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The curtain is finally rung down on the most poignant melodrama of our times, and Major Dreyfus and General Picquart have reaped the reward of suffering and constancy. "La vérité est en marche, rien ne l'arrêtera," proclaimed and predicted Zola. His words have come inevitably true, and in their triumph the dead have a share even greater than the living. A regenerated France accepts with placidity and re-. lief a verdict that seven years ago · might have plunged her into civil war; and a case which touched some of the deepest problems of human government, divided a great nation for many years into fierce and irreconcilable sections, and enthralled the minds and rasped the conscience of the entire world, comes tranquilly to an end. is doubtful whether we in England ever really understood the Dreyfus affair. Some features of it we grasped perhaps more clearly and quickly than did the French themselves, and their inability to share our standpoint seemed to us something more malign than the mere madness of perversity. There is no need to linger on all that was said against France and the French character, and the French army and judiciary by English commentators whose ardent insularity was at once embittered and redeemed by an outraged sense of justice. It was for most Englishmen enough that a man had been condemned on evidence and by methods that looked like a revival of Star Chamber procedure. The personal tragedy absorbed them; in the political intrigues that revolved around it they were less concerned; and to the momentous conflict of ideas of which it became the symbol they remained throughout quite singularly indifferent and impervious. Dreyfus and the horror of his fate they

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could and did sympathize with in a deep fanaticism of partisanship; but the Dreyfus affair and the complex problems of political psychology it raised remained, and probably still remain, to most Englishmen a chaotic and unintelligible puzzle. It was characteristic of them and of their strong passion for individual justice that the man from first to last was the pre-eminent issue. was not less characteristic of the French that Dreyfus himself should soon be swallowed up in the controversy that raged around him, or should hold his own in it merely as a battleground for prejudices, principles, ideas, and inveterate instincts to contend on. The attitude of each people was a faithful reflection of its national temperament, and neither could wholly appreciate the other's point of view. There was nothing more difficult for Englishmen to understand in the Dreyfus affair than why the French did not understand it. There was nothing more bewildering to the French than the failure of other nations to put themselves in their place.

"I would rather," said Goethe, "endure an injustice than see a disorderly act committed." It was between those who accepted and those who opposed this principle that the struggle to which Dreyfus gave his name was at first most bitterly sustained. Order seemed ranged on one side, justice on the other, and France had suddenly to make her choice. Order included, or appeared to include, everything that a Frenchman held dear-the honor of the army, which to a degree we cannot realize is the honor of the nation and of every man and woman in the nation, internal peace, the pressing necessities of national defence, the very existence of the Republic. It was inevitable that

tens of thousands should invoke the safety of the State as the supreme law, and declare that the interests of one man could not require the sacrifice of the interests of all. The resultant conflict was the most harrowing of all struggles in which a democracy can engage, it was a conflict not merely of opinions, interests, or even instincts, but of fundamental duties. Patriotism, the highest expediency, the love of flag and fatherland, and a jealous care for the prestige and efficiency of that great institution which is a monument of national renunciation combined with a hundred less worldly motives to stifle the voice of justice. Nor were these the only factors in the combat. Developing from them came another and wider conflict between forces that have vibrated throughout French history, and have rendered it the most interesting and suggestive of all national annals. With a reverence for authority derived from her Latin past, and still pervading her Catholicism and her military and civil organization, France has unceasingly combined a spirit of free inquiry, of independent and rationalistic interpretation, of progress by revolution. The Dreyfus affair flung these tendencies into deadly antagonism. Even those who were brought to admit that justice must be preferred to order maintained that the admission had no reference to the prisoner on Devil's Island, that he was not innocent, that seven officers had condemned him, that five ministers of war had successively pronounced him guilty, and that their words and verdicts were to be implicitly trusted. Thus the struggle broadened out into a convulsive conflict between authority and the spirit of free inquiry. It was the old religious issue fought out anew on a secular battlefield. In England we have never been tried by such an issue under circumstances that in any way parallel those of France, and there was

something not wholly generous in our reproaches when France for a moment quailed before it. Everything that could distract and terrify the mind and nerves of the Republic and becloud its judgment a venomous outburst of anti-semitism, militarism scarcely less subversive than in Boulanger's day, clericalism and royalism fomenting every discord, and chauvinism preying upon the popular suspicions and unrest -contributed to the dethronement of reason and the installation of blind and furious passion.

