gs^ 
 
 BUI 
 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 WHITHER ? 
 
 OR 
 
 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE
 
 WHITHER ? 
 
 OR 
 
 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE 
 
 A Human Fragment of Contemporary History 
 (1906-1919) 
 
 BY 
 
 Major W. A. A DAM, M.A., p.s.c. 
 
 (late M.P. for Woolwich), Barrister-a£Xaw of the Inner Temple 
 
 Author of Rus Divinum, Two Hundred and Fifty Thoughts, Japanese 
 Conversation in Six Months, How the Loafer's Bred, etc. 
 
 London 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD., 
 Broadway House : 68-74, Carter Lane, E.C. 
 
 1920 
 
 * 3 • » 1 >
 
 • * 
 , 1 • 
 
 « . ■ 
 
 . . . ' 
 
 • • • 
 
 • • • 
 
 • » • *
 
 6,9.3 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 with heart-felt sympathy to all who 
 in the great World M r ar have lost 
 those who are dear to them, victims 
 of a system of bureaucracy nationally 
 unsound and internationally unsafe. 
 
 « J& A 6\A O
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapt. i - 
 Chapt. ii - 
 Chapt. hi - 
 Chapt. iv - 
 Chapt. v - 
 Chapt. vi - 
 Chapt. vii - 
 Chapt. viii 
 Chapt. ix - 
 Chapt. x - 
 Appendix i 
 Appendix ii 
 Appendix hi 
 
 The National Danger 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 Looking Backward - 
 
 14 
 
 The Storm Brewing; 
 
 27 
 
 The Storm Bursts - 
 
 37 
 
 Pro Fratribus, Pro Patria - 
 
 66 
 
 The Re- opened Wound 
 
 92 
 
 Adam v. Ward 
 
 115 
 
 The World- War 
 
 139 
 
 Resurgam - 
 
 171 
 
 Looking Forward ... 
 
 177 
 
 Abolition of Trial by Jury 
 
 179 
 
 The Political Result of the Case - 
 
 187 
 
 Who's Who - - - 
 
 190
 
 WHITHER? 
 
 OR 
 
 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER 
 
 " It seems the rule must hold, do what we can, — 
 Han makes the system, system mars the man." 
 
 War has been defined as the extension of diplo- 
 macy. Taking an even more comprehensive view, 
 we might say that war is merely a phase in the 
 progress of civilization, a short cut to those higher 
 conditions of life which without it we should only 
 be able to obtain by a more circuitous route. 
 
 To say that the great World War will bring 
 vast changes in its train is a platitude which any 
 one, unconsciously harking back to the imitative 
 characteristics of his reputed ancestors, may repeat 
 without much fear of contradiction. It is not given 
 to evervone, however to realize that the roots of 
 many of these prognosticated changes had taken 
 firm hold in the soil of society long before the War 
 was begun. 
 
 We must turn to the best account the tendencies 
 which we note in the body politic, and it is in order 
 to help the citizens of the British Empire to read
 
 2 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 aright the lessons of the War, and to realize the 
 necessity of making certain changes in their legal 
 and political system of administration, that this 
 book has been written. 
 
 Ever since the outburst of the French Revolution 
 in 1789, the tide of Democracy has been slowly but 
 steadily rising. Sometimes it has overflowed the 
 barriers of human toleration, and thus brought upon 
 itself the inevitable remedy of tyrannical repression. 
 Always, phcenix-like, Democracy has risen again 
 from the ashes of reaction. On the whole, the 
 democratic tendency has made for good, though 
 thinking men of all classes of the community are 
 agreed that its virtue is not without alloy. In order 
 to prevent democratic liberty from developing into 
 arbitrary licence, a more efficient system of checks 
 and counter-checks is needed for the increasingly 
 complicated extension of the administrative machine. 
 
 Men still fear the majesty of the law, but where 
 the law has no jurisdiction, there is no standard of 
 honour strong enough to compel those whom democ- 
 racy has foisted into high positions to obey the 
 unwritten law which they have never read, which 
 indeed they have had no opportunity of reading. 
 For many of them the motto of Noblesse oblige has 
 no meaning. It is well if they can grasp the signi- 
 ficance of the lower standard of commercial honesty. 
 Sometimes they cannot even do that. This state- 
 ment is applicable alike to the workman who is 
 promoted to be a foreman, the member of the middle 
 class who is placed in control of a Government 
 Department, and the plutocrat who reclines upon 
 the red benches of the House of Lords. 
 
 The first step towards curing a disease is the 
 recognition of its existence, the second is its
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. 3 
 
 diagnosis, the third is the application of the suitable 
 remedy. By a fortuitous chain of circumstances 
 I have been placed in a position peculiarly favour- 
 able, both objectively and subjectively, to a clear 
 recognition of the national disease, which many 
 others have no doubt also recognised, but of the 
 existence of which the maj ority of my fellow-citizens 
 are ignorant or only vaguely suspicious. I earnestly 
 hope that this book may help many towards recogni- 
 tion and diagnosis of the insidious growth of the 
 national canker, and thus prepare the way for the 
 application of the remedy. 
 
 Far be it from me to deny that there are many 
 honourable public men in England, who strive 
 according to their lights against the obstructions of 
 corruption and dishonesty. Neither these, nor the 
 actively dishonourable, form the majority of our 
 public men, who, whatever their antecedent ideals 
 may have been, have, by process of time and 
 mechanical routine, become content to be passively 
 honourable, to turn a closed eye and a deaf ear to 
 corruption. In other words, they have tacitly 
 recognised the existence of a system. The system 
 and the man are interdependent. The man becomes 
 the victim of the system ; the system remains the 
 product of the man. The existence of this system 
 as a part of our social and political fabric, consti- 
 tutes a national peril, more dangerous, because less 
 evident, than that physical overthrow with which 
 Germany threatened the British Empire when she 
 launched her forces across the Belgian frontier 
 in August, 1914. 
 
 We as a nation have long enjoyed an inter- 
 national reputation for " muddling through." We 
 have even vain-gloriously prided ourselves upon our
 
 4 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 ultimate ability to muddle through. True it is that 
 sometimes we have failed, but these instances we 
 would fain forget. Even where we have been 
 successful in the end, at what a cost has success been 
 gained, and what unnecessary sacrifice has it not 
 entailed ! Generally the sacrifice demanded has 
 been that of thousands and thousands of human 
 lives, lives of men unknown to history, who have 
 gone nobly to their graves to rectify the inefficiency 
 of those whose foresight should have obviated the 
 necessity for the sacrifice. The system under which 
 our army has been organized and administered is not 
 one calculated to produce great men. Organized and 
 administered by men who have little elementary 
 knowledge of the needs of the Empire, the result 
 could not have been otherwise. Occasionally the 
 army has produced great men in spite of its system. 
 It has produced a Raleigh, whom history honours, 
 but who was decapitated by his grateful sovereign. 
 It has produced a Marlborough, whom history 
 honours, but whom the Government of his day 
 dismissed, degraded, and even imprisoned. It has 
 produced a Wellington, who was left to fight a long 
 and strenuous campaign in a foreign land, ill sup- 
 ported, ill supplied. It has produced a Gordon, 
 who was left to meet a heroic death on the burning 
 sands of Egypt, butchered by the savage horde, 
 victim of the Government's culpable dilatoriness and 
 indifference. These are bright instances, and his- 
 tory tells us they are rare. There are, however, 
 pictures much less pleasing to the mind. Many of 
 these will be supplied by the personal experiences of 
 my readers. They appear almost daily in the 
 columns of the press. It is hardly necessary to 
 recall the picture of Colonel Seely, the then Secretary
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. 5 
 
 of State for War, speaking in the House of Commons 
 upon our military preparedness for which he was 
 responsible, and twirling between his dilettante 
 fingers the closed envelope whose contents, had he, 
 as he said, been able to reveal them, would have at 
 once convinced Members of the readiness of our 
 Expeditionary Force of 166,000 men to leave our 
 shores at a few days' notice equipped in men, horses, 
 and material " down to the last button." In a few 
 months' time the test came. Was the Expeditionary 
 Force ready ? Did it sail within a fortnight ? The 
 answer to both questions is in the negative. As a 
 compact, fighting Force, it never sailed at all. What 
 did the Government do ? It made Colonel Seely, 
 who had never been anything but a Territorial officer, 
 a General with an active command. What did the 
 nation do ? Nothing, and wisely so. When the 
 enemy is at the gates is no time for arguing about 
 the internal affairs of the household. 
 
 I imagine, reader, that you have already divined 
 the fundamental reason why we were not ready to 
 meet the Germans in August, 1914. It is not that 
 we had no great military genius to lead us to victory. 
 Such geniuses are rare. They must possess a com- 
 bination of military knowledge and of imagination. 
 Few of our Generals had the former, none the latter, 
 qualification. Imagination, speaking in general 
 terms, is not required by the military profession, 
 which, at its highest standard, aims only at turning 
 out a sufficient number of military mediocrities. On 
 the side of the Entente, no great military genius, 
 except Marshal Foch, has been born of the European 
 War. On the side of the Central European Powers, 
 military genius has fallen just short of perfection, 
 and it is just this shortage that has prevented it from
 
 6 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 being genius at all. No, the reason for our unpre- 
 paredness is far more fundamental, far more per- 
 manent. It is this. That we as a nation have fallen 
 short of the moral standard of real greatness. We 
 have during many years chosen and set up for our 
 leaders men of no high moral standard, men who 
 have feared to take the people into their confidence, 
 men who have played for their own hand and won 
 against their own side, men who have not feared to 
 temporize with truth. We are a smug, self-satisfied 
 people. Unpleasant though the reflection be, it is 
 true. We have been content to let our commerce 
 and our industry pass into more capable hands than 
 ours. All the while we have boasted of an Empire 
 on which the sun never sets, we have boasted of our 
 inherited liberties, we have boasted of the incor- 
 ruptibility of our public life, we have boasted of our 
 superiority in many mental and moral directions. 
 We have taken this vaunted superiority for current 
 coin of the realm of full value and of full weight. 
 Are we surprised to find after all that it is only a 
 token ? We have taken much on trust. The old 
 motto Noblesse oblige has lost its meaning for us, and 
 we have not yet found a substitute. The " good old 
 times " were not in all respects good, but no one can 
 conceive that the statesmen of only the last genera- 
 tion, such men as Gladstone and Salisbury, could 
 ever have condescended to deceive the people by a 
 verbal quibble, or by systematic falsehood. Yet of 
 these practices statesmen of to-day stand unblush- 
 ingly confessed. What are we going to do ? 
 
