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Fourteen CAPTAIN DREYFUS and the THIRD

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Fourteen CAPTAIN DREYFUS and the THIRD Fourteen CAPTAIN DREYFUS AND THE THIRD MAN 1991 On a day never determined with precision, but surely in late September of 1894, the Dreyfus Affair began; the near approach of its centenary invites us to examine once more certain aspects of that enigmatic tragedy. Although an event of history, “the Affair” attained and still sustains the air of a morality play. From its beginning participants and observers alike have manifested passion of a quality provoked only by issues perceived to be moral, issues that speak to conscience. Transcendental values—truth, justice, patriotism, fiercely defended traditions, personal honor—provided paradoxical justification for their own contraries. Evil was done that “good” might come of it; the sorry aphorism summum ius, summa iniuria was resoundingly verified. Beneath the abstractions were human individuals of fascinating diversity; chief among them was the professionally promising, if personally unimpressive, captain of artillery, Alfred Dreyfus, around whose head the whirlwind raged. The French Army of the day—and the same was true of other armies, notably of the German—gave responsibility for gathering and evaluating military information to a pair of departments, one openly acknowledged, the other covert. The Second Bureau of the French Army was officially charged with intelligence matters. Totally separate from this Second Bureau was a counterintelligence or counterespionage office organized under the innocuous cover name “The Statistical Section.” The Affair took its origin with the reception at the Statistical Section of what was immediately perceived to be evidence of treasonable dealings with Germany on the part of a knowledgeable French officer. That evidence is a handwritten letter on a partly torn sheet of onion-skin paper; since it lists five “notes” on apparently sensitive military matters, this list, the bordereau, is unsigned and carries no address. Literally translated the bordereau reads: Without news indicating that you wish to see me I send you nonethe- less, Monsieur, some interesting information: First, a note on the hydraulic buffer of the 120 and on the way in which this gun conducted itself; Second, a note on the covering troops (some changes will be added by the new plan); Third, a note on the modification to formations of the artillery; 176 “TRUTH” IS A DIVINE NAME Fourth, a note concerning Madagascar; Fifth, the issue of The Firing Manual for the Field Artillery (14 March 1894). This last document is extremely difficult to procure and I can have it in my possession for a very few days only. The Ministry of War has sent a fixed number of these to the Corps and the Corps are responsible for them; each officer who holds one must return it after the manoeuvres. So, if you want to take from it what interests you and keep it for me after- wards, I shall get it—unless you want me to make a copy of it in extenso and send you the copy. I am off on manoeuvres.1 The bordereau had been delivered by Marie Bastien, a cleaning woman in the pay of the Statistical Section. She regularly delivered the contents of the wastepaper basket of the military attaché at the German Embassy in Paris to Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the Statistical Section. The attaché, Lt. Col. Count Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, was regularly so careless in disposing of incriminating materials, whether official or personal, that the Statistical Section named this access to his discarded papers “the ordinary track,” la voie ordinaire. The sole precaution taken by the attaché was to tear such papers into minute fragments; Henry was accustomed to reconstituting the torn-up documents with transparent tape. Just such evidence had led to the conviction and imprisonment in January 1894 of a Marie Millescamps. Only partly torn, the bordereau made minimal demands on the skill of Henry; the point must not be forgotten. The Statistical Section had another reason for reacting sharply to the arrival of the bordereau. A former military attaché of the Spanish Embassy, a Raymundo Güell y Borbon, Marquis de Valcarlos, who was on friendly terms with members of the Statistical Section, had warned them in March of 1894 that “There is a wolf, perhaps more than one, in your sheepfold. Look for him!”2 All this must be seen against the background of the decade in which two hostile alignments were forming: the “Central Powers,” Germany, Austria, and Italy, against the “Entente Cordiale,” France, Britain, and Russia. One of the principal figures in the Affair, Gen. Charles le Mouton de Boisdeffre, chief of staff when the Affair began, had in 1892 gone to Russia to negotiate the military cooperation of the Czar's empire and the French Republic. The French Army saw itself, and was so seen by the public, as the instrument of revanche, revenge for the defeat and the loss of provinces to the German Empire in the wake of the 1870–1871 defeat. In the event, the Statistical Section was convinced that the variety of areas touched upon by the five notes of the bordereau—the first, third and fifth on artillery matters, the second on the disposition of troops who would cover the frontiers during mobilization, and the fourth on Madagascar (the island was.
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