With Zola in England | Page 2

has been purely and simply that of friends.
It is because, I believe, I know and understand Emile Zola so well, that I never once lost confidence in him throughout the events which led to his exile in England. That exile, curiously enough, I foreshadowed in a letter addressed to the 'Star' some months before it actually began. When, however, one has been intimate with the French for thirty years or so it is not, to my thinking, so very difficult to tell what is likely to happen in a given French crisis. The unexpected has to be reckoned with, of course; and much depends on ability to estimate the form which the unexpected may take. Here experience, familiarity with details of contemporary French history, and personal knowledge of the men concerned in the issue, become indispensable.
On January 16, 1898, three days after M. Zola's famous 'J'accuse' letter appeared in 'L'Aurore,' and two days before the French Government instructed the Public Prosecutor to proceed against its author, I wrote to the 'Westminster Gazette' a long letter dealing with M. Zola's position. In this letter, which appeared in the issue of the 19th, I began by establishing a comparison between Zola and Voltaire, whose action with regard to the memory of Jean Calas I briefly epitomised. Curiously enough at that moment M. Zola, as I afterwards learnt, was telling the Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Chronicle' that the opposition offered to his advocacy of the cause of Alfred Dreyfus was identical with that encountered by Voltaire in his championship of Calas. This was a curious little coincidence, for I wrote my letter without having any communication with M. Zola respecting it. It contained some passes which I here venture to quote. In a book dealing with the great novelist these passages may not be out of place, as they serve to illustrate his general attitude towards the Dreyfus case.
'Truth,' I wrote, 'has been the one passion of Emile Zola's life.* "May all be revealed so that all may be cured" has been his sole motto in dealing with social problems. "Light, more light!"--the last words gasped by Goethe on his death-bed--has ever been his cry. Holding the views he holds, he could not do otherwise than come forward at this crisis in French history as the champion of truth and justice. Silence on his part would have been a denial of all his principles, all his past life. . . . Against him are marshalled all the Powers of Darkness, all the energy of those who prefer concealment to light, all the enmity of the military hierarchy which has never forgotten "La Debacle," all the hatred of the Roman hierarchy which will never forgive "Lourdes" and "Rome." And the fetish of Patriotism is brandished hither and thither, rallying even free-thinkers to the cause of concealment, while each and every appeal for light and truth is met by the clamorous cry: "Down with the dirty Jews!"
* He himself wrote these very words seventeen months later in his article 'Justice,' published in Paris on his return from exile.
'For even as Jean Calas was guilty of being a Protestant so is Alfred Dreyfus guilty of being a Jew, and at the present hour unhappily there are millions of French people who can no more believe in a Jew's innocence than their forerunners could believe a Protestant to be guiltless. Zola, for his part, is no Jew, nor can he even be called a friend of the Jews--in several of his books he has attacked them somewhat violently for certain tendencies shown by some of their number--but most assuredly does he regard them as fellow-men and not as loathsome animals. In the same way Voltaire wrote pungent pages against the narrow practices of Calvinism and yet espoused the causes of Calas and Sirven, even as Zola has espoused that of Dreyfus. The only remaining question is whether Zola will prove as successful as his famous forerunner. [Nearly the whole of the European press was at that stage expressing doubt on this point.] In this connection I may say that I regard Zola as a man of very calm, methodical, judicial mind. He is no ranter, no lover of words for words' sake, no fiery enthusiast. Each of his books is a most laborious, painstaking piece of work. If he ever brings forward a theory he bases it on a mountain of evidence, and he invariably subordinates his feeling to his reason. I therefore venture to say that if he has come forward so prominently in this Dreyfus case it is not because he feels that wrong has been done, but because he is absolutely convinced of it. Doubtless many of the expressions in his recent letter to President Faure have come from his heart, but they