 What are we going to do ? That is the great 
 question of the future. Are we going to continue 
 to stand by a discredited standard of morality, in 
 the hopes that in the future, as in the past, we may
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. 7 
 
 muddle through ? Or are we going to raise a higher 
 standard of honour, truth, and justice ? From 
 millions of throats comes the answer that we must 
 adopt the latter alternative. Then comes the doubt- 
 ing question, how are we to convert our profession 
 into practice, how are we to get beyond the sphere 
 of moral theory ? This is often a difficult step. It 
 should not be. It is never impossible. Speaking 
 in general terms, we must, if we are to see the 
 regeneration of England, demand from the statesman 
 and Government official the same standard of honour 
 and of moral truth that we now demand from him 
 as a private individual. For this purpose we must 
 continue in the twentieth century the movement 
 which is the key-note of the history of the nine- 
 teenth : we must demand for the people an ever 
 increasing extension of . democratic power. By a 
 system of equitable representation and a demo- 
 cratically controlled executive more suited for giving 
 immediate effect to its decrees, we must, as a nation, 
 as a great nation, be in a position to dispense with- 
 out unnecessary delay with the services of those who 
 have deserved ill of the State. We must not only 
 make it easy for ability to rise, we must make it 
 equally easy for incapacity to fall. We must be 
 able in future to place the responsibility for failure 
 and the credit for success upon the shoulders of some 
 named individual, and at the same time we must 
 make it impossible for the tax-salaried official to 
 shelter himself behind the cloak of anonymity. 
 " You cannot fool all the people all the time," said 
 Abraham Lincoln, and he was right. Under our 
 present system, however, a politician or Government 
 official is generally able to fool all the people long 
 enough to establish his claim to a certain notoriety.
 
 8 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 if not to fame. Our system of rewards and honours 
 is far too elaborate, far too extended to be of any real 
 value in the eyes of honest and intelligent men. 
 Our system of penalties is far too indulgent to uphold 
 the standard of honour which we must demand. 
 We need not be cruel, we need not even be harsh, 
 but we can and ought to be just, and to be just we 
 must find some other method of treating those who 
 have been false to the trust reposed in them than 
 by asking them to accept otium cum dignitate with a 
 pension of some thousands a year for the rest of their 
 natural existence. I speak not here of errors of 
 judgment; these if slight may well be condoned. 
 But I speak of moral infirmity, which should be 
 invariably and ruthlessly condemned. 
 
 Is it possible, someone may ask, to obtain the 
 required regeneration of public life without a 
 Revolution ? Yes, I answer, I think it is in England. 
 From historical knowledge we know that it has not 
 been possible in America, or in France, or in Japan ; 
 from recent experience we know that it has not been 
 possible in Russia, or in Germany. But notwith- 
 standing what history and experience teaches us is 
 necessary in the case of other nations, I still am of 
 opinion that we shall gain regeneration in England 
 without a physical Revolution. Let the people of 
 Great Britain realize that their country is ruled by 
 the official bureaucrat, and they themselves exploited 
 by the unworthy place-hunter, and the remedy will 
 soon be found. Never did the people realize their 
 position more fully than during the recent World 
 War, and, though in greater part they acquiesced in 
 the display of absolute power by the Government 
 official, yet all men who see into the future realized 
 that acquiescence was only for the period of the war.
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. 9 
 
 The diagnosis of the disease has been made, it has 
 been perfected on the bloody battle-fields of France 
 and Flanders, and the people are not going to hesi- 
 tate to apply the remedy. We want no other 
 examples of the benefits to be derived from demo- 
 cratic control than the progress made by the great 
 Republic of the West, and by our own great self- 
 governing Dominions of the Crown. The people have 
 long enjoyed a full measure of articulation. They are 
 going to use it to obtain a full measure of control. We 
 shall then, as a nation, look for leadership not to men 
 such as those who have carried on that shameless 
 traffic in social honours which has made newly- 
 created nobility to stink in the nostrils of the people, 
 men who have made gold their God, and titles and 
 decorations the crosses on which to crucify their 
 Christ, but we shall turn to men who have been found 
 by the people to be worthy, intellectually and 
 morally, of the trust imposed upon them. To find 
 these men is the problem of the future. We, the 
 nation, have to solve that problem. W T e must 
 trust our people with the truth. We must give far 
 greater publicity to the public acts of public men, 
 — the men who are paid by us for their services. 
 We must no longer try to persuade ourselves that it 
 is for the public advantage to conceal the inepti- 
 tudes and faults of these men. Let them, as all 
 others, stand or fall upon their own merits. Let 
 moderate rewards and honours be open to them, — 
 honours whose significance will be enhanced by their 
 restricted distribution. But let there also be no restric- 
 tion upon the speedy discovery and instant dismissal 
 of any culprit, of any man who after a fair trial has 
 been found unworthy of his charge. 
 
 Broadly speaking, there are four remedies for
 
 io THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 a condition of affairs which is impeding the pro- 
 gress of Democracy in more legitimate directions, 
 and the remedies are these : — 
 
 (i) A limited extension of the jurisdiction of 
 the law, so that Government officials shall be legally 
 compelled to obey official Regulations. 
 
 (2) An extension of the principle of appeal to, 
 and arbitration by, independent bodies, as a check 
 upon the arbitrary exercise of official caprice. 
 
 (3) Selection of public men for their moral 
 character as well as for their mental ability. 
 
 (4) Increased publicity upon public matters. 
 One might think that the necessity for these 
 
 reforms would be pretty evident to the majority of 
 men, but as a matter of fact it is not so, and even 
 those who recognise that some such democratic 
 changes are overdue recognize the fact in a somewhat 
 hazy manner, and are obsessed with the difficulty of 
 obtaining evidence of even one concrete case which 
 would drive home to the mass of the people of this 
 country the imperative urgency of reform. It is 
 the very absence of these democratic measures 
 which renders their introduction difficult, yet with- 
 out their introduction all our schemes of recon- 
 struction, from which so much is now expected after 
 the War, will be vitiated at their source. 
 
 Officials and members of the Government are 
 styled " responsible " with euphemistic invariability, 
 but when we come to analyse this epithet which 
 trips so glibly off the imitative tongue, and to ask 
 ourselves to whom these individuals are responsible, 
 we can find no more satisfactory answer than vague 
 and chaotic murmurings about public opinion and 
 the accepted standards of morality. As long as 
 tax-salaried Government officials can with impunity
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. n 
 
 and deliberation make untrue statements in their 
 public correspondence, dealing with any and all 
 branches of Imperial administration, and at the 
 same time shelter their personal responsibility behind 
 the cloak of collective anonymity, and as long as 
 Secretaries of State and other members of the 
 Government can with impunity give evasive, equi- 
 vocal, or incorrect replies to questions put to them 
 across the floor of the Legislative Assembly, it is 
 not within the province of humanity to expect these 
 erring individuals to be parties to the introduction 
 of any measure calculated to make them personally 
 responsible for the truth of their own replies and the 
 accuracy of the statements of their subordinates. 
 Sometimes, it is true, they are pilloried in the Press, 
 more rarely they are dragged squealing before a 
 Court of Law, but far more frequently they have no 
 greater danger to face than the pangs of their own 
 deadened consciences. Even in the rare instances 
 where publicity is given to their actions, they can 
 continue that line of conduct which has already so 
 successfully served their personal purpose, and meet 
 published truth with published falsehood, or fall 
 back upon the worn out shibboleth that further dis- 
 cussion is contrary to the interests of the State — the 
 State being in nearly every such instance a convenient- 
 ly vague synonym for themselves or their colleagues. 
 After all we, the nation, pay politicians and 
 Government officials to do their duty, not to refuse 
 to do it, as is so often the case at present. When 
 we can devise and put into practice some simple 
 means of securing that the personnel of our Govern- 
 ment, executive and administrative, be composed 
 only of honest men who are capable, and may be 
 trusted, to carry out their duty under all circum-
 
 12 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 stances, then we may hope for a decrease in the 
 present enormous number of administrative scandals 
 and " regrettable incidents " which fill the columns 
 of our daily press. 
 
 The majority of those regrettable incidents, of 
 which the late War has been so peculiarly fruitful, 
 arise from fear, and often from knowledge, that 
 disclosure may injure the responsible official. We 
 have heard of many, in India, in Mesopotamia, in 
 Salonika, in France. We are awaiting promised 
 inquiries into a few of these, but in the great majority 
 of cases no inquiry is ever held. Generally the 
 incident is never heard of, and the innocent victim 
 suffers. 
 
 Regrettable incidents differ not in kind, but 
 only in extension. Sometimes the victim is a single 
 individual, at other times a larger number is involved. 
 When the number of victims becomes very large, 
 the incident assumes national importance, as in the 
 case of serious strikes, riots, revolts, and revolu- 
 tions. A nation is a collection of individuals, and 
 as a symptom of national feeling the regrettable 
 incident in the case of an individual, or of a few 
 individuals, is as valuable as in the case of a larger 
 body of citizens, and in certain cases it possesses, 
 as a symptom, even a higher value, as it is more 
 definite, better authenticated, and more truly con- 
 centrated than when observation is made over a 
 large area, and therefore over an averagely weaker 
 combination. 
 
 Having now set forth the impersonal purpose of 
 this book, I proceed to the history of one of those 
 cases of general application, of which there are 
 many thousands similar awaiting solution, — a case 
 which has run the complete gamut of military,
 
 THE NATIONAL DANGER. 13 
 
 political, and legal publicity, and which has long 
 been known throughout the Press of the Empire as 
 11 The British Dreyfus Case." It will serve as a 
 useful sample and measure of our need, exhibiting, 
 as it does, to the British Public in a concrete and 
 very clear form common official methods of 
 procedure.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD 
 
 Once to every man and nation 
 
 Comes the moment to decide 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood 
 
 For the good or evil side. — James Russell Lowell. 
 
 I never thought I should begin to write an auto- 
 biography, even a fragment of one, as the present 
 is. But circumstances overrule desires, and after 
 consideration I have come to the conclusion that it 
 is a duty which I owe to present and future genera- 
 tions, to put on record the facts disclosed in this 
 book, so that those who come after me may profit 
 by the example, and strive, as I have always striven, 
 to uphold the highest standard of truth, righteousness 
 and justice, not only as a theoretical precept kept 
 stored in the innermost recesses of our brain and 
 brought forth now and then to point a moral or 
 adorn a peroration, but as a real live practical entity 
 governing our daily thoughts and daily actions 
 among the affairs of men. In this way, I am con- 
 vinced, and in no other way, shall we citizens of a 
 great Empire be worthy of true service to that 
 Empire, and bring back again, if we ever can bring 
 back, the predominance of individual devotion to the 
 State, disinterested and actively true, in foul weather
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 15 
 
 as well as fair, in the teeth of temporary reverses as 
 well as upon the flood-tide of prosperity. The two 
 forces of evil and of good are ever active in the world, 
 and if this book serves as a sign-post to lead us to 
 throw in our individual lot with the latter, then the 
 record shall not have been made in vain. 
 
