Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/74

 was not inclined to believe so badly of him, but that if he would confess that he had sent "documents of no importance to the foreign power to get documents of more importance," this might be accepted as saving at least his honour. To this Dreyfus had firmly replied that he had done nothing of the sort. But in his long conversation, or rather "monologue," with Lebrun-Renaud, he no doubt said: "The Minister knows that I am innocent. He believes that if I sent documents it was so as to get other (more important) ones. But I did not do even that." … And Lebrun-Renaud, not attending carefully to these words, turned them afterwards into: "The Minister knows that if I sent documents it was with the purpose, etc." … These were in fact the words used in Lebrun-Renaud's report. Such is Jaurès' explanation, and in reading it one feels it is the truth.

With like art Jaurès unravelled the tortuous history of the bordereau. Five experts were called in to study the handwriting of Dreyfus, three of whom held that it was the same as that of the bordereau, two thought not. Of the three who believed that Dreyfus had written it, one Bertillon distinguished himself from the others by his "system," which he said was psychological, not merely graphological. Jaurès holds up his system to ridicule, and he shows how this same Bertillon who was so absolutely certain