Seminar Paper - J'Accuse!

Alfred Dreyfus was born on 9 October 1859. He was a very intelligent, educated man who was an accomplished officer in the French army. In 1894 he was accused of passing secret military documents to the Germans. The documents had been discovered in a bin in the German embassy and must have been given to the Germans by a French officer. Dreyfus was accused largely because he was Jewish, in a time when anti-Semitism was the norm. Despite the fact that there was no evidence against him, and he claimed innocence, he was found guilty in a secret court marshal by military judges. He was publicly humiliated by having his medals stripped and his sword broken and was then sent to a prison on Devil’s Island where he had no human contact, no proper food and was chained up through the nights.

In 1896 the chief of French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, found evidence to suggest that Dreyfus was innocent, and that Major Esterhazy was in fact the traitor. He told his superiors, who tried to cover up his findings, and sent him to Tunisia in an attempt to silence him. In time Picquart leaked information to the press about his findings and the cover up. Despite being guilty, Esterhazy requested a court marshal to clear his name, because he knew that if they found him guilty they would have to admit that Dreyfus had been innocent all along. The military did not want the truth to be discovered at any cost, and so declared Esterhazy to be innocent at the trial.

A journalist called Emile Zola was present at the trial and was outraged that Esterhazy had been found innocent when it was well known that he was the traitor. Zola risked his career by making a stand against the Dreyfus case which he believed to be a miscarriage of justice. He wrote an open letter to Felix Faure, the French president which was published on the front page of the liberal paper L’Aurore on January 13^th 1898. In the letter, entitled J’Accuse, Zola named all the men who he believed to be behind the accusation, conviction and subsequent cover up of the Dreyfus affair.

Zola starts the letter by flattering the President, for example by saying “you have conquered hearts” and “you appear radiant” but then goes on to describe the Dreyfus affair as “a spot of mud” on the otherwise blemish free name and reign of the President. Zola extends this metaphor of the affair being like dirt by describing as a ‘stain’ on France itself. This is further repeated at the end of the letter when Zola says that if the miscarriage of justice is not corrected then ‘it will remain a stain on your presidency.’ The reference to mud and stains suggests that the Dreyfus is something which appears to be a dirty affair, but it is possible to clean up the situation and clear his name. I think that it is very clever of Zola to have mentioned the fact that the ‘stain’ will forever remain on the presidency because it would make the President think about the future, and that he would not want to be remembered as a President who allowed an injustice. Zola reinforces this by stating that ‘History will write that it was under your presidency that such a social crime could be committed.’  

Zola states that he is writing the letter because it is his ‘duty to speak’ and if he didn’t then his ‘nights would be haunted by the spectre of innocence.’ This suggests that Zola believes that he is doing the honourable thing and is clearing his conscience, and in a way it also acts a warning to the President in the sense that the President’s nights will also be haunted once he knows the truth if he does not try to do something about it.

 Further on in the letter Zola again makes a reference to the fact that he is doing his duty by stating “I defy decent people to read it, without their hearts leaping in indignation and shouting their revolt, while thinking of the unwarranted suffering, over there, on Devil’s Island.’ Zola’s reference to decent people’ suggests that if the President is a decent person then he will do something to change the situation. Through the letter Zola continually refers to ‘Mr President’ to highlight the fact that this matter is something which the President needs to pay attention to and act upon, as well as reminding the President that this matter is being directly addressed to him.

Zola then goes on to state what Dreyfus’ “crimes” actually were, for example, ‘he knows several languages’, ‘he sometimes returns to his country of origin’ and ‘one found at his place no compromising papers.’ Zola follows each of these with the word ‘crime’ separated from the accusations with a comma. These accusations are to point out the fact that Dreyfus did nothing at all to incriminate himself, and he in fact lived a very innocent live. The repetition of the word ‘crime’ highlights the absurdity of the accusations. The use of the comma before each ‘crime’ creates a pause in which the reader has time to think about the innocence of each activity and characteristic.

This is a contrast to further on in the letter when Zola describes what he actually believes to be crimes. For example, he states ‘it is a crime to poison the small and the humble’ and ‘it is a crime to exploit patriotism for works of hatred.’ The repetition of the phrase ‘it is a crime’ reminds the reminder of the “crimes” that Dreyfus supposedly committed in contrast to the actual, horrendous crimes of the military. The words ‘it is’ shows that there is absolutely no doubt and no question that the military did commit crimes.

