The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-02-28
THE NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SOME OF THE LATEST BOOKS
 OF THE SEASON

His Last Work-Iss Pertineace to tn @
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 A book naturally attracting world wide attention in the field Of literature Is Zola's Truth" the last work from the pen of this famous writer It is published by John Lane, New York, in attractive style and is a work of six hundred pages in close type. The translation into English is by E. s. A. Vizetelly, the translator of several Of Zola's previous books, whose work was "a labor of love- and is admirably done. Truth" is the third of Zola's group classified under "The Four Evan gelists,' of which the two first were "Fruitfulness'' and Labor" The plot of Truth" is a virtual resetting of the Dreyfus case. in which Zola. played so conspicuous, brave and noble a part, winning the admiration of all who love justice. The story pictures the keenly a1tagonistic influences of the Jesuitical and secular parties in modern France tnstanced in the recent educational troubles. The treatment sustains from start to finish the readers excitement and intense interest in a vivid drama tic situation. Zola's animosity to the Catholic church is most evident throughout the book, and is eEtrava- gant and overdrawn. Nevertheless the vigor and force of Zola's pen at it's best are conspicuous and some of the scenes pictured are intensely vivid and pow erful. The question raised whether Zola's books will be passed by twenty years hence, or will in the lapse of that period, be esteemed far more highly than now, is one in which critics differ. But certain it is that there is terrible earnestness in his works, and this ele- ment is notably conspicuous in the present volume While the Dreyfus case figures in Truth it is by proxy serving as the basis of the principal narrative unfo1ded in it. The horrible and unnatural crime on which the story is based and for which an innocent and worthy Jew schoo1master suffered years of exile and imprisonment, was com- mitted by priest, as is revealed at last, years after the unjustly impris- oned man has had a second trial and been pardoned, now a man broken down with suffering and prematurely old. Accompanying this is interwoven the story of the years of bitter sorrow of his staunch friend and defender, Mare, another schoolmaster, caused by his devotion to his friend. and of the years of separation from his wife caused by religious dissensions in the family, in which the Romish church is made to figure again as malevolent agency. The scene of the book is laid in the French school world, and by the intriguing of clericalfst teachers the crime referred to was imputed to the Jew, the friend and benefactor of the murdered lad.
 Of Truth the Commercial Adverti- ser in an extended review of the book says: Tt may probably be stated as an axiom that, from the purely literary point of view, Zola's career closed with La Debacle But of the seven volumes which have come since, none is so like ly to live, and even to enhance his fame, as Verite. It comes, of course. surrounded by a sort of extraneous halo, the popular notoriety of Zola's championship of Dreyfus, and it reaps the full fruit of this notoriety by hav- ing embodied in it's plot the principal motives and impulses of that famous affaire. A good many false rurnors were circulated at one time and anoth- CT about this book. It is not g. story of the French army; it is not, to any marked degree, story of the law courts. Whatever indictment Zola wished to bring against the corruption of the army he brought in La Debacle. The courts of Justice, singularly enough, were a field of national life that he never utilized in fiction. And yet it is none the less true that, from the opening page to the end, Verite is the minute, intimate, exhaustive history of the Dreyfus trial, skilfully disguised, almost allegorical in parts, but none the less instinct with sincerity and truth. To the Anglo-Saxon, no matter how closely he followed the sensational re- ports which came day by day from the tribunal at Rennes, there was much that remained obscure, incomprehensi- bIe, almost burlesque, in the bitter al- tercations, the fierce vindictiveness that severed friends and famllies-the sud 6en fluctuations of popular sentiment that had in them an element of mad- ness reminiscent of the days of the rev. olution. It is this side of the Dreyfus case which becomes clear as one reads the pages of Verite. The dumb indiffer> ence of ignorance, the phenomenal ere dulity and superstition of a priest-rid- den race, the ingrained malice of hered- itary racial hatred, form the very warp and woos os the volume.
 "Verite may be defined most simply as a plea for religious intolerance. It strikes most fiercely at the Jesuits and the sparochial schools. In place of the army of war, he has taken the school teachers, the army of peace and pro- gress; in place of the crime of treason, he has taken the only crime low enough in the scale to be compared to it--an unnatural crime, eliminating in nur- der.". recital of the varied. crowded, swiftly succeeding incidents of the story, the crafty plots and coun- terplots the puzzling maze of malig- nant faIsehood and stupid indifference. the tampering with judge and advocate and Jury and witness, the secret dos s,ers and forged documents, is not ne- cessary at the present time. It is all ci,riously familiar, an echo of the daily