 The story told is no romantic tale of corruption 
 and persecution such as we are all familiar with in 
 the annals of the Middle Ages — those times which 
 we patronizingly call the Dark Ages — no tale of 
 horror plucked from the dusty shelves of mediaeval 
 romance, but a true narrative of the present time, 
 many of the actors in which are still upon the stage, 
 playing their various parts. It is a narrative of 
 which fragments have already been presented to the 
 public in parliament, in the press, upon the public 
 platform, and in the law-courts, but which never 
 before has been published as one conglomerate whole. 
 In the tale, as will be seen, I take a part by force of 
 circumstances rather than by deliberate choice. 
 
 I remember some twenty years ago sitting in 
 an over-crowded hall where the penultimate act of a 
 somewhat similar drama was being played.* It was 
 at Rennes, the old capital of Brittany, the centre 
 of the most priest-ridden province of France that 
 the Jew, Alfred Dreyfus, late Captain in the Repub- 
 lican army, since restored to his rank and promoted 
 in the same army and decorated with the Legion of 
 Honour, was then upon his trial before a Court com- 
 posed of seven officers of equal and superior rank 
 to that which the accused had previously held. It 
 was my good fortune to meet there for the first time 
 the late G. W. Steevens, of The Daily Mail, whom in 
 
 *For a short account of the French case, see Note A at the end of 
 this Chapter.
 
 16 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 a few months I was to meet again under different 
 circumstances in South Africa, and who gave up his 
 life as one of the besieged in Ladysmith. By his 
 kindness I was able to secure admission to the hall 
 on three of the concluding days of the celebrated trial, 
 and I was there on the famous occasion when the late 
 Maitre Labori made his impassioned appeal to the 
 audience, and called them to witness that whenever 
 evidence favourable to the accused was produced 
 he was prevented by the Court from using it on the 
 ground — the false ground as we know now — of its 
 use being contrary to the public interest. Hot and 
 weary were those September days both inside the 
 Court and outside, where twenty thousand troops 
 patrolled the streets of the old city, where cannon of 
 various calibre commanded all the cross-streets, and 
 people stood outside the Court house in anxious 
 queues waiting for admission from the hour when the 
 Court rose in the evening till the doors were opened 
 the following morning. The Members of the Court 
 had apparently long ago made up their mind as to 
 the guilt of the accused, and seemed to pay little or 
 no heed to the evidence given in his favour, even to 
 the evidence of that gallant and honest gentleman 
 Colonel Picquart, then disgraced, but who lived to 
 become a few years later Minister for War. 
 
 I left Rennes on the evening of the last Thursday 
 of the trial and was in Dinard on the following famous 
 Saturday evening when the verdict, which was a 
 false verdict, which I knew at the time was a false 
 verdict — the verdict of " Guilty " — was announced 
 officially, when bonfires of joy were lighted on the 
 surrounding hills,and French ladies danced bacchana- 
 lian dances upon the tables of the public Casino. 
 
 No one who in 1899 was of an age to appreciate
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 17 
 
 the real meaning of the judgment will ever forget 
 the throb of indignation that swept through every 
 continent, and the terrible indictments which the 
 press of the United Kingdom hurled at our friends 
 across the Channel. 
 
 The verdict was announced on the afternoon of 
 Saturday, the 9th September, 1899, and on Monday, 
 the nth, every great paper in the United Kingdom 
 devoted its first leader to the theme. " A thrill of 
 horror and of shame," says The Times of that date, 
 " ran through the whole civilized world outside of 
 France. . . . The unfortunate prisoner is absolutely 
 and entirely innocent of the charges brought against 
 him." . . . The article goes on to speak of " the 
 forgeries and perjuries with which his enemies have 
 vainly tried to bolster up their case. . . .Dreyfus' 
 chief accusers," The Times continues, " were con- 
 victed of gross and fraudulent illegalities. . . . The 
 judges . . . have . . . demonstrated the truth of 
 the astounding axiom . . . that ' military justice 
 is not as other justice.' " After calling the trial " the 
 grossest and . . . most appalling prostitution of 
 justice which the world has witnessed in modern 
 times," the Times leader-writer says, " A great 
 country . . . has . . . mercilessly trampled justice, 
 honour and truth under foot," and closes his article 
 with these prophetic words, " France cannot close 
 her ears to the voice of the civilized world, for that 
 voice is the voice of history." 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold who penned the leader in The 
 Daily Telegraph is even more sweeping in his condem- 
 nation. " The honour of the French army," he 
 writes, " consisted in purging it of liars and forgers, 
 . . . not in upholding . . . rive War Ministers against 
 truth and justice. . . . This infamous judgment
 
 18 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 disgraces France, dishonours her army . . . offends 
 the best principles of humanity. ... In France 
 there exist no longer, as national qualities, honour, 
 truthfulness and justice." 
 
 Column after column of indignant letters from 
 leading men of the day filled the English papers ; 
 resolutions of sympathy with Dreyfus, and of con- 
 temptuous scorn of his accusers, were passed by 
 Boards, Committees, Associations and Clubs, through- 
 out the length and breadth of the United Kingdom ; 
 demonstrations were held in Hyde Park and many of 
 the principal towns ; and a number of our leading 
 firms even went so far as to withdraw their intended 
 exhibits from the Paris Exhibition which was to be 
 held there the following year. 
 
 I was then spending a short and pleasant period 
 of leave in France in the middle of my professional 
 course at the Staff College, and I sat as a spectator 
 in the crowded Court at Rennes, and listened with 
 admiration to Labori, Demange, and Picquart. I was 
 present unwillingly at the demonstrations of joy when 
 the verdict was announced, and I read these bitter 
 articles in the English press, objectively, with the 
 deepest sympathy for the wronged man and for the 
 country which had wronged him — France. Little 
 did I dream in those happy autumn days that my own 
 country which I loved so dearly, that the army — the 
 profession to which I was devoted — was even then 
 nurturing its Merciers, its Cavaignacs, its Henrys, 
 its Esterhazys and its Du Paty de Clams, and that 
 one day not so very far distant I should be called 
 upon to play in a very similar drama if not the part 
 of Dreyfus, at least somewhat of that hardly less 
 terrible one of the man who was persecuted, aye, 
 almost unto death, by the military caucus for having
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 19 
 
 stood well nigh alone in his endeavour to obtain 
 justice for the Jew. But in those days, as I say, 
 I little knew what was before me, nor would I have 
 believed it had some prophet told me of it. I should 
 have scorned the very idea of the possibility of any 
 such similar event taking place in public life in 
 England. 
 
 The Dreyfus case was one of the greatest expo- 
 sures of modern times. It displayed the fact that 
 the state of the army of France was entirely rotten, 
 that the chief military advisers of the Government 
 were corrupt charlatans to whom honour was but a 
 word, and who were unscrupulous enough to stop at 
 no act which would encompass the end they had in 
 view, no matter how infamous the act or the object 
 might be. 
 
 It sent no fewer than ten Ministers of War* into 
 the limbo of infamous obscurity for having utterly 
 disregarded the truth, and by every nefarious 
 artifice endeavoured one after the other to stifle 
 enquiry, to crush discussion and to prevent the 
 truth from being known. It wrecked fivef Govern- 
 ments. It isolated France for years from the comity 
 of nations. Yet in the end truth won through. 
 
 For amid all this welter of corruption and dis- 
 honesty, amid this vast ocean of organised adminis- 
 trative crime, there were still a few, a very few, 
 who had not bowed the knee to Baal, who loathed 
 injustice as a thing unclean, and held their honour 
 high. 
 
 There was Georges Clemenceau, who was loud 
 in his demand for justice. There was Emile Zola, 
 
 ♦Merrier, Zurlinden, Cavaignac, Billot, Cavaignac (bis), Zurlinden 
 (bis), Chanoine, Freycinet, Krantz, and Gallifet. fThose of Dupuy,. 
 Ribot, Meline, Brisson, and Dupuy (second time).
 
 aWvJw* zL~~ -z**} 
 
 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE, 
 the great novelist., who daring greatly, flung in the 
 
 ^ — Z — . 
 
 
 teeth of the President of the French Republic his 
 celebrated charge. To-day his words " J' accuse ' 
 stand as a synonym for every great endeavour for 
 l^nt, every noble effort to obtain justice for 
 those who have unjustly suffered. " J' accuse ' 
 began a new era for France. The day of secret and 
 cowardly denunciation had passed away, and the 
 sun of courage rose over the horizon. 
 
 Then there was the determined President of the 
 Senate, Scheurer-Kestner, who led the political 
 attack as Zola led the journalistic, who sacrificed 
 his career and his life for the cause of truth, and 
 died upon the day it triumphed. 
 
 Finally, but by no means least, there was that 
 gallant soldier, that honest gentleman, Colonel 
 Georges Picquart, who risked and lost all that he held 
 most dear, who was hounded to what was hoped 
 would be his death by the very men who should have 
 stood by him in his hour of trial. But through all 
 the persecution Picquart lived, lived to regain his 
 honours and become Minister for War in Clemen- 
 ceau's regenerated Government. His honour he 
 never lost. But could this tardy restitution atone 
 for the many years of needless suffering he had lived ? 
 Picquart is now dead, but his name will live for 
 ever, as the type of a gallant gentleman. 
 
 To these few noble men it might well seem a 
 Herculean task to cleanse the Augean Stables of the 
 French War Office, but they swerved not from the 
 path of duty, blocked though they were by every 
 device that organized human ingenuity could present 
 to the brain of the conventional military adminis- 
 trator. But the real reason for the ultimate triumph 
 of truth is to be sought further away than in the
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 21 
 
 action of the agents employed to accomplish it. The 
 real reason was that the heart of the people was 
 sound : the Democracy rang true. When the people 
 of France learned the facts of the Dreyfus case they 
 recognized the danger to the republic which such men 
 as the chief actors in it were, and thereupon they 
 resolved to sweep out the canaille once for all from 
 those posts for which they had proved themselves so 
 peculiarly unfitted ; they resolved to prefer honour 
 to dishonour, rectitude to crime, and to ensure that 
 the administration of their public departments should 
 be free from corruption. What the people resolved 
 to do, they did. They had one and a half decades 
 in which to put their house in order and prepare for 
 the coming crash, and when it came they were ready 
 for it. 
 
