The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-02-21
ALesson to Americans.

The more one reauS ABOUT llle DIeS-
fus case and its sequel. the Zola trial,
the more one feels like thanking God
that he is an American citizen, living
in country which, with all its faults,
is undoubtedly the freest and best
country on earth.
Recall the facts. Charged with SELL
ing military secrets, Captain Dreyfus,
a bright and popular young officer, in
dependently rich, happily married and
with no visible incentive to treason, is
tried in secret, condemned without
privilege of defense. ostentatiously de-
graded and then rushed off to remote
prison colony on a sentence of solitary
confinement for life. His friends pro-
test, the conscience of the people grows
restive, and on preteXt the govern
ment, still hugging its policy of Sc
crecy, re-affirms Dreyfus' guilt, alleg-
ing without proof that he had con-
fessed. The intelligent part of French
public opinion refused to be satisfied;
a notorious blackguard and blacklGg.
Esterhazy, is charged by Dreyfus
champions with being the real Grim
inal; trial of him is demanded; to
save its own head the government re-
luctantly assents; but again the doors
are closed, the process of adjudication
is reduced to the dimensions of farce
and the defendant is acquitted almost
as soon as ariaigned. Then in sensa-
tional manner comes NJ. Zola. who in
public letter addressed to the presi-
dent Of the French republic accuses
the French government from its min
lister of war down with conspiring to
load the sins of rotten system upon
an innocent man, and challenges the
government to hold him TO a legal ac-
counting. Zola is hailed into court on
a charge of libel; he subpoenaes al
most the whole Of official France and
these dignitaries one by one refuse to
! testify. The army asserts that its
| honor will not permit civil inquiry
to be made into facts already passed on
| by courts-martial. The government
| refuses to make public a shred of the
alleged evidence upon which it found
| Dreyfus guilty. And finally, the de-
generate populace, fired with fanati-
cism because Dreyfus is a Jew, COM
mits act after act of mob violence and
openly discusses the propriety of or
dering another st. Bartholomew, this
| time for the Jews
The end of all this no man knows.
| That it indicates intolerable rottenness
| is obvious. That in some way there
must soon come a burst-up is equally
| clear. But here certainty stops and
sheer speculation begins. OF people
| capable of tolerating such gross Unjust
| ice and itself indulging in such paretic
paroxysms anything is possible. France
| is honey-combed with socialism. Its
populace is like gunpowder. The spark
| of a revolution may be even now form
ing itself for a bloody ignition.
| We have much to find fault with in
our own country. Those persons among
US who make q business of reforming
evils, being brought by their occupa-
| tions into better acquaintance with
| the bad than with the good side of
| things, are prone TO teach that with
more or less rapid strides our country
| Is EDlllS W lbS utNi' hwy "iS
| taken, OF course, even though they be
sincere And instances like the Drey-
fus case afford us from time to time
opportunities to get our bearings. One
hearing which it seems opportune to
make note of now is embodied in
the fact that while in almost every
country in continental Europe there is
developing among the masses an in
tense prejudice against the Jewish peo-
| pie, a development not intrequently
| marked by the most abominable perse-
cutiors, i'm the United States Christian
and Hebrew wark arm iii arm, without
bitterness, without strife, indeed in the
upper circles with a growing sense of
mutual understanding and apprecia-
tion. The boast of the French officer
that if preyfus should be liberated 100,
900 Jews in France on that same day
would lose their heads could not be
made in America by any man, what
ever his race or creed, except by an
inmate of an insane asylum.
H. a.s. . he