The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-08-14
ACUTE SITUATION IN FRANCE
UNITING OF FORCES FOR OVER-
 THROW OF REPUBLIC.

1
 gether-conspiracy Dangerous Owing l to Its Strong Military Caste-The Fish, ThicAens About Drey fus and Ora vvn Battle is Predicted to be Impossible. i Copyrighted. 1899, by the Associated Press Rennes, Aug. 15.-;Ehe battle has be. gun in earnest. Its political bearings
 are shown in the arrest of Paul Deroul- ede the deputy and poet, and twenty
 three of his numerous royalist and Bonapartist allies, who have pooled with him against the republic. As the
 Boulangist conspiracy, the pool would
 be of little consequence but for. the
 military caste which has found repre-
 sentative men in General Negrier and
 some other generals having great com
 mands. It is strange how the fight
 thickens around the shadowy and ema-
 ciated red-haired Jew, whose uniform
 of an artillery captain so i'll fits and be-
 fits his figure and physiogonomy.
 Last Mondays sitting of the court
 martial and the subsequent non-public
 sittings were the first skirinishing oper-
 ations; but yesterday was a field day,
 in which the two hostile forces into
 which France is divided and has been
 since the revolution, set themselves
 in array of battle and drew the first
 blood. Each side stands committed to
 a certain course and has burned it's
 ships. The actual Dreyfus trial is a
 trial of strength. I cannot see a pos
 sibility of it's ending in a drawn game.
 It is now meek or nothing" combat,
 desperate fight in which neither side
 will give in unless utterly routed. The
 moral situation of the forces engaged
 reminds one of that of the armies of
 the French revolution and those they
 had to fight. The Dreyfusites have the
 brains, the forward impulse the dash and the flexiblity. At the same time they are raw recruits, gathered spon-
 taneously from the four points of the compass. Hatred of the military caste, and, it may be, the secret hope of re- wards have made them homogeneous.
 The nationalists have social and other prestige, numbers and organiza ton. Their center is composed of the ma jority of Frenchmen and French women. Their left wing is formed of 22, 000 off, cers and their right wing consists of the church. All profess respect for le- gality but only from the lips out. One side is just as unscrupulous as the other but the most active and less nu- merous side does really fight for the cause of humanity, justice and truth. The Dreyfusites have, at any rate, won belligerent rights and they are sure of the friendly neutrality of the govern ment Their adversaries can no longer make use of the rope that hung Le- mercier Picard, or the razor that cut Henry's throat The minister of war could not, if he wanted to, read a forg- ed document in parliament It is inn now to stuff the dossier with fables fit for Mother Goose's tale But numbers prestige and mean staying power. Doubtless the Dreyfusites are supplied with Jew sh funds without accepting M. De Freycnct's estimate of 39,000000 francs. The sums subscribed by English and German Jews must be enormous.
 General Mercier's deposition was in audible unless to the judges and short hand reporters. It fell flat, his voice and delivery being bad. But we have t now in print. It has qualities for which we do not give 1t credit during delivery | They are easy, flowing statements with plausibility and the art of lulling suspicion. As the deposition appears n full in the reports, 1t will everywhere | oe read with delight by those already persuaded that Dreyfus is a traitor. | They will not see what was Pecksnif- | ian, what was of feline perfidity. Fig | lratively speaking, the deposition, | which was really a speech for the pros- shows Mercier to be a flauntist ,f the highest order. He never loses lis way In the most intricate variations ind keeps in view the motive, namely | hat Dreyfus is cool, calculating well traitor.
 The immediate issue of the fight is he freedom of Dreyfus; but yesterdays and episodes are the begin ling of struggle of far reaching con equences. I must give the nationalists redit for having from the very begin-
 ling foreseen what revision would lead 0. They, in many things, showed kindness. They accepted the madman luesnay de BeaureDaire as their pokesman. But they had a keen in- tinct for the ultimate trend of the re- isionist movement.
 Dreyfus is generally unfortunate in he use of the pen. He lacks artistic ensibilities and cannot dsassociate imself from his ego to enter into the ceilings of others. One sees this harsh gotism in his correspondence with his fife. He was never more unfortunate ] the letter complaining that M. Casi- lirPerier did not keep a promise to i'm. It exasperated Casimir- Perier,
 ho treated as q foul libel the assertion ] lat he, as president of the republic, ltered into a pact with an officer &C., ] leed of treason. Casimir- Perier has a abit of thinking morbidly. He has lllen deep offense at several assertions i Mercier and will try conclusions with . i'm tomorrow. We expect fur to fly in Casimir Pcrier's case, canine. in z ercer felineA Some of Countess Marie Von Mun- I er's letters in the secret dossier were (
 Mile. Lucia Faure They may be ! rgeries. I cannot imagine that she { i've them to the minister-of-war as [ oof that the family of the German ! took an interest in Drey- ! S. The Schwartzkoppe letter, speak g of the inpetuous intervention in a affair of The German erl1ppror for