The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1906-07-26

their publication would be the signal
for a war with great continental
power. The power referred to OF
course was Germany.
Dreyfus was convicted by the dos
sier." IL may be stated here that the
documents which made up the dos
sier" were forgeries. Only one OF
them has ever been made public. 1t
was a private letter from Lieut.. Col.
Won Schwarzkoppen, the German mill
tary attache, to Lieut.. Col. Panizzardi,
his colleague of the Italian embassy,
written two years before, and which
contained the sentence:
"Cette canaille de d. devient trop
exigeunte." This dog of a ID. Is
getting too importantly
II was afterwards conceded by the
accusers of Dreyfus that the ID" did
not refer to Dreyfus at all, but re-
ferred to another person.
Dreyfus was convicted and SEN
fenced, first to be publicly degraded
and then to be transported and i'm
prisoned for life on Devils island, a
barren spot off Cayenne, South Amer
lea. On January 5, 1895, the first part
of the sentence was carried out. The
troops were drawn up In hollow
square. Dreyfus. in full dress uniform.
was conducted to the center of the
open space. A noncommissioned OFF,
Ger tore the epaulettes from his shoul-
ders, ripped the gold braid from his
coat, tore the buttons off, and finally,
as a supreme mark of degradation,
broke his sword across his knee and
threw the dishonored fragments to the
ground. Then the unhappy officer was
compelled to march to rogues music
along the front of his regiment.
A Prisoner on DEVILS Island.
On February 9, 1895, Dreyfus
reached Devils island. Here had been
erected a stockade, like pen in which
negro convicts are kept. In the stock
ade was hut. In this hut, under the
glare of an equatorial sun, Dreyfus
was condemned to pass the remainder
of his life. He ate and slept In the
hut and took what exercise he cared
for in the little stockade inclosure.
He was permitted to have no converse
with his guards He was denied the
solace of books and newspapers. He
was permitted to write to his wife
once a month and to receive one let.
ter month from her.
The first clew to the innocence of
Dreyfus and to the identity of the real
culprit came later in the year 1895 by
the discovery by spies of a card tele-
gram (petit bleu) written by Lieut..
Col. Won Schwarzkoppen and ad-
dressed to Commandant Esterhazy,
calling upon him to give more detailed
information.
This card elegram-afterwards fa-
nous in the case as the petit bleu"
Ct was written on little blue post
card) taken to Col Georges
Picquart, who had succeeded Col
Sandherr as chief of the secret intelli-
gence bureau. Col. Picquart looked
into Esterhazy's record and anteced-
ents He obtained specimens of his
writing and made the sensational dis.
NC'Nis NhhN ~ NGo LottihuHy anu
Dreyfus who had written the border
eau.
The struggle OF Dreyfus' friends to
obtain a new trial for him went on
increasingly, but it was not until 1899,
after the death of President Faure and
the election of Loubet that they were
finally successful.
Dreyfus landed in France on July 1,
1899, and was placed in prison at
Rennes to await his second trial. II
began on August I. The same malig-
nant "dossier" was used against him.
Again he was convicted on forged evi'
dence. He was sentenced on Septem.
Der to ten years detention In fort
ress on French soil. The years he had
passed on DEVILS island were deduct
ed from the sentence. President Lou
bet commuted the remaining years
Dreyfus, dismissed from the army
was a free man. He retired to his
estates in the country, but for the last
six years he has quietly but persist
emily worked for the vindication which
1