 Unfortunately we in England were not so well 
 placed. No Dreyfus case had as yet ruffled the 
 untroubled surface of the military administrative 
 pool. At the close of the century, a few men, it is 
 true, recognized that the democratisation of our army 
 had already commenced, and that oligarchic condi- 
 tions were no longer applicable to what was gradually 
 but surely becoming a democratic corporation. Some 
 remedies were applied, but the results did not justify 
 the hopes with which the doctors had inaugurated 
 the treatment. With the abolition of the post of 
 Commander-in-Chief in 1904 by the late Mr Arnold 
 Foster the dilution and decentralization of military 
 authority from which so much was expected only 
 transferred the power from the hand of a trained 
 soldier to that of an untrained civilian, ignorant of 
 the needs of the army. In less than two years' time 
 by the strange maelstrom of fate, the duties of 
 Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Forces of the
 
 22 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Crown became vested in a Chancery lawyer of phleg- 
 matic temperament, who publicly boasted that he 
 knew not the difference between a battalion and 
 a brigade. The Secretary of State possesses patron- 
 age, possesses too the power to appoint the military 
 members of the Army Council and to dismiss them, 
 and hence we see the humiliating spectacle — humilia- 
 ting for any one who has pride in his country — of 
 four Generals of high rank vying with each other in 
 their eagerness to adopt any plan for the organization 
 and administration of the army which may appeal to 
 the untutored imagination of the Secretary of State 
 for War. 
 
 So it happens that we see the same military 
 advisers in the short space of four years advocating 
 a long and a short service army, throwing that over, 
 and advocating an organization by army corps, and 
 again throwing that over and advocating the destruc- 
 tion of the volunteers and the old constitutional 
 force, the County Militia.* 
 
 When the Army Council was created in 1904, it 
 was hoped, even expected by some, that any military 
 member of the Council who differed from the Secre- 
 tary of State or his colleagues on such fundamental 
 
 ♦One of the niost recent examples of tergiversation on fundamental 
 principles, with which everyone is familiar, is Sir Ian Hamilton's volte- 
 face, on the much discussed question of Voluntary v. Compulsory Service. 
 Sir Ian Hamilton, who had ceased to be a Member of the Army Council 
 only a few months previously, published in November, 1910, his book 
 advocating the former system. This was the moment when Lord Haldane, 
 Secretary of State for War, was using all his official efforts to thwart the 
 endeavours of Field Marshal Lord Roberts, who was trying to arouse the 
 country to a sense of its danger, and publicly urging the adoption of some 
 form of compulsory military training. Lord Roberts had been the first 
 to bring into the public eye Sir Ian Hamilton, at a time when the latter 
 was an officer of inferior rank in a marching regiment.
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 23 
 
 matters as organization or conditions of service 
 would resign as a protest. But these hopes have not 
 been realized. The temptation of the loaves and 
 fishes has proved too strong. During the fifteen 
 years of its existence no resignation for any such 
 reason is known to have taken place among the 
 military members of the Army Council. The official 
 ring is self-interested in not allowing the truth to be 
 known. The ordinary Member of Parliament is 
 quite unable to obtain it, for the lawyer-politician on 
 the Government bench is trained and experienced. 
 The profession of a lawyer is supported by the 
 indiscriminate defence of right and wrong, and should 
 we permanently permit the transference of the 
 sophistry and chicanery of the law-courts to the front 
 benches of our Parliament, I admit that the prospect 
 of England's future is an appalling one. I realized this 
 to the full when I sat in Parliament, and found the 
 blade of truth ever parried by the shield of falsehood 
 and the buckler of evasion, and parried without 
 protest from the bystander. Persistence in such a 
 course must not only lead to the ruin of any nation, 
 which indulges in it, but must produce the eventual 
 triumph of vice. Of neither of these contingencies 
 have I any fear. I believe the heart of the people 
 is sound, I believe their desires are honest. We have 
 not subdued vice, and never shall, but the general 
 standard of honour is higher to-day than it was two 
 thousand years ago, when the great Nazarene 
 preached from the mountain to the men of that and 
 future ages. 
 
 But constant regeneration is necessary. We 
 must ever be striving to reach a higher plane, or we 
 shall inevitably find ourselves coming to rest upon 
 a lower one. There must be no separation between
 
 24 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the standards of public and private morality. We 
 must condemn falsehood and deception in the states- 
 man and the Government official as forcibly as we 
 would condemn it in a personal acquaintance ; we 
 must even make more marked our contempt for 
 such conduct in the former, who stands in the posi- 
 tion of a trustee, than in the latter, who acts for 
 himself alone. What is right for the individual must 
 be right for the nation. From the councils of our 
 rulers we must sweep all petty and self-interested 
 jealousies. We must seek instead those broad- 
 minded views of constructive policy, which are so 
 eminently lacking. The capture of the vote must 
 cease to be the end-all and the be-all of our political 
 life. 
 
 France was warned, and learned her lesson in 
 1899, and so she was ready in 1914. We were not 
 then ready, for our lesson was yet to learn. The 
 following narrative will show how near we were to 
 learning it in 1910. But war is a stern disciplinarian, 
 and its conclusion finds us in more chastened mood, 
 more ready to listen to the voice of truth, and profit 
 by the experience of our own, and others', past. 
 
 NOTE A 
 
 THE FRENCH DREYFUS CASE 
 
 The details of this famous historical case are well known, and need 
 only a slight recapitulation here. 
 
 In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French army, while serving on 
 the Staff was accused of a serious military offence of which he was entirely 
 innocent. He was tried by a secret Court Martial and given a life sentence, 
 his conviction being secured by false evidence which was disclosed to 
 those officers who tried him, but which was not shown to the accused, 
 who was deliberately kept in ignorance of its existence. This was done 
 with the knowledge of the Minister for War, and the Chief Officers of 
 the War Office. The punishment was publicly announced and carried into 
 effect. Captain Dreyfus still protesting innocence.
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 25 
 
 About two years later Colonel Picquart, who was an excellent linguist 
 and was employed in the Intelligence Department of the War Office, 
 obtained proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus, and brought the fact to the 
 notice of the Generals under whom he was serving, who advised him not 
 to take any further steps in the matter. They did not doubt the truth 
 of Colonel Picquart 's assertion, but disclosure of the facts would have 
 involved the late Minister for War and themselves. Questions on the 
 subject of Dreyfus were asked in Parliament, but to all the War Minister 
 replied that the case had been rightly decided on its merits at the time, 
 and that he had no intention of re-opening it or holding any further 
 enquiry about it. Colonel Picquart was fully convinced of the innocence 
 of Dreyfus, and, being an honest man and a gentleman, was quite unable 
 to understand the orders given to him by his superior officers. He could 
 do no more than obey.* Meanwhile anonymous articles dealing with the 
 case were appearing from time to time in the public Press, upon which the 
 military authorities did their best to impose silence. They also quietly 
 got Colonel Picquart out of the way, sending him first to the provinces 
 and later on to Tunis, on a dangerous mission to the frontier of Tripoli. 
 
 But the resiliency of truth is wonderful, and while the War Office 
 was suppressing it in one place, it kept rising up in another. Gradually 
 M. Scheurer-Kestner, President of the Senate, had begun to entertain 
 doubts as to the guilt of Dreyfus. He had questioned General Billot, the 
 War Minister, who was an old friend of his, and who had assured him 
 that Dreyfus was guilty. He had, however, asked him to accept merely 
 his personal assurance and refused to produce any proof. M. Scheurer- 
 Kestner was not satisfied, and after further enquiries, he became convinced 
 that Dreyfus was innocent. On the 14th July, 1897, a classic date in the 
 history of the French Republic, Scheurer-Kestner openly announced his 
 conviction. f Later in the same year he visited the War Minister and asked 
 for an Inquiry. General Billot's only action was to open a violent press 
 campaign against his old friend. Then followed a series of official enquiries 
 and Courts Martial held by the military authorities under extreme pressure, 
 but so carefully engineered by them as to burke the real issue and throw 
 dust in the eyes of the public. 
 
 On the 13th January, 1898, Zola published in L'Aurore his celebrated 
 manifesto " J' Accuse." For this he was triedj and condemned, though 
 
 *" General Gonse said to Picquart : ' What is it to you if the Jew 
 remains on the Devil's Island ? ' ' But, General,' said Picquart, ' he is 
 innocent.' Gonse replied : ' We can't re-open the case ; General Mercier 
 and General Saussier are mixed up in it.' ' But, General,' said Picquart, 
 ' he is innocent.' Gonse .shrugged his shoulders : ' That doesn't matter,' 
 he said, ' that is not a consideration which should be taken into account.' 
 Picquart pointed out the danger of hushing up the case. Gonse replied : 
 ' If you say nothing, no one will know.' " L' Affaire Dreyfus, by J. 
 Reinach, Vol. II., p. 359. 
 
 •jT was living in Paris at the time and well remember the sensation 
 his announcement caused. Jit was at this trial that the War Office 
 declined to produce the papers which would have justified Zola's accusa- 
 tion.
 
 26 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the sentence was afterwards quashed. Zola was again prosecuted. His 
 offer to justify the whole letter was disallowed by the Court, and Zola 
 left France. Eleven days before the opening of Zola's second trial, 
 Cavaignac, who had succeeded Billot as Minister for War, read out to the 
 Chamber of Deputies letters purporting to be the proofs of Dreyfus' guilt, 
 on which the War Office had relied, but which were at once declared by 
 Dernange (Dreyfus' Counsel) not to have been disclosed at the Court 
 Martial in 1894. M. Cavaignac was personally interested in proclaiming 
 the guilt of Dreyfus, as he was a cousin of Colonel Du Paty de Clam, 
 who had played an active part in securing Dreyfus' conviction. A few 
 weeks afterwards it became known that these proofs had been forged by 
 a high official at the War Office. Cavaignac resigned, and was succeeded 
 by Zurlinden. Meanwhile Picquart had been removed from the active 
 list of the army, and subjected to every kind of indignity at the hands of 
 the military authorities. At last on the 34th September, 1898, the Cour 
 de Cassation was entrusted with the revision of the Dreyfus Court Martial, 
 whereupon Zurlinden resigned. He was followed in rapid succession by 
 Chanoine, Freycinet, and Krantz. 
 
