The Dreyfus affair has this week produced a new League
called the League of the French Fatherland. It appears that some chiefs among the Anti-Dreyfueards, with M. Brnnetiere, of the Revue des Deux Mendes, as their adviser, are unwilling that all the " intellectuels" of France should be ranged in the camp of Revision, and have induced a great number of eminent persons to sign a programme in which they say —in a prodigiously long sentence—that they are anxious to defend "the vital interests of the French Fatherland, especially those whose glorious custody is in the hands of the French Army." They therefore " group themselves, apart from all spirit of sect, in order to act effectively in this sense by speech, writing, and example." That is unobjectionable but a little vague, resembling, indeed, nothing so much as the faith of those gentlemen who are "Christians without dogmas, definitions, or boundaries"; but substantially the signatories intend to defend the Army against its assailants. That is, they think justice less im- portant than military prestige. Grave divisions have already appeared in their ranks, and they will probably accomplish nothing. They will not descend into the streets; and in a campaign of the pen it is individuals, not societies, who win great victories. No man writes the better for being a member of a corporation.
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