see you for some days, but my cold has prevented me.
I am therefore compelled to trouble you by letter. My
object is to ask you to undertake the task which our
lamented friend Lord Herschell had undertaken the
principal arbitership on the British side in the approaching
Venezuelan arbitration. I hesitate to ask you to undertake
a duty which will involve a good deal of labour in
addition to that which falls upon you naturally in con-
sequence of the high office you hold. But you are, from
every point of view, so incomparably the fittest man
among us for this duty, that I venture to ask, as a
patriotic sacrifice, to allow me to submit your name to
the Queen for that purpose.
The arbitrators met in Paris in the summer and
autumn of 1899, M. Martens, an eminent Russian jurist,
acting as umpire. The award was made in October.
310
. 67] VENEZUELAN ARBITRATION
Something was given to England, something to Vene-
zuela, and peace was preserved. 1 Speaking at a dinner
at the Royal Societies Club in December, Russell said,
referring to the ' results of the arbitration ' :
We all strove to do justice ; I think we succeeded. I
think the result of the arbitration is to give to Venezuela
all that Venezuela is fairly and honestly entitled to, and
to give to Great Britain no more than Great Britain is
honestly entitled to have. There is, to my mind, no
question of triumph in the matter. A judge can rejoice
in only one triumph, and that is the triumph of justice.
It may be left to the distinguished American counsel
acting for Venezuela I mean ex- President Harrison,
Mr. Tracey, Mr. Soley, and Mr. Mallet Prevost on the
one hand, or to my hon. and learned friends Sir Richard
Webster, Sir Robert Reid, Mr. Asquith, and Mr.
Rowlatt if they desired on other occasions to cockcrow
and flap their wings ; but certainly this is not the occa-
sion, and this is not the part I desire to play. One
observation I would like to make in passing, and I
make it more particularly because I believe this is a
gathering in which there are reporters of the Press.
My observation is this : Before the arbitration had pro-
ceeded for any considerable time, one leading English
paper I believe it is called the leading paper had an
article in which it, in very strong and emphatic language,
told the arbitrators to hurry up, that they were wasting
a great deal of time, that the question was simply to
draw a line, and that it did not very much matter to
1 The decision was substantially in favour of this country, and authorised
the inclusion within British Guiana of the great bulk of the territory em-
braced by what is known as the Schomburgk line. The only exception, of
any note, to this sweep of the award lay in the fact that it assigned to
Venezuela a small tract at Barima Point, on the delta of the Orinoco, to
which on strategical grounds the Venezuelans had always attached high
value. Annual Register, 1899, p. 235.
3"
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
anyone where the line was drawn. I hope it will not
be considered too strong language to use if I say that
I consider that article a gross impertinence. It is not
only a gross impertinence, but it shows an entire want,
as I conceive, of the sense of the necessity of at least
one essential condition being observed in those public
arbitrations, in those international arbitrations, and that
is that they ought never to be so conducted as to leave
it open to either party to the dispute thereafter to say,
' We have not been fully, adequately, competently heard.'
But that arbitration, as it seems to me, has an
importance far beyond the great importance of the
interests which are directly involved in it. Its import-
ance is that it had demonstrated to the world that
a question which had occupied the attention even for
generations of the leading men in the two nations or
countries involved yet might be peacefully, satisfactorily,
economically determined without bloodshed and without
leaving behind it a heritage of bad blood and ill-will.
But I again repeat and it is the concluding note which
I desire to sound that if arbitrations of this kind are
to be successful they must be arbitrations in which the
arbitrators are not partisans ; they must be arbitrators
who will have the sense of individual judicial responsi-
bility upon each of them. And although, as I have
already said, it would not be possible to remove all
impressions, yet it is possible, as I believe, pursuing
those lines, to constitute an arbitration in which, judicially
conducted, it is certain substantial justice will be done.
When the arbitration was over Lord Salisbury
wrote :
' On the conclusion of the proceedings in the arbitra-
tion, I have received the Queen's commands to express
to your Lordship her Majesty's appreciation of your
eminent services as one of the British arbitrators.
