The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-09-07

 1 when inviting certain ministers to his dinner parties, to watch his silver plate { lest they should steal it. M Constahs
 hls bltterest foe, he has repeatedly
 charged with murder poisoning anG
 various other crimes. Now people won- der often whether he believes or not the
 stories he is telling, and in which many
 oI his readers undoubtedly do believe
 1 thlnk that he does believe them; if not
 when he tells them for the first time, at least after little while. He has the
 credulity of child. During the Arme-
 nian massacres he seriously asserted
 that the sultan had bribed the German
 kaiser with several millions of francs.
 l have heard him in the Hobbies of the
 palais de justice during the Zola trial saying to crowd of people gathered around him, and of whom he knew | nobody, that Gen. Billet, who was at the time secretary of war, had been
 paid by the Jews 30000 francs in order
 to let Col. Picquart testify in favor of Dreyfus
 No one during the whole Dreyfus agi-
 tation has laid more stress than he on the stories about the syndicate and on all the gross stupiditiee about the for elSn money that was supposed to cross the frontier every day in order to conn fort the Dreyfusists. The story told at Rennes by Gen. Mercier of the 35,000000 had long ago been told by Rochefort to the readers of L'Intransigeant.
 That Rochefort should have rushed into the Boulangist and afterward into the Esterhazyist party, has astonished many people, who mistook that old fool for a socialist. Nothing is on the con- trary, less at variance with his temper Like all Parisian street arabs, Roche fort, who is their spokesman, is q rabid Chauvinist At the time of the Bou- langism he became, just as ninety out of hundred other patriots, enamored of the handsome general on the black horse. There was not bit of politics in it. But in the Dreyfus case he was directed by his interests, he knew quite well on what side was the greatest mass of his customers and although he is an atheist who never ceased blaspheming against God and insulting Catholicism, he became q rabid anti-Semite. More over, he was very much pleased that the general staff should have begged for his support and have told that they had "a hundred proofs of Dreyfuss guilt" With his customary credulity, he first gave out the preposterous and gro- tesque story of the letter of the German emperor to Dreyfus, which some officer had told him. His attitude had q t last one result. It has shown to all the most serious and soundest socialist, who had up to this time mistaken the clown for politician, that he had never been anything else than fool. He has lost already his credit with the party, and has been the victim of some mystifca- tions of the same kind which have vis- ited that other madman, Quesnay de Beaurepaire.
 Drumont, whose influence is second to that of Rochefort, is in many ways diff ferent from the old jester. Drumont is a regular fanatic. He is both the leader and the inventor of anti-Semitism in France. Prior to the appearance of his book on Jewish France" which was published with startling success in 1886, there was no French anti-Semitic move- ment whatever Drumont has neither the sparkling wit nor the humor "bou- leVardier'' of Rochefort, but he is en- dowed with more serious propensities He is learned, has read a good deal, and instead of spending his time like his fellow -pamphleteer, at the horse races, he busies himself in the libraries Fifteen years ago Drumont was quite an obscure journalist, contributing arti- cies to Catholic newspapers Both his religious fanaticism and his spirit of baseness and envy made him an anti I Semitic Being bigoted Catholic he resented the republican policy of self ] defense against the church. In the sec 1 ond place, as a poor and unsuccessful writer he had much trouble in forcing | his way to fame, he felt angry against | those who had succeeded better than | himself. Among those were, of course, | l good many Jews Thus Drumont be- | gan to hate both republicans and Jews, | whom he mixed up in the most strange | fashion, trying to arouse against the | former the old prejudices which the | alter have always aroused among the Drumont were Jews, and all Jews were foreigners. Thus in his theory, France was ruled and the church was persa- ,uted by a set of foreigners.
 This is the theme which for 13 years Drumont has been dwelling on, first in III his books, which had a tremendous sale, and then in his newspaper, La 4ibre Parole, which he founded in 1891 | 4a Libre Parole is a paper written in l he same vein as L'Intransigeant. Day liter day all public men, be they Jewish IT not, are abused either by Drumont ,r by a few associates who are just as as, if less talented than, limself
 It was said the Jewish France" his amous book, which in few months old more than 100 editions was directory of defamation" so numerous we're the lies and the slanderoue tales le had gathered therein about all prom nent men in France. La Libre Parole 'ecame likewise a sort of daily direc- ory where Jews were abused one after he other and denounced as an inter ational horde that plundered France nd betrayed it.
 La Libre Parole, which has not far rom 800 900 readers and perhaps more, 5 a favorite newspaper with the big ted middle class. the priests, the coun- ry squires and the officers. It is not | that officers of the general taff poisoned by the daily reading of | o it,,n Dnph1p cyraoto5 +I,n (