There you have, then, _Monsieur le Président_, the Esterhazy case,--a guilty man to be declared innocent. We can follow the beautiful business, hour by hour, for the last two months. I abridge, for this is but the _résumé_ of a story whose burning pages will some day be written at length. So we have seen General de Pellieux, and then Major Ravary, carrying on a rascally investigation whence knaves come transfigured and honest people sullied. Then they convened the council of war. How could it have been expected that a council of war would undo what a council of war had done? I say nothing of the choice, always possible, of the judges. Is not the superior idea of discipline, which is in the very blood of these soldiers, enough to destroy their power to do justice? Who says discipline says obedience. When the minister of war, the great chief, has publicly established, amid the applause of the nation’s representatives, the absolute authority of the thing judged, do you expect a council of war to formally contradict him? Hierarchically that is impossible. General Billot conveyed a suggestion to the judges by his declaration, and they passed judgment as they must face the cannon’s mouth, without reasoning. The preconceived opinion that they took with them to their bench is evidently this: “Dreyfus has been condemned for the crime of treason by a council of war; then he is guilty, and we, a council of war, cannot declare him innocent. Now, we know that to recognize Esterhazy’s guilt would be to proclaim the innocence of Dreyfus.” Nothing could turn them from that course of reasoning. They have rendered an iniquitous verdict which will weigh forever upon our councils of war, which will henceforth tinge with suspicion all their decrees. The first council of war may have been lacking in comprehension; the second is necessarily criminal. Its excuse, I repeat, is that the supreme chief had spoken, declaring the thing judged unassailable, sacred and superior to men, so that inferiors could say naught to the contrary. They talk to us of the honor of the army; they want us to love it, to respect it. Ah! certainly, yes, the army which would rise at the first threat, which would defend French soil; that army is the whole people, and we have for it nothing but tenderness and respect. But it is not a question of that army, whose dignity is our special desire, in our need of justice. It is the sword that is in question; the master that they may give us tomorrow. And piously kiss the sword-hilt, the god? No!