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JET. 67] VENEZUELAN ARBITRATION
' The Queen recognises that the necessity of obtain-
ing a thorough knowledge of the intricate questions
submitted to the tribunal by the two Governments
concerned has involved much labour and personal incon-
venience, and her Majesty desires me to thank you for
the ability and devotion which you have shown in dis-
charging the important duties entrusted to you.'
After Lord Russell's death, his colleague, Lord Justice
Henn Collins, bore testimony to the public services
rendered by the Chief Justice in the Venezuelan arbi-
tration :
1 1 do not believe that the public have ever suffi-
ciently realised the great debt they owe to Lord
Russell of Killowen for the influence he exercised in
bringing about the happy result of that award. '1
do not believe that there was any other man in this
kingdom who was capable of bringing a weight, a
gravity, an indisputable supremacy in discussion and in
argument such as he brought to bear on the solution of
that question.'
313
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
CHAPTER XVI
THE DREYFUS CASE
THE next event in the life of Lord Russell, to which
I wish to refer, is his presence at the court-martial
which tried Dreyfus at Rennes in 1899. It being
intimated to him that Queen Victoria would like to
hear his account of the trial, he prepared a paper,
which was read to her. This paper shall form the sub-
ject of the present chapter.
PAPER BY LORD RUSSELL
Written 16 September 1899
I am not quite sure that I rightly understand what is
required of me whether it is desired that I should
state my impressions of the Dreyfus case generally
(including my observations at Rennes) and the course
and action of French opinion in relation to it, or whether
I should speak only of my impressions of the Conseil de
Guerre at Rennes, formed during my two days' visit to
that tribunal.
I shall, however, assume that it is the former which
is desired, even at the risk of writing what may be con-
sidered unnecessary and tedious.
I have followed the Dreyfus case from its earliest to
3H
JEr. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
its latest stage with close interest ; and, while I have
come to the clear conclusion that the case against Dreyfus
was supported by no solid evidence, I at the same time
think that a harsh judgment has been pronounced by
the foreign Press generally, and notably by that of
Great Britain, not only upon some of the persons con-
cerned, but even upon the French nation as a whole.
To begin with, it is necessary to bear in mind the
almost sacred character with which the imagination of
the French people has invested their army. Nor is this
without some natural explanation. Looking to the
numerous divisions of political parties, even amongst
those who advocate constitutional government in some
form or another, and remembering besides the large and
increasing number of socialists (to say nothing of the
anarchistic element), it is hardly wonderful that large
masses of the people have come to doubt the stability
of its government and to regard the army as the sole
ark of safety in France. When, therefore, the original
Conseil de Guerre pronounced against Dreyfus, it was
quite natural that the people of France should believe in
its judgment. There is, in fact, no reason to believe
that the members of that original council were otherwise
than perfectly honest. They were certainly bad judges,
unversed in the art of weighing evidence, likely to
be unduly impressed by the testimony and attitude of
members of the Etat Major ; but I think there is no
ground for saying that they were not honest men accord-
ing to their lights.
When, further, this judgment was defended not
by one but by several ministers of war in succession,
and by several ministries in succession, the justice of
315
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
Dreyfus's condemnation became a fixed conviction of
the French nation.
Later, when facts began to leak out which made
thoughtful people doubt the justice of the condemnation,
it was unfortunate for Dreyfus that amongst the most
prominent advocates for revision were to be found
(i) foreign journals, and in France (2) amongst the
class of men like Cl^menceau and Urbain-Gohier (in the
Aurore), and Jaures (the socialist leader) in the Matin.
These men were only too glad, while advocating the
rehabilitation of Dreyfus, to make his cause the oppor-
tunity for an attack upon the army as an institution. I
do not mean to say that there were not others in France
who advocated revision who were free from these
imputations.
