Good morning. Today, January 13th is the anniversary of the publication of a famous letter by the French writer Emile Zola to the President of France. This letter, written in 1898, demanded justice for Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer languishing on Devil’s Island for passing military secrets to the Germans. Zola told the President that the case against Dreyfus was a tissue of lies concocted by the French military and based on false testimony. It ended with a string of denunciations: J’accuse. I first heard about the Dreyfus affair when I was doing history ‘O’ level but it wasn’t until last summer that I really understood what it was about – and that was when I read Robert Harris’s treatment of it in his novel, an Officer and a Spy.
Harris tells the story from the point of view of the Head of French Counter Espionage, George Picquart. He was no supporter of the Jews but he came to see that the evidence against Dreyfus was weak and he conducted an investigation of his own. It was Picquart who identified the real traitor, Ferdinand Esterhazy. But nobody wanted to know. In an atmosphere of casual anti-semitism the shame of truth was simply unendurable. National pride and honour was at stake. Military officials tried to engineer the killing of Picquart, eventually he was sacked and disgraced. The evidence that would have exonerated Dreyfus was suppressed. The military had public opinion on their side. The government, the Catholic Church and the press were united in their determination to find Dreyfus guilty. Zola’s letter, though, could not be ignored. He was eminent, he was influential, he exemplified the values of the Republic. You cannot bury truth, he said. The case split France into two opposing camps. Finally Dreyfus was summoned back re-tried and released. Loyal, as ever, to France he lived to fight in the First World War.
Robert Harris’s treatment of the Dreyfus scandal helped me to see how easy it is for institutions and governments to protect themselves from inconvenient truths. We like to feel that we are on the side of virtue and most of the time we expect the truth to conform our assumptions. But truth is not prejudiced. It confronts us in the sheer otherness of the other who lives differently, believes differently and has a different vision of reality from our own. We can opt for a superficial acceptance which is only half meant, an acceptance which all too often breaks down under pressure; or we can return to our own spiritual sources and strive to be more honest, to deepen our moral vision. My own faith urges me to see in the face of the stranger, the face of God that is most unfamiliar and that I most fear; but it is also the face that I most need.