The record-union., 1899-08-06
COMING TRIAL
OF DREYFUS.
Said the Prosecution Will Have a
Very Hard Task
10 Convict the Former ARM Officer When
the Next Hearing Takes Place.

General De Gal1ifet Has Deter
mined That Exact Justice Shall
be Done, and the Burden of
Proof Rests With the Govern
ment.
NEW YORK, Aug. 5.-The Paris corr
respondent of the Tribune" discussing
the question on which the coming Drey
fus court martial will hinge. says:
One of the consequences of the judg,
ment delivered by the Court of Casa
ton on June Sd has been to shift the
burden of proof from the prisoner to the
prosecution. At the ourt-martial OF
1894 it was incumbent upon Captain
Dreyfus to prove that he was innocent
of the charges brought against him.
This was in accordance with French
law, which places the burden of proof
upon the accused. But at the Rennes
court-martial Captain Dreyfus will APP
pear as an officer who has been illegally
condemned and will not be obliged to
prove his innocence. 1t will be for the
prosecution to prove that he is guilty.
The issue relegated by the Court OF
Cessation to the RenneS cOurt-martiai
for trial. is narrowed down to the single
question whether or not Captain Drey~
fuS communicated to a foreign power
the precise documents enumerated in
the bordereau. The bordereau is the
memorandum without date or sigma
ture written on very peculiar water
marked tissue paper, which, upon the
evidence of the late Colonel Henry, th&
forger, was discovered torn in slips in
the waste paper basket of Colonel Won
Schwartskoppen, then military attache
at the German Embassy in Paris, and
after being put together by Colonel
Henry, formed the basis of the original
charges against Captain Dreyfus. There
is nothing in the bordereau to show
that Captain Dreyfus had been follow
ing reasonable practices or to connect
him in any manner with it, beyond an
alleged similarity between the hand
writing of Dreyfus and that of the
author of the bordereau. The Court
of Cessation has decided that the bor-
dereau was written by Esterhazy and
not by Dreyfus.
The Court of Cessation has already
passed judgment upon all the other evil
dence adduced against Dreyfus in 1891.
including the confession of guilt falselS
alleged to have been made by DreyfuS
in January. 1895. to Captain Lebrun.
Renaud and to Sergeant Depert, as well
as the famous secret dOssier, with its
fOrgeries and criminally manipulated
documents. All that is legally left
standing after the elimination by the
Court of Cessation of the Irregularities
that vitiated the conviction of 1894, is
the bOrdereau, which the Court of Cas-.
sation on June Sd declared was rot
written by Dreyfus. The functions of
the Rennes courtmartial are now
limited to hearing evidence and dec1d-
ing upon the subject of the alleged
communication by Captain Dreyfus 10
a foreign power of the documents emu
merated in the bordereau, now known
to have been written by Esterhazy, as
he himself has confessed. Dreyfus was
unacquainted with Esterhazy when the
bordereau was written. and it may be
safe to predicr that it will be practl-
caly impossible for the prosecution to
prove at the forthcoming trial at
Rennes that Captain Dreyfus handed
over to a foreign power the document
in question. These documents are five
in number
/. A description of the hydraulic
vi 6hc VI tiiC licid gun hlioWi III LIN
French service as the '120 court and
notes upon the construction of it's car
riage The 100 court is the heaviest
gun used by the French field artillery.
It's gun carriage is ingeniously con-
trived so as to travel over plowed fields
and across country" The projectiles
were formerly loaded with melinite. but
dynamite is now used for this purpose,
noq6p
Mention with dynamite shells fired from
the "120 court guns are said to have
pulverized several thousand cubic
meters of solid rock.
. A memorandum concerning the
"troupes de couverture" troops in case
of mobilization to be thrown toward the
frontier so as TO cover the actual mob
tlization) with notifications according
to the latest plan.
3. A note describing the changes
adopted in the artillery formation. This
refers to the distribution of BATTERIES at
the commencement of mobilization
among the divisions of the army corps.
4. A paper on the Madagascar cam
paign.
). A draft of the manual of field artil- |
lery fire dated March IA. 1894.
In the report of President Ballot
Beaupre, the conclusions of which were
adopted by the Court of Cessation, a
portion of the record of the court
martial of 1894 is cited. from which it
appears that on November p, 1891, |
Coinmandant d'Ormeschiville (the Off
Ger who framed the indictment upon
which Dreyfus was convicted) showed
Dreyfus the original of the bordereau.
Dreyfus resolutely denied ever having |
seen the document and explained In de-
tail why it was materially Impossible
that he could have written it. When
questioned about each of the five docu- |
mentS enumerated in the boruereau the
answers of Dreyfus were as follows:
Il. Never at any period of my career
have / had in my possession any docu- |
ment relating to the hydraulic brake or
the carriage of the 120 court. The last |
time that saw the 120 gun was while
I was at the Ecole de Guerre; i saw it
en- repos; I have never seen the piece |
fired. |
"2. Since January 1, 1894, until July
of the same year I was employed al
the second bureau. During that entire
period / never had any work to do In
relation to the couverture. 1 have
never had in my possession any docu-
ment upon this question
..3. In regard to the note relating to
modification in the artillery forma. /
ton In the month Of June. only know