As to the foreign journals, France has not yet realised
the fact that every great drama, whether in Courts of
Justice or elsewhere, is now played before the whole
world as an audience, and is therefore subject to the
criticism of the whole world. France has not realised
that the telegraph and the telephone have almost
brought the ends of the earth together, and that it is
quite impossible to treat, as a purely domestic concern,
any question which, like this one, appears to touch the
very foundations of justice. In all circumstances it not
only distrusts the motive of foreign advice or inter-
ference, but repudiates and grievously resents it.
In fact, France does not regard any of the great
communities of the world, except Russia and perhaps
the United States of America, as friendly to her. The
result has been that the adverse comments in the German
and in the British Press, so far from helping the cause
316
JET. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
of Dreyfus, have been appealed to and paraded by those
who profess to believe in his guilt, as if they afforded
corroborative evidence of his guilt.
It was, of course, impossible that the British Press
could be silent ; but it is nevertheless true that, so far as
Dreyfus was concerned, it has done him not good, but
harm ; and it is but just to say that, in its comments
during the actual sittings of the Court, the British Press,
from the Times upwards or downwards, almost without
exception, have indulged in such partisan comment as
would have earned for their editors, at the hands of
English judges, prompt committal to prison had any such
comments been made pending a trial in England. These
comments would have amounted to what is called con-
tempt of Court, which means that they would have had a
direct tendency to interfere with the due course of justice.
What has especially troubled the French people is
that these attacks have not been confined to those
immediately concerned as judges or as military officers
in the Dreyfus case, but have been extended to the
French nation as a whole, and against that nation has
been levelled the charge of a general decadence of moral
tone and sense. Indeed, the latest form that these
comments have taken is an attack upon the religion of
the mass of the people of France, which is also the
religion of a not unimportant section of her Majesty's
subjects at home and in her empire abroad to say
nothing of its being the religion largely professed in all
the civilised communities of the world.
It has been, indeed, charged that the Dreyfus pro-
ceedings were the result of a complot between the heads
of the army and what are called the clericals.
317
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
I have inquired into this allegation, and I think there
is no foundation for it. It is quite true, unhappily, that
so-called religious papers, like La Croix, have written
abominably against Dreyfus, just as avowedly non-
religious papers have done ; but I do not think there is
any ground for the suggestion that the prejudice against
Dreyfus was at all considerably accentuated by the fact
of his being a Jew. That the Jews are unpopular in
France is undoubted ; but it is equally true that they are
unpopular in Germany and in Russia, and indeed in most
countries where they reside, but assuredly not on religious,
but on racial and social grounds.
It seems to me that the foreign Press, in its com-
ments, has not rightly interpreted some of the phenomena
which public opinion here has presented, and has not
taken into account, to soften the harshness of its judgment,
the general considerations to which I have referred.
When one recollects how comparatively small is the
number of persons who form independent judgments of
their own on a matter like this, when you bear in mind
how insensibly your opinions are formed from those
with whom you talk, amongst whom you live, from the
newspapers you read, it would be surprising if, in the
circumstances to which I have adverted, the French
people as a whole had not originally accepted the idea
of Dreyfus's guilt ; and looking to the support, from
persons in authority, it had received, it would have been
remarkable if they had not, for a long time at least, clung
to that opinion.
But, I agree, we have now reached a different phase
of the question. I think the conscience of the French
nation ought now to be wide awake and alert ; and I
318
Mr. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
think the facts now disclosed are of such a startling and
significant character that it is impossible any longer for
honest men to repose faith in the implicated heads of the
army or to acquit them of treachery and duplicity.
Even from the comparatively small opportunities I
have of observing the trend of public opinion by actual
conversation with people here, I do observe a change
decidedly for the better ; and I think that change is
manifested in a striking manner by the fact that, even
amongst the most violent opponents of Dreyfus in the
French Press, there is a tacit acquiescence in the sug-
gested free pardon which it is said the Government
intend in a short time to grant to the condemned man.
