Georges CLEMENCEAU proclaims the innocence of Captain DREYFUS.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

Autograph manuscript – Against Justice.

Eleven pages in quarto. Some typographer's annotations in blue pencil. No place or date [Paris. 1899]

" Like a great flash of lightning in the night, the story of the Dreyfus affair will soon illuminate the horizon. " 

Important first draft manuscript by Clemenceau, a great architect of the fight for truth in the face of the injustice of Alfred Dreyfus's conviction.

This text – which has many variants – constitutes the preface to the book Against Justice published by Stock in 1900, and which brings together the articles written and published by Clemenceau in L'Aurore between December 12, 1898 and March 31, 1899.

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“ Preface – This is the third series of my daily articles in the long campaign to save innocence. The title says it all. The reader will witness the full development of the passions hostile to human conscience. He will see people and government at the height of their struggle against justice and law. I dare say that the scandal has not been surpassed and will not be.”

Judges were found to acquit a traitor. Judges were found to condemn an ​​innocent man. were found , driven by sectarian and class interests, to glorify falsehood, lies, and treachery. Herds of brutes were found to applaud , to say, and to believe that falsehood, lies, and treachery were the very essence of the nation.

Class animosities and religious hatreds have already given us some of the worst spectacles in history. Beliefs of charity and preachings of compassion, instilled in the human soul, have overflowed their "cave of choice" into torture, torment, and barbaric massacres. To "justify" murder, to excuse the bloodshed, one must lie to others, and first and foremost, to oneself. The heart of the Dreyfus Affair is the oldest of stories.

What makes it so original is that we thought this story was over, that where Christ had failed to pacify the murderous soul and the human animal, philosophers had stepped in, mocking the impotence of dogma and replacing it, as the foundation of precepts of love, with industrious metaphysical sentiments from which emerged the proof that we were good by nature and that evil was merely a reparable accident in humanity. Thus, we had definitively emerged from primitive savagery. Therefore, the crimes of humanity were not committed by the people, gentle, compassionate, and loving, but by their masters, kings or priests, who, through a sophisticated system of oppression, prevented them from developing their goodness.

There was indeed a difficulty. If the people possessed so many virtues, why did they tolerate so many crimes at the hands of their masters? This was overlooked, refusing to admit that the actions of the oppressor were simply the expression of the oppressed's soul! And the humanitarian historians hastened to demonstrate that the tyrant alone was guilty and that the people were pure as doves. The people were God, it was said. Their word was declared identical to that of the Creator. A remarkable discovery that would revolutionize the world. It was enough to establish the people in their freedom, and justice and law would reign on earth.

One nation, in particular, was ready for this experiment. It was us, without any vanity. Gesta dei, gesta populi per Francos . [The action of God, the action of the people, is carried out through the Franks.] With trumpets blaring—and even cannons—we hastened to proclaim throughout the world the peace of happy justice. Much blood was shed, and it took us nearly a century to establish at home the regime we had failed to establish elsewhere. But that didn't matter. We had achieved our goal. We possessed the marvelous mechanism that allows people, freed from the evil of tyranny, to spread the good within themselves. The people of kindness, the people of light, no longer had a master. Nothing prevented them from dispensing justice, from organizing the law.

To this end, delegates, to whom he granted a temporary mandate, met in Paris to enshrine his wishes in law. What wiser organization of reasoned action could there be? What better method of justice through liberty? Historians would no longer say this time: "The harm was done in spite of the people." If any harm remained, it would be all too obvious that the people were to blame. But since only good was to flourish, it is to the people that our chroniclers would be compelled to attribute the glory.

I say nothing of what the people did with their power when the republicans of 1848 decreed them free and sovereign. I prefer not to draw any conclusions from this half-century of our history up to the present day. However, I cannot ignore the present, and the present shows, in the furious madness of a segment of the population, in the profound indifference of the sovereign masses, and despite the protests of a few, the people's representatives and the government of their choosing committing, under the banner of the French Republic, the crime—forbidden by all the monarchical constitutions of Europe—of changing the judges of an accused person in order to secure a conviction . I say that this is the ultimate act of villainy.

Judges acquitted a traitor; judges condemned an innocent man, fully aware of the facts. Civil or military judges, this is not a new spectacle in human history. Changing the judges of an accused person to ensure their conviction, "innocent or guilty," as a qualified representative of the people of Paris so aptly put it [Clemenceau is alluding here to the nationalist deputy from Paris, Georges Berry], had already been seen; but by a monarch chosen by God, a Caesar master of the world, not by the legitimate of the popular will. Now it has been seen, it has been done with the complicity of passions and the indifference of the sovereign people, ready to re-elect tomorrow the representatives who have dishonored them with this infamy .

The government that demanded this act, the legislators, fully aware of the crime, who carried it out, will leave an indelible stain on the brow of their Republic. They have branded themselves: but that is nothing. Before the entire world, with the consent of the Demos , they have proclaimed the bankruptcy of their "democracy." Through them, the sovereign people, torn from their throne of justice, are displayed as utterly deposed from their infallible majesty!

There is no longer any way to deny it; evil is among us with the complicity of the people themselves. The Dreyfus Affair clearly demonstrates this. What is the Dreyfus Affair? A cry of pain amidst the universal slaughter. A drop of blood in the ocean of iniquity. The evil perpetrated by rulers is only as great as the masses of the ruled allow it. The people are not God. The people are not even Homo sapiens, the term by which superior humanity defines itself. The people do not know. This is the greatest evil on earth. What can they do with their useless, and therefore dangerous, power? What most monarchs have done with it: the worst possible use.

The collective tyrant spread throughout the land is no more acceptable than the tyrant enthroned on a throne. Flatterers, corruptors, and exploiters are no more lacking in either. "Your enemy is your master," a wise man once said . In the past, deliverance came in the form of a dagger thrust, from which nothing but a change of servitude ever emerged. Now, we have risen to a better understanding. One does not kill the master when one carries within oneself the source of tyranny. Besides, who could kill the sovereign people? Galliffet [General Gaston Galliffet] , with his thirty thousand corpses, did not succeed. Let us not kill our unfortunate, thousand-headed master. Let us enlighten him, inform him—that is the safest course. Let us send him to school and inspire him to teach himself a lesson. Because for him, the great school is the spectacle of man every hour, every day. That he observes himself living, feeling, thinking, acting, and that he judges himself.

He needs the perspective of time. He will soon have it in the Dreyfus Affair, even before justice is served. Never will a better opportunity to know and understand be given to him. He only needs to make the effort to distinguish the liars from those who speak the truth. Let him read, let him question, let him compare, let him verify. I seek nothing in this book but to offer him a temptation to know . Truth seems slow to us, having for us only a brief moment. In the sense of its continuity, the people unhurriedly accomplish the fatal evolution of enlightenment. Know that yesterday they understood a little better than the day before; know that tomorrow they will understand better than today. Help them, for they are suffering, and any help will be welcome.

Like a great flash of lightning in the night, the story of the Dreyfus Affair will soon illuminate the horizon. We will see, we will understand, we will know that a homeland without justice is a slaughterhouse. We will say to ourselves: let us build a better homeland, a homeland of humanity. To redeem the past, let us remove some of the present evil, let us prepare some good for the future. We will say it, we will do it, and on that day, dead or alive, the Dreyfusards will receive their reward .

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