Trooper 3809
A Private Soldier of the
Third Republic

By
Lionel Decle

Author of
"Three Years in Savage Africa"


With Eight Illustrations by H. Chartier

London
William Heinemann
1899

This Edition enjoys Copyright in all Countries Signatory to the Berne Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of America.

NOTE

It is right to state that the following pages have not had the advantage of final revision by the Author, as Mr. Decle was called upon to take charge of an important mission to Africa on behalf of the "Daily Telegraph," and was therefore unable to complete the preparation of his MS. for the press.

PREFACE

The bitter and protracted discussions which have arisen out of the Dreyfus case, and which have divided France into two hostile camps, have concentrated the attention of the civilised world on the French army, but nobody has done more to disgrace it, and to lower it in the eyes of friends and foes alike, than Frenchmen themselves.

Those who, persuaded of Dreyfus' innocence, made superhuman efforts to further the noble cause of justice and to obtain the redress of one of the greatest wrongs ever committed against a human being, spoiled their noble task by indiscriminate and wholesale abuse of the army in general, holding the thousands of French officers responsible for the conduct of a few of their number. Those, on the other hand, who believed in the guilt of Dreyfus, based their conviction upon their blind belief in the infallibility of half a dozen officers who had passed judgment upon the condemned man. Trusting to unworthy subordinates, the highest officers of the General Staff made of Dreyfus' guilt a matter on which they staked their own honour and reputation, and when they discovered that they had been deceived, they found themselves in the position of having either to acknowledge that they had been befooled, or else of having to stand by those who had led them into their awkward predicament. They chose the latter alternative, and their friends and supporters played into the hands of those who so fiercely attacked the army, by refusing to admit that there could be a single black sheep in it, and by thus linking together the whole body of French officers and making their collective honour dependent on the honour of every individual member.

A time came, however, when even the most determined partisans of this system had to turn against those they had extolled but the day before. First came Esterhazy, the liar, the swindler, and the traitor; then Henry the forger, and de Paty du Clam, his accomplice.

It is a remarkable fact that amidst all these scenes of violent abuse there should be but one man who maintained implicit trust in the good faith of his worst enemies—Dreyfus himself—the victim of this most abominable conspiracy.

His case is, unfortunately, but a greatly magnified example of what daily happens throughout the French army, and the recollections I am now offering to the reader, of the time I served in its ranks, will show that Dreyfus has been a victim not so much of the malice of individuals as of a faulty system. It will be seen how, in a regiment, the Colonel forms his opinion of a private from the character given to him by his Corporal or Sergeant, and how the mere fact of appealing against a punishment is considered as an act of insubordination. It is always the same principle—le respect de la chose jugée (the upholding of a judgment, without considering upon what grounds or evidence it has been delivered).

I wish it to be clearly understood that this little book has not been written for the purpose of attacking the French army as represented by its officers. It is intended merely as a faithful account of the hardships I endured when I served my time in the ranks—hardships which every Frenchman has still to bear. I cannot follow M. Urbain Gohier in his virulent and indiscriminate attacks upon all French officers—among whom individuals differ as in other classes of men; but each one of my readers will be able to draw his own conclusions with regard to the system which, in practice, is universally in force.

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