Dreyfus out-Dreyfused

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 40, Issue 40, 1 October 1903, Page 18

Dreyfus out-Dreyfused

Our readers can readily recall the storm of eruptive agony that rose from the British and colonial press, as

from another Soufriere, over the suspicion that ex-Cap-tain Dreyfus was not receiving a fair trial at the hands of his military judges at Rennes. But, like •Mr Dooley's ' Admiral Dewey, our news-papers know how to be calm « whin they'se anything to be calm ab,out.' They have evidently made up their minds that the wholesale outrages which the French Government has been commiting on the liberty of the subject is a trifle light as airsomething which is beneath even the calmest editorial notice. The great French persecution is, in fact, made the object of what looks like an organised conspiracy of silence by the secular press in Englisih-speaking countries that went into volcanic hysterics over the Dreytfus affair. * The ' Aye Maria ' has this pointed note upon the situation :—: — « ' Ruski*. who said co many wise things, declared that the great difficulty is to open men's eyes. To touch their feelings and break their hearts is easy : the difficulty is to break their heads and let the light in." Dom Gasquet is reminded of Ruskin's words by a conversation with a London journalist »of unusually acute intelligence and sound judgment," whose view of the religious difficulties in France was that they were due to the contumacious refusal of the religious communities to apply for authorisation. When Dom Gasquet at last brought him to understand that the religious had really no choice m the matter, hut were simply dissolved and their property seized, the journalist said : "But this is an injustice compared with which the Dreyfus affair, which stirred the heart of the English nation to its very depths, was as nothing." Precisely. When a French Jew, after at least the semblance of a court trial, was degraded from his position in the army and sent into exile, the world went mad with indignation ; now that many thousands of men and women against whom no offence could even be alleged have been exiled and their honestly acquired property seized without the formality of a trial, the world looks on with philosophic calm.'