Of the Figaro revelations published during the week, it is
enough to say that they have finally plucked the heart out of the secret dossier. This is now shown to have been a mere budget of forgeries, including bogus letters from the German Emperor, the existence of which successive Foreign Ministers have denied, although reference to them had caused serious diplomatic friction with Germany in January,1895, and led to an official contradiction addressed to the German Ambassador. The Figaro shrewdly surmises that it was because Du Paty de Clam had mentioned those letters in his original report on the secret dossier that that document was destroyed. Another important point established is the long-standing scepticism of the Foreign Office, embodied first of all in M. Hanotaux's memorandum in 1894 recording his efforts to stop General :Mercier from prosecuting Dreyfus, and General Mercier's evasive reply- " We have made up our minds "—when asked as to the exist- ence of other documents beside the bordereau.
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