. The Dreyfus case . arts discovery of the real authorship of thebordereau. That piece of evidence was felt by himto be crumbling; it had already been pooh-poohedin the Jour of September ii, 1896, and the secretof its entire worthlessness might at any moment bedivulged, now that Picquart and Bertillon, Gonse andBoisdeffre, and probably others as well, were cogni-sant of it. Hence the necessity of acquainting theFrench public with the fact that the bordereau wasfar from being all, or even the most important,evidence adduced against Dreyfus, They must bemade to understand that it was the secret
. The Dreyfus case . arts discovery of the real authorship of thebordereau. That piece of evidence was felt by himto be crumbling; it had already been pooh-poohedin the Jour of September ii, 1896, and the secretof its entire worthlessness might at any moment bedivulged, now that Picquart and Bertillon, Gonse andBoisdeffre, and probably others as well, were cogni-sant of it. Hence the necessity of acquainting theFrench public with the fact that the bordereau wasfar from being all, or even the most important,evidence adduced against Dreyfus, They must bemade to understand that it was the secret dossierthat had really convinced his judges, and not thebordereau at all. That might be discredited andthrown over, yet there was left plenty of evidenceto justify Dreyfus retention in the Isle du Diable,plenty to warrant a dogged opposition to any revi-sion of his sentence. Such is the aim which inspired this communica-tion in the Eclair, and the writer of it was clearlya man who saw little harm in the production of. COLONEL G. PICQUART. PICQUARTS DISCOVERY 113 evidence to the judges which was at the same timewithheld from the accused and his counsel. It waswithheld, he says; otherwise the defence would havelearned that the French War Office was in possessionof the German cipher. This is clearly a cock-and-bull story designed to palliate to the readers of theEclair the flagrant illegality of the transaction. Whowas the man behind the scenes, so anxious to preju-dice the public mind, and to discount the revelationwhich it was expected within the War Office Picquartmight at any moment make, and that with theassent of Gonse and Boisdeffre ? It was clearly eitherDu Paty or Henry, or both acting with the conni-vance of Mercier, who had now, indeed, lost hisposition in the War Office, but whose sinister person-ality reveals itself in the background as the inspirerof the orgies of fraud and crime, of which as soonas Picquarts back is turned the War Office was tobecome the temple. The
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