Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/28

 The Revision of the Dreyfus Case. they had in 1870 — a superior military weapon with which to fight, — yet, after all, fighting is done by men, as was seen in our late war with Spain; and the French gov ernment was not ready to provoke a fight with Germany; for the cicatrice was yet raw and red made by the German sword at Woerth, at Gravelotte and at Sedan. How to do it was a question for the French gov ernment; how to do it and save his own bacon was a possible question for Esterhazy. On the high staff and attached to the in telligence bureau there was a captain of the French artillery by the name of Dreyfus (three-foot). Dreyfus had the fortune or misfortune — for it seems to be a misfortune in France, though not in England or Amer ica — to belong to that ancient and vener able race from which we Christians have derived our religion and much of our law and civil polity. But while the fact of hav ing descended from the race of Abraham, of Moses and of Jesus, ought to be a badge of pride, yet in France, where among a portion at least of the people the bigotry and intol erance of the Middle Ages still prevail, it is a symbol of degradation and disgrace. It seems strange that a people with such quick intelligence as that of the French should find themselves unable to take a just view of the character and position of the Jew. As against Christendom he is guilty of two offenses : he refuses to abandon his ancient faith and adopt the new religion promul gated by a reformer of his race; also he is a trader and a financier, quick in invention, fertile in resources, artful in diplomacy and in management; and he accumulates faster than his Christian neighbor. His race has a history which reaches back as far as his tory reaches back. The civilization of that race was ancient and venerable at a time when our Celtic, Germanic and Scandina vian ancestors were living in mud huts and eating raw pork in the swamps and forests of Batavia, of Germany, and of Denmark.

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Every office, civil, military or ecclesiastical, springing from the needs or uses of civiliza tion has been filled by members of that race, with spotless integrity and with consummate skill. General Grant, when conducting his campaign in northern Mis sissippi, in the fall and winter of 1862, issued an order expelling " the Jews as a class " from his lines, because some trading Jews had insinuated themselves beyond his outposts for the purpose of buying cotton, thus necessarily conveying intelligence of his movements to the enemy. When he ran for the presidency the first time, the Jews remembered it and turned upon him, and he apologized for it. General McClellan, applied to on the question of the cour age of the Jewish soldiers in his army, wrote that he had no reason to suppose that they were any less courageous than their decid edly belligerent ancestors. When the Rus sian army camped at San Stefano, six miles from the walls of Constantinople, the British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, descended from an Italian Jew, arrested their onward march by ordering the British fleet to pass the Dardanelles and aline itself opposite the Russian camp, and by ordering a detachment of Sepoy troops to proceed from India to Malta. At the last Jewish New Year there was encamped a large body of troops at Montauk Point, near New York. Many of them were of the Jewish race and faith. These latter were allowed furloughs, that they might visit the city and celebrate the anniver sary. Many of them had climbed the hills in front of the Spanish fire at Santiago. One of them had been promoted by Colonel Roose velt for gallantry on the field of battle. In their service-soiled uniforms, and under the flag which their valor had borne to victory, they formed a battalion in the great proces sion, and, as they marched through the streets, the clouds shook with the plaudits of the people. The legal profession, held in honorable estimation among men, has been rendered more illustrious by members