We debated the matter fully several times. Nothing Jaurès or I could say shook Liebknecht's conviction. Nor was it shaken to the day of his death. I have heard since, on good authority, that more than one of those who had risked much for Dreyfus never spoke to him again after the Rennes re-trial. That may easily have arisen from personal causes, for Dreyfus was not an agreeable man. But I have no ground for believing that Clemenceau ever saw reason to waver in his opinion in the slightest degree. I recall this now, when the lapse of years has calmed down all excitement and many of the chief actors are dead, to show how, apart from the mass of sheer prejudice and unscrupulous rascality which had to be faced and overcome, there was also an element of honest intellectual doubt among the anti-Dreyfusards. The presence of this element in the background made Clemenceau's task more difficult than it would otherwise have been. Even at the present time there may be found capable observers who lived through the whole conflict, certainly not sympathetic to militarism, Catholicism or anti-Semitism, who are still ready to argue that Dreyfus may have been ill-used but that he deserved the fate to which he was originally condemned! This, however, may be said with perfect truth, that the victory of his opponents over Clemenceau, Jaurès, Zola and all they represented would have been a disaster to France, whatever view may be taken of Dreyfus himself. In 1906 the first report of the Committee appointed to examine into the whole of the Dreyfus case was presented. It exonerated Dreyfus from all blame, declared him to have been the victim of a conspiracy based upon perjury and forgery. This report secured the complete annulment of the condemnation at Rennes and restored him to his position in the army, after years of martyrdom. CHAPTER XIV AS ADMINISTRATOR