 Then followed the trial at Rennes, the re-affirmation of the unjust 
 conviction and the pardon offered to Dreyfus and accepted under the 
 pressure of his friends and medical adviser.* On accepting it Dreyfus 
 published a letter protesting his innocence, and affirming his resolution 
 never to rest until his honour was re-established. The Government 
 endeavoured to carry out the policy of the sponge, but it was not till 
 1903 that General Andre who had succeeded General Gallifet as War 
 Minister undertook an honest examination of all the papers in the case, 
 and, thus fortified, applied for a second revision, which led to the final 
 rehabilitation of Dreyfus and Picquart. The former resumed military 
 service and on the 21st July, 1906, was decorated with the Cross of a 
 Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. In the same month the latter was 
 promoted Major General, and in September Lieut. -General. On the 26th 
 October, 1906, Picquart became Minister for War in the Government of 
 M. Clemenceau. 
 
 The French Dreyfus Case will ever remain a locus classicus of history. 
 It convinced a considerable body of public opinion in France that it is 
 better for the State to secure the individual a fair trial than to protect 
 the State administration at the expense of justice. It also showed the 
 democracy of France the awful gulf to the edge of which it had been 
 unsuspectingly led by the men to whom it had entrusted its destiny. 
 These valuable lessons of history remain to Europe and to posterity as 
 some recompense for the terrible and unnecessary suffering caused to 
 many of those who played a leading part in the French Dreyfus Case. 
 
 ♦During the latter years of his confinement, Dreyfus was subjected 
 by order of the Government to such intense physical suffering that he 
 nearly lost his reason.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 (1905) 
 THE STORM BREWING 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends 
 
 Rough-hew them as we will. — Shakespeare. 
 
 I shall pass lightly over the events of my boyhood 
 and early manhood, so as not to burden my narra- 
 tive with immaterial details. Born in Dublin in 
 1865, I passed my childhood in a pleasant Irish 
 County, going to school at Harrow in 1879. After 
 studying foreign languages I matriculated at Dublin 
 University in 1883, entered Sandhurst in 1885, was 
 commissioned in 1887, and spent most of my service 
 in India and other places abroad. While stationed 
 in South Africa in 1898 I passed into the Staff 
 College, but upon the outbreak of the South African 
 War in the following year I rejoined my regiment 
 the day before we were shut up in Ladysmith. Going 
 through the two years and a half of the war with my 
 regiment, we returned to England and were stationed 
 at Colchester, under the command of Colonel Allenby 
 (now Field Marshal Viscount Allenby). Proceed- 
 ing by order of the War Office to Japan in 1904 
 during the Russo-Japanese War I returned to 
 England in 1905, and in May of that year resumed 
 command of my squadron at Aldershot under Colonel
 
 28 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Allenby.* My regiment formed part of the ist 
 Cavalry Brigade, which was commanded by the late 
 Major-General Scobell, and the Aldershot command 
 was held by Lt. -General Sir John (now Field Marshal 
 Viscount) French. We had an exceedingly pleasant 
 and arduous drill season at Aldershot, concluding it 
 by divisional f cavalry training under General Scobell 
 and Sir John French upon the Berkshire Downs in 
 September of that year. Upon the close of the 
 manoeuvres Colonel Allenby accepted command of 
 the 4th Cavalry Brigade, and much to the regret 
 of every officer and man in the regiment left for 
 Colchester in October to take up his new appoint- 
 ment. Before he left he rendered his annual 
 confidential reports upon the officers of the regiment, 
 which were sent to General Scobell, who then 
 rendered them, together with his own reports, to 
 Sir John French, who, after adding his own remarks, 
 rendered them to the War Office. 
 
 It is perhaps well to pause here to examine in 
 detail the system under which confidential reports 
 are rendered in the army. The Regulations govern- 
 ing this system have frequently been changed, but 
 for the moment we are interested only in those 
 Regulations which were in force in 1905, 1906 and 
 1907. These are published in The King's Regulations 
 for the Army, 1904 edition, and distinctly lay down 
 that any adverse confidential report upon an officer, 
 shall be shown to that officer, and a copy given to 
 him, before such report is rendered to superior 
 authority. These instructions are so important that 
 a note has to be made upon the report itself to the 
 
 *In Adam v. Ward {Official Report p. 210) Major Adam said : " I 
 was practically on and off commander of a Squadron all the time from 
 1895 to December, 1906." fThree brigades of nine regiments.
 
 THE STORM BREWING. 29 
 
 effect that they have been duly carried out. In 
 order that there should be no doubt as to what 
 constitutes an adverse report, an official definition 
 is given, stating that an adverse report is one record- 
 ing " any fault which affects an officer's character 
 as an officer and a gentleman, or his fitness for his 
 present position, or for promotion to a higher one." 
 Furthermore a reference to the Regulations will 
 show that it is laid down that " similar procedure 
 will be followed in the case of adverse reports other 
 than those made in the annual confidential reports." 
 (See p. 45 note). 
 
 It will thus be seen that the Regulations safe- 
 guard an officer from any unknown attack or criticism 
 upon his character or capacity, and if they had been 
 carried out, even in spirit, by the officers responsible, 
 this narrative would never have been written. 
 
 Colonel Allenby's report upon me in October, 
 1905, was a favourable report ; General Scobell's 
 report and Sir John French's were likewise favour- 
 able. I have no reason to think that the reports on 
 all the officers in the regiment were not also favour- 
 able, in fact without actual knowledge and without 
 having seen any of them, I have very good reason 
 to assume that they were all favourable. As for 
 my own I can speak with absolute certainty, for not 
 only was I assured it was so by the Military Secretary 
 at the War Office in 1912 (see p. 107) but I have such 
 a high opinion of the honour, and such a full know- 
 ledge of the practice, of Colonel Allenby, that I 
 know he would never for a moment entertain the 
 thought of saying behind an officer's back what he 
 would not say to his face, much less of incorporating 
 in a confidential report to superior authority any 
 suggestion that could in the slightest way prejudice
 
 30 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 an officer's career, without reading his remarks out 
 to that officer himself, and giving him a copy of 
 them before he even mentioned them to the Briga- 
 dier. In 1905 I had been confidentially reported 
 upon for nineteen years by many different com- 
 manding officers, many different generals, and many 
 inspecting officers, and I had never been reported 
 on in other than the most favourable terms. 
 
 Before proceeding with an account of the last 
 terrible fourteen years of my life, it may be well to 
 take a recapitulatory glance at it as it was at the 
 moment (October, 1905) of which I am now writing. 
 
 I had originally adopted the army as a profession 
 mainly because it was an honourable one. I believed 
 that the word of an officer and a gentleman was as 
 a triple bond of brass. I believed that it was for 
 honour that an officer lived, for honour that he would 
 gladly die. I was devoted to my regiment, and to 
 my brother officers, to the men of my Squadron, 
 to the horses of my Squadron, to my polo ponies, 
 and the healthy out-door life of a cavalry officer, 
 and I drank to the full of the joie de vivre. But 
 nevertheless my military ideal was not identical 
 with the one most usually accepted in practice by 
 the army. I loved to think of my profession as that 
 in which a man, either as leader or as led, should 
 go out to fight against the foes of right, and to 
 conquer for the sake of country, of honour and of 
 truth. The years had brought me experience, they 
 had not dimmed my faith or my ideal. I loathed 
 with a great loathing the superficiality, the eye-wash, 
 the low personal intrigue, the petty jealousies, the 
 sordid selfishness, which, whether we care to confess 
 it or not, every soldier, who takes the time and 
 trouble to look below the surface of things, must
 
 THE STORM BREWING. 31 
 
 admit make up the greater part of modern military 
 life. But these things had not touched me, and I 
 went upon my way with a light heart. 
 
 I had at that time to my credit nearly nineteen 
 years of most successful service, spent in Europe, 
 Asia, Africa and America. Being an Irishman 
 I was devoted to my Irish Regiment, where I was 
 spending a most happy life, in which the expression 
 brother-officer was no mere fagon de parler, for we 
 were as united a body of regimental officers as could 
 be found in the British army, with the exception of 
 a Major Graham who was little known to any of 
 us. Six months previously I had been promoted 
 to Field rank in my regiment, was a graduate of 
 the Staff College, had recently returned from a 
 successful tour of Staff duty in Japan (during the 
 Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5), was an M.A., and 
 University Gold Medallist in Modern Languages, 
 as well as a First Class Military Interpreter in Russian 
 and French. I had studied on the spot, and was well 
 acquainted with the armies and languages of all the 
 chief European Powers. I had devoted my whole 
 life to my profession and to preparation for the 
 European War, which I saw was inevitable. I had, 
 as I have already mentioned, successfully led my 
 Squadron for many years, and recently during the 
 drill season at Aldershot under Major-General 
 Scobell, and through the manoeuvres at the large 
 cavalry camp at Churn under Sir John French in 
 1905, and had just received an excellent annual 
 confidential report from Colonel Allenby, com- 
 manding my regiment, from Major-General Scobell, 
 and from Sir John French. No cloud was visible 
 upon the horizon of life, which opened before me a 
 panorama of apparently illimitable possibilities.
 
 32 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 But by other hands than mine had the seed of the 
 fatal harvest been already sown. A seer might 
 have already heard the rumblings of the coming 
 storm. 
 
 Unfortunately, through circumstances not under 
 my control, I had brought upon my innocent head 
 the ill-will of two General Officers, who play 
 prominent parts in the succeeding narrative, Major- 
 General Scobell and Lieutenant-General Sir William 
 (later Lord) Nicholson. 
 
 In the case of the former c'est la jcmme que Von 
 doit chercher. Some years before the material por- 
 tion of this narrative opens General Scobell and I, 
 then a Captain in my regiment, had been rivals 
 for the favour of a very beautiful widow, well 
 known in Society, whose charming portrait adorns 
 the walls of one of our public picture-galleries in 
 London. I would have married her had I not later 
 discovered just in time that she was the victim of an 
 incurable habit. It was in this connection that 
 General Scobell, who was then commanding the First 
 Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot, whom I had never 
 seen and with whom I had had no previous corres- 
 pondence, wrote me to Colchester in November, 
 1903, an insulting personal letter. I suspected that 
 the judgment of the writer had been perverted by 
 the personal chagrin of the rejected admirer, and let 
 the matter drop, never thinking that in less than 
 two years' time I should happen to come under the 
 command of this officer. General Scobell's original 
 letter is still in my possession, but I refrain from 
 publishing it, as it could not but hurt the feelings of 
 many of the relatives of the lady, who has since 
 died from the effects of that habit to which I have 
 before alluded. I did what I believed at the time was
 
 THE STORM" .BREWING. 33 
 
 the best thing to do, namely, dtrided not to reply 
 to General Scobell's letter ; then forgot all about the 
 incident, and later on in none of my personal dealings 
 with General Scobell did I ever refer to it or let it 
 influence my conduct in any way whatsoever. .Re- 
 sentment is a feeling which I have never entertained, 
 and I hoped that General Scobell was of a like mind. 
 I still honestly believe or at least try to believe, 
 that in all my later official associations with General 
 Scobell, he was not influenced by any recollection 
 of what had happened or what he had written to 
 me some years before. Reviewing all the incidents 
 of the case, and with his old letter of 1903 now- 
 lying on the table before me, I can only hope that 
 he had forgotten what I had ceased to remember. 
 It may be that he had, it may be that he had not. 
 No one will ever tell. 
 
