462
PARTISAN REVIEW
public, while the Dreyfus court martial had taken place behind closed
doors, and the most crucial evidence remained secret to this day.
Now it was known that a prominent and respected statesman,
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, vice-president of the senate, claimed to pos–
sess irrefutable proof of Dreyfus's innocence. Then let's get on with it!
grunts Clemenceau. But a week later he is still hesitant. "Pending fur–
ther developments, Dreyfus must still be considered guilty, since he was
duly convicted." To the credit of Clemenceau, the reader discovers that
he is ready to change his mind if he is shown the evidence to justify it.
A fortnight later: "Finally our duty-everybody's-is quite clear.
It
is to
facilitate, to the full extent of our abilities, the production of the truth."
In
his preface, Michel Drouin provides elements of Clemenceau's own
biography, recalling a time not too distant when, as a member of par–
liament, he too had been a victim of injustice, the case against him based
on false testimony and counterfeit documents.
Until the end,
l'affaire
was a labyrinth, with the entire general staff
and war ministry and countless subordinate officers involved in sup–
pressing evidence and fabricating false leads; they had even uncovered
the true culprit-who was now protected by those who forged the case
against Dreyfus. On November
21,
r897, Clemenceau points out that
he never pretended that Captain Dreyfus is innocent because he simply
doesn't know that this is the case, and has no way of knowing. "But I
and many others argue with all our energy-and the mysterious goings–
on of recent days show us to be justified-that all the facts concerning
this shadowy affair have not yet surfaced, and that the government
owes public opinion the full truth."
One remains, literally, out of breath as one turns these pages; will the
scrupulous editorialist finally see what we have grown up knowing? It's
a movie, and we want to shove the detective in the direction of the guilty
party. And still Clemenceau hesitates to declare Dreyfus innocent, but
now of course he knows that there is a serious suspect in the person of
Major Esterhazy, who, oddly enough, is being protected by the army. "I
have always said that the guilt of Esterhazy doesn't oblige us to admit
the innocence of Dreyfus.... The two men might be accomplices."
By early December Clemenceau's sometimes brief editorial notes are
running daily-as if he knows that he is producing a page-turner-and
we discover the seamy plots and sub-plots as he does, all through that
eventful month and into January r898, when George Clemenceau stands
aside for Emile Zola's open letter to the President of the Republic-nam–
ing important names, raising devastating charges, and bringing the ceil–
ing down on his own head. This first volume takes the case to the middle