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Yet through that terrible ordeal France has forced a wayward but triumphant path. She is stronger and not weaker for the Dreyfus affair. has passed through a crisis that tortured men's hearts and consciences not indeed unscathed but with firmer fibre, a greater knowledege of herself, some reasons for shame and many more for pride. In nearly everything that makes for national well-being the France of 1906 is incomparably better off than the France of 1894. At the time of the first court-martial the country was betraying the exhaustion of its gallant reconstruction. A profound lassitude and pessimism had penetrated the national mind. The Panama scandals had strained all but the most robust faith in the Republican theory. The soul of France, one might have said, was dormant, if not dying. The national decadence was accepted as a clear if curious fact, just worth the trouble of analyzing and tracing back to this cause and to that. The smiling genius of the land had passed, it seemed, into a total eclipse of hopelessness. Sincerity, earnestness, originality had all perished. It was a time when France from sheer ennui might have welcomed a pretender. There came, instead, the Dreyfus affair, probing and stirring the most heedless conscience, hurling men against naked realities, shattering parties, raising everywhere the extremes of

fratricidal strife, but energizing the national character with a new will and steadfastness, and evoking the display of the most heroic as well as the basest qualities. The Dreyfus affair brought to a sudden head almost all the ills from which the country suffered.

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Thanks to its rough and radical surgery she was able after a supreme struggle to throw them off. The ordeal wrought many changes in internal politics and external relations, but the greatest change of all was in the moral tone and conscience of France.

The Russian Girondins have fallen. The moderate majority in the Duma, who have hitherto displayed great selfcontrol, and who, it is well understood, would have furnished a competent Ministry if the Court would have promised them its sincere support, have at length irritated the reactionaries into action which, though legal in form, in practice involves a coup d'état. The Czar in his Ukase dissolving the Duma states that the Deputies have "strayed into spheres beyond their competence," and blames them for making inquiries into the acts of local authorities-who, it would seem, are not even to be censured by the representatives of the people-and for "making comments" upon the imperfections of fundamental laws. Nicholas II., it is clear, does not even comprehend what representatives are for. There is, however, another story in circulation which is at least more probable than the one shadowed forth in the Ukase. The Duma might have gone on talking with impunity but that the great officers at headquarters discovered that the soldiers were beginning to attend to its talk, and that in consequence there was an increasing readiness to mutiny against grievances, and to refuse in many cases to fire upon unarmed "rebels." Even the Cossacks were beginning to think that obedience could be stretched too far, so much so that a special garrison was despatched to the Cossack centre, Taganrog. The same officers perceived

that the peasants were hoping everything from the Duma, and feared that if time were allowed, the recruits, who come in large proportion from among the peasantry, would all show themselves disaffected. They therefore represented to the Czar that if the autocracy were to be preserved the Duma must be dissolved at once. It is probable, also, though not yet certain, that these representations were strengthened by the arrival in St. Petersburg of the Grand Duke Vladimir, who had just escaped assassination on his railway journey from Paris, and who is believed to be the most reactionary as well as the most determined of his nephew's immediate circle. The stroke was therefore struck; the Tauris Palace, where the Duma sat, was occupied by troops; and the Deputies retired, a few of them to the districts which elected them, but a large proportion to Viborg, in Finland, whence they issued a Proclamation which is undoubtedly an open incitement to revolution. They call upon all Russia not only to support the Duma, without which, they say, no legislation can be legal, but to refuse payment of taxes and the regular demands for recruits. The former device is rather futile, for the Russian Government can issue paper to an unlimited extent; and the latter cannot be carried out unless over the vast extent of Russia unarmed men are prepared to risk encounters with the soldiery.

Both, however, signify a

call to the people, if they desire freedom, to defy the Czar. The Revolution is, in fact, officially' proclaimed.

Whether it can "march" wholly depends-we must say it again, though it is for the hundredth time-upon the temper of the troops, and upon this subject evidence is extraordinarily conflicting. The War Office evidently believes that if some of the barrack grievances of the men are removed, more especially their insufficient supply of food, the soldiers will, in the last resort, declare for the autocracy. They have good arguments on their side. Among all soldiers the necessity of discipline is admitted, and the severities of discipline are condoned as regrettable but unavoidable incidents of the military career. And the soldiers are few who can bear to be attacked by mobs, even of their own countrymen, without resorting to the arms which, as they know, will at once ensure their own safety and manifest their own superiority. On the other hand, in Russia the soldiers, with the exception of the Cossacks, are, even in cities, unusually sensitive to the popular hatred, and in the country districts share the strongest feeling of those who are expected to rise in insurrection. They, too, think that the land belongs to them, and that to shoot down their brothers for claiming the land is definitely an oppression. There is, therefore, serious fear of an agrarian movement, which may include a great military mutiny, and result either in an effort to change the dynasty, and with it the Court policy, or to re-establish the Duma, which thus re-established by the sword must become a Convention; or if the barracks, in Marshal MacMahon's phrase, "fire upon the barracks," in a civil war, the end of which will depend, like the end of all wars, upon the comparative strength of the contending forces and the genius of their leaders, who as yet are hidden from the sight