 The case of Sir William Nicholson was different. 
 It had been my duty in accordance with the King's 
 Regulations for the Army to report the conduct 
 of this officer to the War Office from Japan in 1904. 
 It had been a very unpleasant duty, and I had 
 consulted the British Ambassador at Tokio, who 
 entirely approved of my conduct. As I did my duty 
 and was not told till many years afterwards that 
 this incident which is more fullv dealt with in the 
 course of the narrative (see Chap. VI, Note C, et al.), 
 was thought to militate against me, there is no 
 occasion to mention it further at this moment. 
 
 After the departure of Colonel Allenby the 
 question of the appointment of his successor in com- 
 mand of the 5th Lancers came before the Selection 
 Board. This Board used to meet occasionally at 
 the War Office and appoint officers to commands 
 and staff. The members were the Military Members
 
 34 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 , ,, Armv Co ,anc ^» assisted by the Inspectors 
 C ril arc* cne General Officers Commanding-in- 
 rv f th^ /ar i° us Districts of the United Kingdom. 
 T , h matter of appointments they honestly do their 
 r ^c, but, according to the system of reporting 
 employed in the army, the data upon which the 
 Members of the Board are asked to come to a decision 
 are hopelessly inadequate for the purpose. The 
 mistakes they make are of course numerous, and it 
 is realty a matter of congratulation that chance so 
 often directs a wise appointment. In this instance, 
 however, they went hopelessly astray in their 
 search for an officer fit to command the 5th (Royal 
 Irish) Lancers. Their selection fell upon Major 
 Graham who had reached the position of Second-in- 
 Command of the Regiment, and as this appointment 
 was responsible for everything that happened subse- 
 quently to the regiment, and to the individual 
 officers and men who composed it, it may be well to 
 pause here a moment and in the light of ulterior 
 events review the previous record of this officer's 
 service, a record which has already been very fully 
 debated in the law courts and commented upon by 
 a well-known judge of the King's Bench Division. 
 Major Graham had begun his military career by 
 receiving a commission in the 2nd Battalion, West 
 India Regiment, on the 5th March, 1884. This is 
 a black infantry regiment, with black non-commis- 
 sioned and white commissioned, officers. Shortly 
 afterwards he was transferred to the 1st Battalion, 
 West India Regiment, and in 1887 he was transferred 
 to the 5th Lancers. He was not popular in the 
 regiment, and the following year, he was seconded 
 for service with the Gold Coast Constabulary or 
 Houssas (black foot police). Without finishing his
 
 THE STORM BREWING. 35 
 
 tour of seconded service with this force he came 
 back for a few months to the 5th Lancers in 1890, 
 but before that year expired had been persuaded 
 again to seek extra-regimental employment, and 
 entered the Egyptian native army. Here he again 
 failed to complete his tour of service, and returned 
 to the 5th Lancers in 1893. The Army List of 
 February, 1894, shows him again as seconded for 
 some duty outside the regiment. He remained 
 r^bsent from the regiment during 1895 and 1896. 
 At the beginning of 1897 he returned to the 5th 
 Lancers and after a fortnight was sent as Station 
 Staff Officer to Delhi, a post such as is usually held 
 by a subaltern of the native army. At the beginning 
 of 1898 he was appointed to the Staff in Natal. 
 When the Boer War broke out in 1899 he was 
 appointed brigade-major of Lord Dundonald's 
 irregular cavalry brigade, but after a few weeks was 
 sent away by Lord Dundonald, and given purely 
 civil employment in South Africa where he remained 
 till 1904, when he once more came back to the regi- 
 ment. This was the first year during which Major 
 Graham had ever commanded a squadron, and the 
 result was that in March, 1904, a very few weeks 
 after he took over command, a grave mutiny on two 
 successive days occurred in his squadron* The 
 
 *A full and accurate account of this mutiny will be found in the 
 issues of John Bull of 9th May and 4th July, 1908, where the sworn testi- 
 mony of those serving in the regiment at the time is given. An account 
 is also given in Truth of 16th December, 1908. 
 
 The mutiny was the subject of questions in Parliament. On 
 the 23rd June, 1908, Mr Haldane was questioned upon it in some detail 
 by Mr Roberts, and replied that no report of the mutiny had reached the 
 War Office. " Will you enquire ? " asked Mr Roberts. " No, Sir," 
 replied Mr Haldane ; " if it (the mutiny) had occurred, it would have 
 been reported." Questioned again in the following December, Mr Haldare 
 stated: " No report of the alleged mutiny has ever reached the War
 
 36 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 mutiny was not reported by Major Graham to the 
 commanding officer, who was on leave when it 
 occurred. I was in Japan at the time, but I heard 
 of the mutiny while I was there, and upon my 
 return to the regiment in the following year received 
 a detailed account of it from my brother-officers. 
 At the beginning of 1905, after a few months' leave 
 Major Graham was appointed by sequence on the 
 roster Second-in-Command of the Regiment, a posi- 
 tion in which he came little into touch with the 
 men, as a Squadron Leader does, or with the officers, 
 as the Commanding Officer does. 
 
 Such was the record of the man who, on the 
 19th October, 1905, to the consternation of the 
 regiment, took over official command of the 5th 
 Lancers by order of the Selection Board. The 
 change made itself felt almost immediately. Mur- 
 murings among the men and non-commissioned 
 officers began to be heard, and these were with diffi- 
 culty checked by the officers, who gallantly strove 
 to avoid the disaster which, it was evident to all, 
 would sooner or later, in some shape or form, over- 
 take the regiment. It was the new Commanding 
 Officer's custom to pick out some sergeant-major or 
 officer, and hunt him for two or three weeks. During 
 this period everything the victim did was wrong, 
 nothing gave any satisfaction. Even the subaltern 
 officers began to express themselves rather too freely 
 about the Colonel in the Mess, and this I myself 
 stopped on two or three occasions. I was peculiarly 
 fortunate, because for five or six months I succeeded 
 in keeping on apparently quite good terms with 
 Colonel Graham. Then at last my turn came also. 
 
 Office, nor have I reason to believe that any such mutiny took place." An 
 official report of the mutiny was sent to the War Office in Octc ber, 1907.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 (1906-1909) 
 THE STORM BURSTS 
 
 Keep close to duty. Never mind the future, if 
 only you have peace of conscience. Be what you 
 ought to be ; the rest is God's affair. — H. F. Amid. 
 
 At that time (1905-6) there used to be held at Wool- 
 wich six-months' instructional courses in saddle-tree 
 making, and men of good conduct who showed an 
 aptitude for this work were selected from cavalry 
 regiments at home to go through the course. 
 
 It happened that early in 1906 two men of the 
 5th Lancers, who had been selected for this special 
 training by Colonel Allenby in 1905, had just re- 
 turned to the regiment on completion of the course, 
 and, as was usual, they were paraded at the Orderly 
 Room to see the Colonel. One of the men belonged 
 to my squadron. On occasions like this the two 
 squadron leaders attend the Orderly Room, and 
 Major P (now General P) and myself were present. 
 The proceedings were formal. The men were 
 marched in by the Regimental Sergeant Major 
 in front of Lieut-Colonel Graham, who congratu- 
 lated both of them upon the excellence of 
 their certificates as saddle-tree makers. "It so 
 happens," went on Colonel Graham, " that there is 
 at this moment a vacancy in the regiment for the 
 post of saddle-tree-maker corporal, and I have 
 
 4119:'"
 
 38 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 decided to promote to the post whichever of you 
 two men is the senior." It turned out that the man 
 of my squadron, whom I shall call Private X, had the 
 most service, and thereupon the Colonel officially 
 informed him that he would be promoted corporal 
 to fill the vacant post, and that the announcement 
 of his promotion would in due course appear in 
 regimental orders. Private X thanked the Colonel, 
 and both men were marched out. I also thanked 
 the Colonel and withdrew, thinking the matter 
 ended. Outside the Orderly Room I spoke to 
 Private X congratulating him upon his good fortune. 
 The man was very delighted, as he was not only 
 going to be promoted, but would receive a consider- 
 able increase of pay as a non-commissioned officer 
 and skilled artificer in saddle-tree-making. 
 
 I thought no more of the incident until one 
 evening about three weeks later, while I was dressing 
 for Mess, I saw to my surprise in regimental orders 
 that the other man, whom I shall call Private Z, 
 was appointed to be saddle-tree-maker corporal. 
 At first I thought it must be a mistake, but during 
 dinner I received a note from the Colonel, who 
 being married did not dine in Mess, asking me to 
 come round and see him after dinner. I did so, and 
 Colonel Graham said that I would probably be sur- 
 prised at the appointment of Private Z to be saddle- 
 tree-maker corporal, but told me that if Private X 
 complained to me and asked to see the commanding 
 officer, I was to refuse his request. Colonel Graham 
 declined to give me any reason for this extraordinarily 
 unjust treatment of the man. I told the Colonel 
 that I considered that he had treated Private X very 
 badly, and that if the man complained to me and 
 asked to see the commanding officer, I should have
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 39 
 
 no other course open but to do my duty and bring 
 Private X before him. Colonel Graham got very 
 angry, and asked whether I meant to defy him. I 
 replied quietly that it was my duty to see that 
 every man of my squadron had his rights, and Private 
 X had a right to make any complaint through me 
 to his commanding officer. 
 
