The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-16
MILITARIsM IN FRANCE.

One government after another has to all appearance reasoned in this fash ion; "We do not wish to see the parti- sans of the old dynasties reconciled to the republic We suspect the genuine ness of their conversion, and we do not want to have them as rivals in the struggle for political or official ad vancement. Consequently we will let them go into the army, where they can do no mischief to the republic, and will be out of the way of republicans. That they have been out of the way of republicans is undoubtedly true. Whether this enforced seclusion has rendered theni harmless to the repub- lie is more doubtful. For the imposi- tion of military service upon the semi- naries a more plausible case could be made out. It was supposed, in the first instance, that 1t would gradually dry up the supply of clergy by indisposng young men who had once tasted the freedom of barrack life to submit to the severe restraints of celibate profess sion. Unfortunately for it's authors, this calculation has not turned out cor rect. he seminaries, by all accounts, have influenced the barracks far more than the barrack has influenced the seminaries. The contact with enthusi- astic young men animated by a strong sense of their mission to win back France to the Catholic church has giv- en the soldier a new conception of reli- zion and of the clergy They have found them less black than they were painted by the atheistic brush, and have come to see>o at least to suspect, that the gulf between the priest and the layman is not so deep as they fan cied. A measure dreaded by the eccle- | sastical authorities at least as much as | it was desired by the civil authorities, | has disappointed the expectations of | both.
 | The Dreyfus case is the first occasion on which this new temper of the chiefs of the army has had a chance of show
 ing itself No doubt the peculiar ideas of justice which they have imposed upon successive cabinets are in some 1 degree the creation of military indf- 1 ference to means as distinct from ends.
 Dreyfus is guilty; therefore Dreyfus
 must be condemned. Whether there is any evidence by which his guilt can be | legally established fs matter of quite
 minor importance. The punishment of
 military criminals must not be hindered
 by mere civilian scruples. We think,
 however, that there is more in the case 1 than this-that the high officers of the army have all along made the refusal
 to revise the conclusions of the court
 martial a kind of test by which to | judge the dispositions of the civil au- | thorities, and that had these disposi- | tions proved less satisfactory, and es- | pecially had M. Brisson insisted on re-
 versing the decision of M. Moline, the
 new cabinet would not have found the
 succession to office so undsputed The incident of Pere Didon's speech made | in the presence of eneral lamont, the | "Generralissimo" of the French army and the feeble censure-if censure it
 can be called-which the minister has dealt out to the commander-in-ch chief
 simply for taking the chair at the
 speech-day of private school instead
 of for listening without protest to the
 Dominican exaltation of the army over l the civil power, are only straws, but
 they are straws blown In the same di-
 rection. They may mean less than we
 think, but such meaning as they have
 can only be of one kind.-London Spec totOr.