Book Review: Piers Paul Read, The Dreyfus Affair

Alfred Dreyfus was an unattractive figure - Dreyfusard salonnière Geneviève Straus met him after his presidential pardon in 1899, and remarked, `What a pity we can`t choose someone else for our innocent.` Boring, sententious and conservative, Dreyfus`s conviction for treason in 1894 has provoked some of Europe`s best writers to indignation. Historians have toured around this subject, starting with those who saw it as an ideological split betraying the fissures of the Third Republic, pitching secularists against clericalists, or left versus right. This was then replaced, in an age when ideology seemed to be dying, by an increasing emphasis upon individuals in the Affair. More recently, Ruth Harris has re-injected religion into the case, stressing that this was an affair that divided religious people as much as one that simply divided the religious from the secular. Piers Paul Read comes into this debate from the perspective of a devout Catholic and novelist. He admits that many Catholics were anti-Dreyfusards, and some anti-Semitic, but diminishes the Church`s role, for instance denying that Jesuit schooling had as powerful an effect on army officers as anti-clericals at the time argued. For Read, although anti-Semitism was an important cultural force, Dreyfus`s conviction and deportation was primarily the responsibility of the military intelligence`s Statistical Section. Upon discovering Dreyfus`s innocence, a handful of officers covered up the mistakes to avoid any loss of honour for the army, already criticised by Republicans who questioned Catholic officers` loyalties. These officers acted with little malice, rather on notions of duty and preservation. Their actions unleashed a chain of events that tore France asunder, and Read provides a solid account of both sides of the Dreyfusard/anti-Dreyfusard debates. Beyond the Affair, Read draws linkages with the Third Republic`s secularisation policies, and ultimately the events of the Second World War, in which many protagonists of the Affair or their families became implicated, with deadly consequences.

Little is new here, although Read uses his skills as a novelist to chronicle developments in a readable manner, containing much contextualisation and weaving a rich tableau evoking the humanity behind the history. The underwhelming courtroom performances of Dreyfus after his return from Devil`s Island - his monotonous, dreary delivery, failing to fulfil the dramatic potential of his role - demonstrate that much can be made from dullness. This book does not avoid tedium completely, but narrative flourishes and cogent synthesis render it a recommendable work for the wider public.