 The next day what I had expected to happen, 
 did happen. The man, brought before me by the 
 Squadron Sergeant Major, said he had a complaint 
 to make, and asked me to take him in front of the 
 commanding officer. I said I would, and at the 
 proper time the man attended the Orderly Room and 
 was marched in before the Colonel. He made his 
 complaint, to which Colonel Graham listened with 
 a very ill grace, finally telling the man that he had 
 changed his mind about the appointment because 
 he found that Private Z had a better conduct sheet 
 than he had. Outside the Orderly Room Private X 
 came to me and said that the Colonel's statement 
 was not true, and asked me to compare the two 
 sheets. Later in the day I did so, and found that 
 Private X had a better record than Private Z. 
 Private X asked to go before the Colonel the next 
 day, when Colonel Graham had to acknowledge 
 that he had made a mistake about the conduct, but 
 said that the reason he had changed his mind about 
 the appointment was that Private Z had a better 
 certificate of education than Private X. Private 
 X came to me outside and said this was not true. 
 At his request I made enquiries and found that 
 Private X had the better certificate of education, 
 and the following day Private X again came before 
 the Colonel to complain. This time Colonel Graham 
 said he would give no reason for his action, but
 
 40 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 that the appointment of Private Z should stand, 
 at the same time telling me officially not to bring 
 Private X before him any more. Private X came 
 to me again and asked me to take him before the 
 General, whom he now had a right to see. I was 
 very sorry for the man, but knowing that the General 
 would only back up the Colonel, after a few days 
 I succeeded in persuading Private X to drop the 
 matter, promising to recommend him soon for 
 promotion to corporal in the squadron. The man 
 never got justice. The above incident, which was 
 only one of many similar occurrences in the regiment 
 at that time, illustrates the conduct of Colonel 
 Graham, and his general capacity for administration. 
 Many months afterwards I learned by chance that 
 in 1904 Private X had been Colonel Graham's 
 personal servant, and for some trifling fault had 
 been sent back by the latter to his ordinary duty. 
 I was in Japan at the time and knew nothing of the 
 matter, but it is quite possible that Colonel Graham 
 thought that I was aware of this fact, when I brought 
 Private X before him. 
 
 Shortly after this, the Adjutant, Captain Willcox 
 (now Lt.-Col. Willcox of the 3rd Hussars), who was 
 a great friend of mine, privately advised me to get 
 some extra-regimental employment, " for," he said, 
 " Graham will never forgive you about that saddle- 
 tree-maker corporal, and will do his best to get 
 rid of you." I said I was sorry that this should 
 have annoyed the Colonel, and pointed out to 
 Captain Willcox that I was bound by Army Regula- 
 tions to see any report upon myself which was 
 sent in, and have the opportunity of forwarding 
 with it my own remarks, and also that Graham had 
 seemed of late to be particularly friendly to me.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 41 
 
 Captain Willcox, however, told me not to trust to 
 the Colonel's apparent good-will, and earnestly 
 entreated me to try to get employment outside the 
 regiment, till Graham's period of command should 
 have expired. I said I would when we left Aldershot, 
 but that I particularly liked the work at the big 
 camp, where one had the opportunity of seeing all 
 the latest military inventions tested, and various 
 military experiments being carried out. 
 
 Unfortunately soon after this, in May, 1906, 
 I got a serious attack of lumbago, the result of having 
 strained a sinew in my back playing polo in India 
 ten years before. I put myself in the doctor's hands 
 and began a course of light baths. The doctor 
 advised me not to go on parade, but I continued 
 to do so. I had difficulty in mounting and dis- 
 mounting, but, once in the saddle, nothing prevented 
 me from riding and drilling. Colonel Graham knew 
 all about this, and knew also that I had to go to 
 London three times a week for these baths. He 
 appeared to be very sympathetic and offered to 
 excuse me parades, but I said I would rather go on 
 parade, unless the pain got so bad that I was quite 
 unable to do so. He said that if the regiment were 
 ordered on active service I should be unable to go, 
 and pressed me to remain away from parades 
 temporarily. 
 
 On the 18th June, while drilling in the Long 
 Valley, Colonel Graham clubbed the regiment, and 
 all the Squadron leaders came in for a full share of 
 abuse.* Such things had been of daily occurrence 
 
 *" On the 1 8th June, 1906, Lt. -Colonel Graham, while drilling the 
 regiment in the Irong Valley (Aldershot) lost his head and his temper, 
 and gave wrong words of command, so that neither Major Adam nor 
 the other Squadron leaders knew what he wanted done." (Sworn evidence 
 at trial of Adam v. Ward.)
 
 42 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 since Colonel Graham had got command, and no one 
 paid much attention to them. On this day, how- 
 ever, the scene of confusion was witnessed by Sir 
 John French, Commanding-in-Chief at Aldershot, 
 who rode up angrily to ask Colonel Graham the 
 reason of the confusion. It was apparent to all on 
 parade that Colonel Graham in his reply laid the 
 blame upon the Squadron Leaders. 
 
 The next morning I received a friendly letter 
 from Colonel Graham, asking me to take over the 
 command of the Reserve Squadron. I saw him on 
 the matter, and he assured me that the arrangement 
 was a temporary one, made for my own benefit, 
 to obviate the necessity of my riding until my back 
 was completely cured.* 
 
 At the first interview I had with General Scobell 
 in December, 1906 (see p. 51), he told me that 
 Colonel Graham had made a report to him in the 
 previous June. That report, according to what 
 I then learned from General Scobell, was incorrect. 
 Furthermore, at the trial of Adam v. Ward, in 1914, 
 it was revealed for the first time that Colonel Graham 
 had in June, 1906, made a report to Sir John French 
 to the effect that he had placed me in command of 
 the Reserve Squadron of the regiment, but it also 
 
 *In the trial of Adam v. Ward [Off. Rep., p. 67), Mr Duke to Major 
 Adam : " Did Colonel Graham make a statement to you with regard 
 to that transfer ? " Major Adam : " Yes." Mr Duke : " At the time 
 of the transfer?" Major Adam: "Yes." Mr Duke: "Do you 
 remember what that statement was ? " Major Adam : " Yes." Mr 
 Duke: " What was it ? " Major Adam: " It was that on account 
 of my difficulty in mounting a horse he thought I had better not go on 
 parade for some months ; I had a difficulty in mounting my horse, but 
 when I got in the saddle I was all right." Mr Duke : " What was the 
 cause of the difficulty ; was it temporary or permanent ? " Major 
 Adam : " A temporary one." Mr Duke : " You say the difficulty was 
 from a transitory cause ; what was it ? " Major Adam : "A strained 
 sinew in my back."
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 43 
 
 became clear from Sir John French's own evidence 
 that he heard of my strained back for the first time 
 at the trial. As Colonel Graham, in submitting his 
 report to Sir John French, would have had to give 
 some reason for his action in relegating me to the 
 command of the Reserve Squadron, it must be 
 evident that the reason was one adverse to myself, 
 and was doubtless couched in much the same lan- 
 guage as the report made by him to General Scobell 
 just referred to. In fact, although General Scobell 
 did not tell me so, it is more than probable that 
 it was he who gave Sir John French the verbal 
 report which he had received from Colonel Graham, 
 and which, as stated, was incorrect. These secret 
 verbal reports are irregular and subversive of all 
 order. Until I heard the fact at the trial in 1914, 
 I never suspected that any report at all had been 
 made in June to Sir John French by Colonel Graham, 
 or by Major-General Scobell. 
 
 I took over temporary command of the Reserve 
 Squadron, and things went on in their ordinary 
 course. October came, when it would be necessary 
 for the commanding officer to render his annual 
 confidential reports upon the officers under his 
 command. The procedure to be observed has been 
 already given in detail. (See pp. 28, 29.) 
 
 The reports had to be rendered early in October, 
 and I well remember, while some of us were chatting 
 over the ante-room fire after Mess one evening 
 towards the end of the month, one of the senior 
 captains (who lately gave up command of the regi- 
 ment) saying : " Well, after all, no matter how the 
 Colonel may abuse us to our faces, he hasn't sent in 
 any bad reports on us, or we should have heard of 
 it before now." This was the general opinion of
 
 44 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 all the officers ; which only shows how very little 
 any of us understood either Colonel Graham or 
 Major-General Scobell. 
 
 On the morning of the nth November, 1906, an 
 orderly handed me an envelope marked " Confi- 
 dential " which upon opening I found to contain a 
 memorandum from the headquarter office. I read 
 it very carefully. It was a short document, type- 
 written on blue paper, addressed to me. This 
 memorandum was the first intimation I received 
 that any record or report had been made of any 
 fault having been found with me by any one in any 
 way whatsoever.* It was sent to me some five 
 weeks after the reports of Colonel Graham and 
 General Scobell had been received and considered, 
 and in fact the memorandum stated that General 
 Scobell's report (which, with Colonel Graham's 
 report, I should have seen before they were rendered) 
 was the cause of its being addressed to me. The 
 wording of the memorandum was in substance as 
 
 * See the trial of Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 67)— Mr Duke: 
 " Down to, first of all, the nth November, 1906, did any officer of any 
 rank, find any fault with your performance of your regimental duties, 
 or with your conduct either as an officer or as a man ? " Major Adam : 
 " No." Mr Duke: " On the nth November, did the adjutant of the 
 regiment produce to you a memorandum from the office of the General 
 Officer Commanding-in-Chief ? " Major Adam : "He sent it round to 
 me by a corporal." Mr Justice Darling : " It was closed, the corporal 
 did not know what was in it ? " Major Adam : " No." Mr Justice 
 Darung : "What was in the report?" Major Adam: "It was a 
 memorandum from the head-quarter office." Mr Duke : " Did it notify 
 you that on account of an unfavourable report rendered upon you by 
 the officer commanding the brigade, he would be unable to recommend 
 you for promotion ? " Major Adam : " Yes, those were General French's 
 words ; that is, to the best of my recollection." Mr Duke : " That was 
 the effect of it ? " Major Adam : " Yes." Mr Duke : " I call for the 
 document." (Conversation between Mr Duke and Sir John Simon). Mr 
 Duke : " I am told that it is not produced as it cannot be found." (Sensa- 
 tion in Court.)
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 45 
 
 follows : — " Owing to an unfavourable Report upon 
 Major W. A. Adam, 5th Lancers, rendered by the 
 General Officer Commanding the 1st Cavalry Brigade, 
 the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Alder- 
 shot, regrets that he will be unable to recommend 
 that officer for promotion." 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 After careful perusal of the memorandum, the 
 four following points were clear : — 
 
 (1) General Scobell had omitted to comply 
 with the King's Regulations.* 
 
 (2) There was no intimation whatever in the 
 memorandum that any report on the subject had 
 been, or was going to be, rendered to the War Office. 
 
