, put forward the hypothesis that the forged Wilhelm letter had been fabricated at the time when Colonel Picquart was discovering Esterhazy, shortly before the Henry forgery, and in order to convince General Billot, Rochefort, and Princess Mathilde. But this hypothesis is inadmissible. The forgers could not have had the idea of this retrospective forgery and this retrospective fiction, which would inevitably have exposed their crime. General Billot would certainly have spoken of it to the surviving ministers of 1894, to M. Hanotaux for example, and they would have revealed the fraud to him. It is equally impossible that General Mercier should make use of a document he knows to be forged, since he knows of its non-existence in 1894. He cannot carry impudence and audacity to the point of having his deceit denounced beyond any possible reply by one of his former colleagues.
This hypothesis being ruled out, only one possibility remains: the forged Wilhelm letter dates from 1894, from the very origin of the affair, of which it is the key. See, indeed, how easily the facts and the men are explained by this hypothesis.
This document was introduced in 1894; we shall soon investigate how. MM. Dupuy, Hanotaux, and Mercier were
Pierre Félix
taken in by it. Hence their well-known alarm. Hence their terror of the German embassy and the famous historical night, hitherto poorly explained. They feared, they said, the anger of the ambassador, who was threatened by the press with having his military attache called into question! In reality, during that mysterious sleepless night, they feared the anger of the Emperor, who was going to find himself personally called into question. They believed it. Hence the remark of M. Charles Dupuy: “We may have been the victims of a mystification,” which he acknowledged at the Court of Cassation but did not explain. Hence the similar remark of M. Hanotaux to M. Monod: “It may all have been nothing but a vast fiction.” Hence many other remarks no less authentic and far more significant, of which I do not speak to you because they have not been printed in official documents.
They believed it, they were afraid. But General Mercier, confronted with this unheard-of affair of an imperial service of treason installed in his own offices, did not hesitate to act. There is perhaps, in his case, patriotic courage.
Meanwhile Esterhazy kept a facsimile of this document, and that is the IMPERIAL guard (I underline the word deliberately). That is also the liberating document that he brought to the Ministry of War after M. Mathieu Dreyfus’s denunciation. It was claimed that he had brought the document “that scoundrel D.” But Jaurès himself could not explain how this document, until then locked away in the drawers of the Ministry, could be liberating.
This forgery brought by Esterhazy intimidated the general
who had gravely suspected General de Boisdeffre — it was because of the remark of M. Méline: “To obtain a retrial, one would have to call into question too exalted a personage.” You see now that this remark applies far more readily to the Emperor. M. Rambaud likewise declared to friends that from the exposure of all the documents war would follow!
I could continue in this vein for some time, but I prefer
to let you continue on your own. What I have said is enough to show you how many facts, hitherto unexplained, are explained by this necessary hypothesis.
There remains the question: How was this forgery introduced in 1894? This question of the scenario invented by the forgers is moreover of no importance, and it is obvious that on this point we are reduced to pure imagination. One can imagine this: The bordereau on tissue paper arrives at the Ministry. There is an undeniable fact here, for there was genuine treason. They search through the various offices; the handwriting casts suspicion on Dreyfus. But Henry trembles with fear for Esterhazy. He needs to strengthen these suspicions. He then fabricates a bordereau on heavy paper, with an annotation by the Emperor naming Dreyfus. He makes it appear that this too had been seized at the embassy, and that the previous one had been traced by an agent. It is the tissue paper that gives him this idea. In this way, he could if necessary protect Esterhazy, and explain the identity of his handwriting with that of the tracing. It seems to me that at the time M. Millevoye told something similar; moreover, Esterhazy has claimed and still claims that he traced the bordereau for the fourth bureau, and
Pierre Félix
that, in this way, the bordereau on tissue paper is indeed in his hand.
The forged Wilhelm letter is therefore probably the mainspring of the affair, and perhaps by pressing firmly upon it one might more easily cause the truth to spring forth. Especially since, note well, it tends to prove a certain good faith on the part of people we had thought merely criminal.
It is not possible that this forgery should have wrought so much havoc without leaving numerous traces, even in the files of the Ministry. If the Ministry, refusing to let the supreme court be mocked by a negligible tribunal, had wished to reopen the affair, it is in this direction that it would probably have been able to find new facts. Without humiliating and distressing trials for everyone, without sending anyone to the penal colony, it would probably have been able to bring the matter to light — which is the only good we desire. Is there not cause here to deplore all the more the irreparable misfortune of this amnesty, which delivers the great mass of our fellow citizens to the growth of reactionary passions, and which one may well ask whether it will not have effects upon the education of the young bourgeois generation as disastrous as the Falloux Law itself?
Yours truly.
Pierre Félix