The revelations touching Esterhazy, the counter-
plotting by the Etat Major against Picquart in his
attempts to ascertain the true delinquent, the contriv-
ances resorted to touching the second Conseil de Guerre,
the truculent behaviour of the generals (prominently
Generals Mercier and Roget) have made most men,
formerly confident of Dreyfus's guilt, doubt their former
opinions. So much in general.
As to the members of the Conseil de Guerre at
Rennes, in considering their proceedings it is to be
recollected that they were administering a system which
was theirs, and that that system is not ours. For
instance, by the laws of evidence prevailing in France,
and indeed in all the countries in Europe in which the
Roman Civil Law or the Code Napoleon (largely
founded on the Civil Law) prevails, much looser state-
ments are permitted to be given than English law
recognises as evidence. An example of this relates to
hearsay evidence. For instance, it is allowable in a
3*9
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
French witness to state what some third person has
informed him as to the acts or conduct of the accused
touching his guilt, and probative effect is given to such
statement In England, on the other hand (except in
a very limited class of cases), such evidence would be
rejected. Again, witnesses are allowed, largely because
of the preceding rule, to give their evidence very much
in the nature of a speech or address. Again, that in-
valuable test of truth, namely, the right of direct cross-
examination of witnesses, is not permitted before these
tribunals, and only such questions as the presiding judge
permits are put, and they are put by him, with the
result that they are comparatively ineffective.
These considerations explain what must have struck
the English reader as the extraordinary line of conduct
permitted to Generals Mercier and Roget, amongst
others, to make, in their supposed character of wit-
nesses, nothing short of unscrupulous, mean, and vin-
dictive speeches for the prosecution. I do not think,
however, that the same amount of license would have
been permitted to them before a tribunal presided over
by a superior judge in a civil Court.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the eyes of a
lawyer of the Rennes proceedings was the want of accord
in the lines of defence pursued respectively by Maitre
Demange and Mattre Labori. The former, both in his
cross-examinations so called, and in his final speech,
appeared to aim at saying and doing nothing which
could ruffle military sensibility ; in other words, he dealt
with the evidence as it was given, as if it were honest,
reliable evidence, without casting any reflection upon
the conduct and character of the persons who gave it,
120
. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
and confined himself to the thesis that, accepting such
evidence, the guilt of Dreyfus had not been established.
On these lines, the speech of Maitre Demange was an
able analysis of the evidence, and an able and eloquent
exposition of its weaknesses and shortcomings. This
was a course which, in my opinion, was only justifiable
provided it was likely to succeed. It may be that it
was a powerful factor in securing the adhesion of the
two dissenting members of the Court, and in obtaining
the assent of all the members to the finding of extenu-
ating circumstances, and to the recommendation against
inflicting upon the condemned man a further public
degradation. At the same time this course of defence
had this consequence, that the speech of Maitre De-
mange was, in a certain sense, unreal : it sounded in my
ears too much like an appeal for mercy, and it did not
deal with the considerations touching the conduct of the
members of the Etat Major, which most strongly went
to accentuate their mala fides. In fine, it contained little
which may be said to constitute an appeal from the judg-
ment at Rennes to the great tribunal of public opinion
outside that Court.
On the other hand, Maitre Labori attacked, and, as
I think, justifiably attacked, the witnesses in his cross-
examinations ; but, in the opinion of many, this course,
so far as the decision of the Rennes tribunal was con-
cerned, was injurious to the interests of Dreyfus. These,
however, are matters of speculation, upon which diffe-
rent minds will take different views.
As to Dreyfus himself, I was disappointed. I was
full of pity for him, and entered the Court with every
desire to be impressed by him ; but I was not. He
321 Y
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
does not impress one favourably. He is mean-looking,
with a hard, unsympathetic face ; and, so far as ex-
pression goes, I must reluctantly admit that there was
no openness, frankness, or nobility in his expression.
He did, I think, display a great deal of dignity in the
passionless immobility with which he, almost throughout
the entire proceedings, listened to the injurious and, as I
believe, often lying statements launched against him.