of men. The Russian Army has no Suvoroff, indeed no successful general of any kind, who might bind the soldiers by personal loyalty to himself, and no Cromwell or soldier who could lead a rebel force to victory. That sterility of dominant capacity which is the marked feature of the Russian bureaucracy extends also to its opponents. In any one of the three contingencies the loss to Russia must be frightful, for in so vast a country a hostile people cannot be rapidly put down, and unless the revolution can be rapidly put down society must for a time go utterly to pieces. The landlord cannot be made safe, the Empire as an Empire cannot be made mobile, and the Treasury cannot be refilled. The external world will not go on lending millions except on ruinous terms, internal commerce must be suspended, and the mere destruction of property which results from universal disorder must destroy, or at least suspend, all the sources of prosperity. The appearance of a man of genius on either side may, of course, falsify all predictions; but at present the appearances point to anarchy in the near future; and the European world, not only in Russia, but everywhere, is suffering from a general, though, it is to be hoped, temporary, flood of mediocrity. The rocks are covered by the advancing flood and the mud throws up nothing that is well above the surface.

There remains a contingency which must be considered, if possible, by the light of reason rather than of either panic or prejudice. It is quite clear, as many well-informed persons believe, that if the Revolution shows symptoms of winning, the Romanoffs, like the Bourbons, will summon the foreigner to their aid, and that William II., like his ancestor, may think it his duty to intervene. We cast aside all rumors as to arrangements already made, and rely for an ad interim judgment only upon patent political facts. So far as

we can see, if Russian Poland rises the German Emperor not only may, but must intervene. He cannot allow a movement to succeed which might cost him great provinces, even if it did not provoke into action all the revolutionary elements in his own States. The three Powers which partitioned Poland must continue to hold down Poland, or confess themselves defeated by a race which for a hundred years has been taught to see in revolution its only hope of independence. As far as the Vistula, therefore, in the supposed contingency-that is, in the case of the Revolution winning in the struggle-we expect German intervention. The really doubtful point is whether the German Emperor will cross the Vistula. The decision will depend upon himself, for his Army will undoubtedly obey his orders, and, indeed, will be in motion before it has time to deliberate whether those orders are acceptable or not; but his policy is extremely difficult to predict. On the one hand, it must be remembered that the military occupation of Poland is by itself a most serious effort, and one which, owing to tradition as well as other easily visible causes, may produce terrible agitation in France. It may be taken as certain, too, that the opinion of the masses in Germany is not favorable to the Romanoffs, and will be greatly outraged by an expenditure of German life and treasure in order to restore their autocracy. William II. understands his The Spectator.

epoch, and will not, we are satisfied, feel willing to bring upon himself the hostility of the Liberals throughout Europe. Powerful as he is, and strong as is the discipline of his Army, he has to deal with a vast mass of Socialist opinion, which will undoubtedly be excited past all ordinary means of repression by sympathy with a great, and, on the hypothesis, successful, peasant uprising. The Emperor is not an incautious man, and may well be inclined to limit his action to Poland, or perhaps to Poland and the southern Baltic Provinces. On the other hand, the Emperor William is a near kinsman of the Romanoffs; he sincerely believes in "the Monarchic principle"; and the spectacle of an army defeated by peasants, or of a civil war within the ranks, must be to him almost past endurance. It is useless in such circumstances to predict, but intervention must be regarded as one of the dangerous possibilities resulting from the unrest in Russia, the danger being all the greater because it is most improbable that the Hapsburgs will suffer themselves to be dragged at the heels of the Hohenzollerns into an adventure which can hardly by any possibility benefit themselves. Galicia is not a province which will risk untold misery in order to swell a Polish revolt. The easy-going despotism there has ever since 1849 been found by Poles much more endurable than the scientific rigidity of the Prussian system.

That "undervaluer of money," Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton, would speak of angling as a moderator of passions and a calmer of unquiet thoughts. Walton knew him well, and in a charming touch or two of friend

ship tells us how his "forraign imployments in the service of this Nation" and choice gifts of mind and character made his company esteemed as one of the delights of mankind. Wotton for his part painted a picture of Walton in