Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/182

 174] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [auo.

French man of letters which had inspired, and the devoted self- sacrifice of a French officer which had rendered possible, the move- ment prosecuted with signal courage in France for " revision " of the original sentence on Captain Dreyfus. Impolitic, because England, despite impending imperial dangers, thus gratuitously aroused the resentment of a great foreign nation. Fortunately, those who organised and took part in a well-attended Hyde Park demonstration of sympathy with Captain Dreyfus (Sept. 17) were wise enough to avoid the excesses of language into which not a few of their countrymen and countrywomen had been betrayed, and the measured though earnest tone of most of the speeches was reflected in the following resolutions which were adopted with enthusiasm and practical unanimity : " That this mass meeting of the citizens of London assembled in Hyde Park sends the expressions of its deepest sympathy to Captain and Mme. Dreyfus, and assures them that wherever the English tongue is spoken there is admiration and gratitude for the splendid courage and noble example they have shown amidst unparalleled persecution/' "That this meeting expresses its abhorrence of men who have sullied the honour of the uniform they wear in their long and desperate fight with truth and innocence, congratulates Zola, Picquart, Labori, Demange, and their supporters for the splendid resistance they have made to military and sectarian fanaticism, and appeals to the Govern- ment of the Bepublic to act according to the best traditions of free and generous France by releasing and rehabilitating Captain Dreyfus before it is too late."

In respect of purely domestic affairs, the autumn months presented very little calling for permanent record unless, indeed, in the ecclesiastical sphere. There, no doubt, some keen observers held that symptoms were discernible of the approach of a genuine crisis. The occasion, though hardly the cause, of these disquieting developments was to be found in the decision of the two archbishops against the legality of the ceremonial use of incense and processional lights in the services of the Church of England. It should be observed that the disruptive influence — should it prove so — of that decision lay much more in the reasons on which the archbishops based it than in its actual effect. At the earliest opportunity after the delivery of the archiepiscopal decision — judgment, it was not, since they had expressly disclaimed the idea that their sitting together at Lambeth constituted a court — Sir William Harcourt had a triumphant letter in the Times. He hailed the pronouncement of the Primates as an event "pregnant with vital results to the future of the English Church, " because, as he maintained, " their reasons will be found to extend far beyond the particular instances under discussion, and, indeed, to cover the whole ground both of doctrine and ritual/ ' and to "go far to solve the entire range of the questions at present in controversy in the Church/'

Sir Wm. Harcourt proceeded to develop this thesis at length