As to his judges, I had not an opportunity of person-
ally seeing their demeanour while witnesses were being
examined. But I must add that the reports of the
previous proceedings seemed to show that a greater
license was given to the witnesses against Dreyfus than
to those called for him, and that the intervention of the
generals was allowed without limits, while the advocates
of Dreyfus were not infrequently prevented putting
questions which seemed directly relevant to the inquiry.
I only saw them during the two days occupied by the
speech of Maitre Demange. So far as appearances went,
it is fair to say that nothing could have been more
decorous or dignified than their demeanour. They were
respectful to the advocate, and they appeared to follow
closely the points which he made, taking notes from
time to time. I see no reason whatever to doubt that
they were honest men, determined to do justice accord-
ing to their lights.
The explanation of the erroneous judgment, as I con-
ceive it to be, at which they arrived I take to be this :
they were unversed in law, unused to legal proceedings,
with no experience or aptitude to enable them to weigh
the probative effect of testimony ; they were steeped in
prejudice and concerned for what they regarded as the
322
JEr. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
honour of the army ; and thus, impressed or overawed
by the heads of their profession, they gave undue weight
to the flimsy rags of evidence which alone were pre-
sented against the accused man.
My view of the case may be expressed thus : If I
had been trying it before a jury, while I could not have
said that there was no evidence to be considered by the
jury, I should certainly have told them that it was a case
in which it would be utterly unsafe for them to convict.
That there was some evidence, I think, cannot be
doubted ; amongst others, that as to the handwriting of
the bordereau and that as to the alleged confession ; but,
on both points, it was of so utterly unreliable a character
that I think no judge or jury could properly have acted
upon it.
I am glad to learn, upon what I believe is good
authority, that, with a view to a general appeasement,
the Government do contemplate granting at an early
date a free pardon to Dreyfus. Indeed, it is said that
at a recent council the president stood alone in refusing
to agree forthwith to this course. Although a pardon is
no reparation to an innocent man, it will at least restore
him to his family, and will give him the time and the
leisure to work out, even to the satisfaction of his country-
men, still largely hostile to him, his complete vindication.
It seems to me that good may come for the world in
general out of the sufferings of this man.
In the first place, I think it will render impossible the
continuance of courts-martial, at least without more com-
plete legal safeguards and control than now exist ; and I
think this will be a gain.
In the next place, I think it will bring home to the
323 Y2
LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN [1899
Powers of the world the impossibility of continuing to use
the services of their military attaches at foreign courts
for the purposes of espionage. It seems intolerable that
an officer in a noble service should be called upon to
perform duties which in any degree call upon him to play
the part of espion.
If I may put a concrete illustration, take the case of
an intelligent and honourable man, like Colonel Douglas
Dawson, military attache to the Embassy at Paris. Is
it not painful to think that, received on terms of equality
in French society, enjoying their courteous hospitality, he
is nevertheless all the time, according to his duty, play-
ing the part, in a less or in a greater degree, of a spy
upon France's military proceedings and arrangements ?
For example, he might this evening be a guest at
the table of Monsieur de Galliffet ; and yet, upon return-
ing to his rooms, he would, in the performance of his
duty, be obliged to hold parley with a treacherous secre-
tary of his host whom he found awaiting him, and who
had brought him, for payment, a secret document of
importance filched from the private bureau of his
master !
I think it must be felt that, if espionage of this kind
is to be kept up (and it may be necessary), it ought to
be committed to the care of a different class of men,
and that gentlemen in honourable service in the army
ought not to be allowed to soil their fingers in its
performance.
A final word. France is undoubtedly just now pass-
ing through the throes of a crisis. I think that, in the
end, truth and a sense of justice will completely reassert
themselves. They are beginning to do so. It is not to
324
JEr. 67] THE DREYFUS CASE
be forgotten that the rehabilitation of Dreyfus (almost
complete in the eyes of the onlooking world) has been
brought about mainly by the efforts of Frenchmen
Scheurer-Kestner, Trarieux, Picquart, and Comply, and,
with all his grossness and exaggeration, the name of
Zola ought not to be omitted.
It must be remembered also that recent proceedings