 Throughout the letter Zola directly names the people who he believes to be guilty of framing and convicting Dreyfus, and then trying to cover it up. Not only does he name the men, he also insults them. For example, he says ‘There is the Minister of War, General Mercier, whose intelligence seems poor… General De Boisdeffre, who appears to have yielded to his clerical position… and General Gonse, whose conscience could put up with many things.’ These insults, in addition to naming the men meant that Zola was clearly defaming everyone he accused. Zola was aware that he could be punished with ‘the offence of slander’, but states ‘it is voluntarily that I expose myself.’ This shows that Zola believed that proving Dreyfus’ innocence was so important that it did not matter if he made himself guilty of slander in the process.

Zola is particularly open in his defamation of Commander Du Paty de Clam. Zola names him at the start of the letter, describing him as ‘a nefarious man’ who ‘did everything.’ Again, Zola leaves no room for doubt in his accusation. He accuses the commander of hypnotising the other men, of threatening Dreyfus’ wife, and of having ‘romantic and lunatic imaginations.’ Zola continues by stating that Dreyfus is ‘a victim of the extraordinary imaginations of commander Du Paty de Clam’. The repeated use of the word ‘imaginations’ suggests that all the accusations against Dreyfus were constructed out of nothing other than the commander’s mind.

Zola accuses General Billot as being guiltier than all the other because ‘he was the Master of justice, and he did nothing.’ He explains how Billot ‘could decide the truth’ because he had ‘arrived completely fresh.’ Zola believed Billot was guiltier than the others because he knew all the facts but had not been involved in the miscarriage of justice, and so he had the chance to expose the truth but chose not ‘in fear of betraying all the High Command’.

Zola refers to the part that hierarchy and duty played in the Dreyfus affair, stating that one of the problems was that ‘inferiors could not say the opposite’ to what the high command were trying to pass as the truth. He also realised that hierarchy meant that when it came to the Esterhazy trail, it would not have been possible for the council of war to go against a decision made by the previous council of the war; Zola said that ‘Hierarchically, this is impossible.’ Zola explains that the council of war bough preconceived ideas to their seats that Dreyfus must be guilty because the high command said he was, and that ‘nothing could make them leave that position.’ This suggests to the reader that the outcome of the trial had already been decided before it has even begun, in the same way that Dreyfus’ first verdict had been decided before the trial began.

Zola concludes the letter by clearly stating who he is accusing, and what he is accusing them of. He names eight men directly, and finally accuses the offices of the war. Although he names all these men throughout the letter, the summary is useful because I found myself quite confused as to who was responsible for what when reading the letter. As well as making things more clear for the reader, the summary is powerful because it groups all the guilty men together.

I was very surprised that Zola did not accuse Esterhazy of being the traitor in the first place. This could have been because Zola felt that no accusation was needed because it was obvious that Esterhazy was guilty, but it is odd that he did not state it in his summary to shame Esterhazy.

Zola highlights the fact that he does not know the men he is accusing, he has never seen them and he has neither hatred nor resentment against them. He says that to him, the men are ‘spirits of social evil.’ I think that it was smart of Zola to state that he did not know any of the men personally, because it irradiates any possible argument that he was merely lashing out against people that he did not like, or had had trouble with previously.

Zola also states that he believes his letter acts as a catalyst ‘hastening the explosion of truth and justice’, meaning that the truth was going to come out eventually one way or another, and he was only speeding up the inevitable. In a way I think that this could have been a message to the men he accused to say that they would never have been able to get away with it, even if Zola had not exposed them, someone else would have.

The statement ‘I am waiting’ is incredibly powerful. It could mean that Zola is waiting for justice for Dreyfus, or waiting for a response from the President, or perhaps waiting for the inevitable backlash from his letter in regards to his life and career. The use of the present continuum ‘waiting’ suggests that Zola was waiting while he was writing it, and was still waiting while other read it, and even reading it today makes it sound as if Zola is still waiting.  This could also give the reader, no matter when they read it, the impression that Zola would wait for the injustice to be corrected no matter how long it takes. It also suggests that Zola wanted to make the point that he still cares about the matter, and that the letter was not the end of things as far as he was concerned.

I found reading the letter really interesting because it is impossible to read it without realising the massive impact it would have had in France and across Europe at the time. Zola was a journalist who dared to speak out when others were silent and I think that is something which should continue to be praised.