This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...the antimilitary proletariat, Protestantism, and the Jews. The prize of the struggle was not Alfred Dreyfus, Captain of Artillery, but France. To the English eye it all looked like what it was--a public meeting rather than a court of law. An English court is almost ostentatiously grim and business-like. The ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...the antimilitary proletariat, Protestantism, and the Jews. The prize of the struggle was not Alfred Dreyfus, Captain of Artillery, but France. To the English eye it all looked like what it was--a public meeting rather than a court of law. An English court is almost ostentatiously grim and business-like. The room is small and none too light; the walls bare, unless a plan should be hung on them to illustrate an argument. The judge sits on the bench--a nose, mouth, and chin appearing out of his white wig--like a silent sphinx. Lawyers drone and mumble. Witnesses stumble over monosyllables. The impression is one of hush and dimness--man suppressed, but the awful majesty of the law brooding over all. But this court-martial in the Hall of the Lyce'e was utterly different. The room was large enough for a lecture or orchestral concert, which is exactly what it is used for. With two rows of large windows at each side--square in the lower tier, circular in the upper--it was almost as light as the day outside. The walls were coloured a cheerful buff; round the cornice were emblazoned the names of Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Eenan, and the intellectuals of Brittany. At the top of the room was a stage; hanging on its back wall the white Christ on a black cross proclaimed the place a court of justice--only instead of the solemn sphinx in black, there sat at a table seven officers in full uniform. In the centre was the president, Colonel Jouaust, a little old gentleman with dark hair, eye-glasses, and a huge white moustache that seemed part of the same stuff as the tall white aigrette in his kepi on the table before him. On each side sat three officers--four small and two heavy men, in the black, red-faced uniform of the artillery; their kepis also--tricolor for...
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