3-085-906 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Trial of M. Zola: Major Esterhazy, 1898. 'The "honour of the army" continued to be the almost unvarying formula put forward by the witnesses for the prosecution of M. Zola...All the same, the evidence has gone to show that some reconsideration of the Dreyfus and the Esterhazy trials is urgently needed. The "secret document," withheld from Dreyfus, is admitted to have influenced his judges, and that secrecy makes their decision informal. Dreyfus, then, has not been legally condemned, and that, after all, was M. Zola's point, although he expressed it a little brusquely. The proceedings in court reached a culminating pitch of interest when M. Zola delivered, or rather read, his address in defence. "I affirm," he cried, "that the army is dishonoured by those who mingle cries of Vive l'Armée! with those of A bas les Juifs and Vive Esterhazy!"' From "Illustrated London News", 1898.