 (3) As I had only been promoted to the rank of 
 Major in the previous year (19th February, 1905), 
 some years probably must elapse before I needed to 
 think of further promotion or the necessity of any 
 recommendation for it. 
 
 (4) As my regiment had then been more than 
 two years at Aldershot, and would probably be 
 
 *" When the officer who, in accordance with para. 203, first renders 
 the report, considers it necessary to record any fault which affects an 
 officer's character as an officer or a gentleman, or his fitness for his present 
 position, or for promotion to a higher one, the particulars of the adverse 
 report are, when practicable, to be read to him and a copy handed to 
 him by the general commanding the brigade or other officer to whom the 
 report is rendered, who shall at the same time communicate any points 
 which may have come under his observation. If the officer unfavourably 
 reported on is not present at the time of the inspection, the above par- 
 ticulars are to be communicated to him by letter. A note will be made 
 on the report that these instructions have been duly attended to, or an 
 explanation furnished when they have not been carried out. If the result 
 of the report is considered by the Army Council to prejudice the officer's 
 chances of further promotion, he will be so informed. Similar procedure 
 will be followed in the case of adverse reports other than those made in 
 the annual confidential reports." — The King's Regulations for the Army, 
 1904, para. 214.)
 
 46 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 leaving that station (as it did) the following year, it 
 was practically impossible that the General Officer 
 Commanding-in-Chief at Aldershot would ever be 
 asked to recommend me for promotion. 
 
 I concluded therefore that there was no great 
 need of haste in dealing with the situation. There 
 was a note by the Adjutant upon the envelope, 
 asking me to return the document to the bearer, 
 which I did without taking an exact copy, for of 
 course I had no idea then that this memorandum 
 was the commencement of a case which would last 
 for many years, and occupy the time of both Parlia- 
 ment and the Law Courts. After some consideration 
 I decided that the best course for me to pursue was 
 to submit an official application to the commanding 
 officer, asking to see his and the Brigadier's reports, 
 at the same time pointing out that the King's 
 Regulations (1904), para 214, had not been complied 
 with. 
 
 I wrote out my official application, which I took 
 (nth November, 1906) to the Orderly Room, 
 attaching it to the memorandum of the General 
 Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Aldershot Command.* 
 In this application I referred to the memorandum as 
 " the attached report," meaning thereby the report 
 of Sir John French to me. Had it ever occurred to 
 me that my use of the word " report " as a more 
 
 *For the same reason that I kept no copy of the memorandum, I 
 kept no copy of my application. The original has been in possession of 
 the Army Council since 1906, and was produced by them at the trial of 
 Adam v. Ward in 1914. If they could produce my application, they could 
 have produced the official memorandum to which the application referred. 
 When this application was produced, it had been attached underneath 
 to a long type-written document. This, it was stated, was a report by 
 Sir John French to the War Office which I have never seen, and of the 
 very existence of which I was first made aware in 191 1. (See pp. 95, 
 96 note.)
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 47 
 
 respectful term than that of " memorandum " would 
 ever have been employed against me for what appears 
 to have been an ulterior purpose, I should have 
 been careful to make the wording of my application 
 clearer. Upon receipt of my application Colonel 
 Graham summoned me to the Orderly Room, and 
 having sent the Adjutant away, he became very 
 friendly and confidential, saying that he thought me 
 a very good officer and telling me that there was 
 really nothing detrimental to me in his report, and 
 that if I would withdraw my application he would 
 make it his especial care that nothing in the report 
 should have any prejudicial effect upon my future 
 career. I asked him to read the memorandum, 
 attached to my application, and pointed out to him 
 that there must have been some reason for this 
 communication sent to me by the General Officer 
 Commanding-in-Chief at Aldershot. He then 
 appealed to my feelings, and said that my applica- 
 tion would place him in a very unpleasant position. 
 Finally he asked me "as a friend and like a good 
 fellow " not to insist upon his sending on my applica- 
 tion. I had very good reasons to mistrust his sudden 
 cordiality and promises, and I told him that I must 
 insist upon my application going forward. Before 
 I left the Orderly Room I saw Colonel Graham write 
 an official minute to the Brigade Major requesting 
 that the report which he had rendered upon me 
 should be returned to him.* 
 
 After an interval of three or four weeks, on a 
 date between the 3rd and 6th December, the report 
 
 *In Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 386), Sir John Simon : " That 
 second entry which follows Major Adam's (application), is it signed by 
 Colonel Graham ? " Sir John French (looking at the document) : 
 " Yes."
 
 4 8 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 came back with an order that a certificate should 
 be attached to the effect that it had been communi- 
 cated to me. Colonel Graham sent for me to the 
 Orderly Room and showed me the report, which 
 was his own with some additional remarks by General 
 Scobell. Colonel Graham had written in his report 
 that he had placed me in command of the Reserve 
 Squadron, but gave no reason for so doing. This 
 he had evidently left to General Scobell, who had 
 written on the report " His Commanding Officer 
 has given him chance after chance and found him 
 quite impossible."* This statement must have been 
 given verbally by Colonel Graham to General Scobell. 
 It was not an expression of opinion on the part of 
 any one, but was a deliberate mis-statement of fact, 
 made by Colonel Graham, recorded and rendered 
 to superior authority by General Scobell. That it 
 was untrue can be vouched for by every officer, 
 non-commissioned officer and man in the regiment 
 at that time.f I told Colonel Graham that I desired 
 to appeal against this report, which was very unjust 
 and, as I pointed out to him, false not only in spirit 
 but in letter. Again Colonel Graham repeated all 
 the methods of persuasion which he had used some 
 
 *See Truth of 25th February, 1914. In June, 1912, when 
 Sir William Franklyn showed me {see p. 107) what purported to be this 
 report, either the last five words had been deleted and three others (" per- 
 haps too many ") substituted for them, or the report had been made out 
 in duplicate with this difference. f According to the sworn evidence 
 
 at the trial of Adam v. Ward, the Sergeant-Major of the Squadron stated : 
 " During the whole time that Major Adam was in command of the Squad- 
 ron [i.e., considerably over a year), I never once heard Lt. -Colonel Graham 
 find fault with him or the Squadron either directly or indirectly. Had 
 he done so, I could not have helped knowing of it on account of my 
 position. I have twenty years' service, and I have never known a 
 Squadron better instructed or better led than during the time that Major 
 Adam was in command." This statement was endorsed by all the officers 
 of the Squadron.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 49 
 
 three weeks previously, but in vain.' Before I left 
 the Orderly Room, he had reluctantly promised me 
 that he would " see the Brigadier about it." It 
 was on this occasion that he recorded on the report 
 that it had been shown to me. What happened to 
 my appeal I do not know, but from subsequent 
 correspondence with the War Office I have strong 
 suspicions of its fate.* 
 
 Some days before the time at which I at Alder- 
 shot was appealing against a false report which I had 
 only just then seen, the Army Council, f in triple 
 violation of the Kings Regulations ,% acting upon 
 another report of which I knew nothing, were 
 despatching from London a letter containing an 
 order to give me the coup de grace. 
 
 This letter, dated the 1st December, ordering 
 me under threat of most dire punishment to resign 
 my commission, was handed to me within a week of 
 my last interview on the subject with Colonel 
 Graham, which has been related above. The letter 
 stated that the Army Council had reached their 
 decision to call upon me to resign my commission 
 " after full consideration of the circumstances of 
 the case." Subsequent War Office letters {e.g. 
 those of the 21st March, 191 1,§ and of the 2nd 
 October, 1915H), together with other disclosures and 
 admissions made by the military authorities as time 
 went on, show that nine years later " the circum- 
 stances of the case " had not yet become known to 
 
 *See p. 93, et seq. }&t this time the Secretary of State for War 
 was Mr Haldane, and the four Military Members were Sir Neville Lyttelton, 
 Lt.-General Douglas, Sir William Nicholson, and Sir James Wolfe-Murray. 
 I (1) Unfavourable reports of two successive years were required to 
 justify their action. {King's Regs., 1904, para. 204). (2) The report should 
 have been shown to me. {King's Regs., 1904, para. 214). (3) I should 
 have been previously warned if chance of promotion was affected. {King's 
 Regs., 1904, para. 214.) §5ee p. 94. \\See p. 158.
 
 50 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the Army Council. Reason asks how they could 
 have received " full consideration " nine years 
 previously. 
 
 At the trial of Adam v. Ward, in 1914, Sir John 
 Simon, the Attorney General, contended that the 
 first two lines of this letter (" With reference to 
 your letter of the 3rd ultimo ") informed me of a 
 report made upon me by Sir John French. This is 
 not so. In the first place, no mention is made in 
 the letter of any report, the communication in ques- 
 tion being called a letter. In the second place, the 
 Army Council's letter was addressed to Sir John 
 French, not to me. In the third place, if, as the 
 Attorney-General was contending, Sir John French's 
 report had been communicated to me on the 8th 
 November, there would have been no necessity to 
 inform me of it on the 1st December ; and in the 
 fourth place, General Scobell's report, which I had 
 seen only a few days before, and whose terms would 
 have justified the allusion made in the first two 
 lines of the War Office letter of the 1st December, 
 would have been rendered through Sir John French, 
 would thus have become Sir John French's report 
 or letter, and would have been referred to as such 
 by the Army Council. In fact a reference to it in 
 any other form would have been highly irregular. 
 I had no suspicion that any other report* except 
 General Scobell's had been rendered, nor had I any 
 grounds for such suspicion. 
 
 On the receipt of the Army Council's letter, on 
 or about the 9th December, 1906, recognizing that 
 
 ♦The fact that any report had been rendered by Sir John French 
 is first mentioned on the 21st March, 191 1 (see p. 95). General Scobell 
 did not know of any such report. He went to the War Office (see p. 51) 
 to cancel his own report. He could not have gone there to cancel the 
 report of an officer senior to himself.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 51 
 
 some serious error had been committed, I went at 
 once to see General Scobell, and found that he was 
 on leave till that evening. I called again about 
 eight o'clock, and found the General at home. I 
 told him of the order to resign which I had received, 
 and he appeared greatly upset. I believe he was 
 genuinely distressed, and when I upbraided him 
 with having written an unfair and incorrect report 
 and with having sent it in without my knowledge, 
 and told him that I should leave no stone unturned 
 to establish the truth, he became very much alarmed 
 and extremely agitated. For the sake of a man who 
 has passed away from this world, I do not desire to 
 record all the details of this painful interview, though 
 I shall never forget them, but I shall merely say that 
 he asked my forgiveness, and assured me over and 
 over again that he had never intended (see Note B 
 at end of this Chapter) or thought for one moment, 
 that anything he had written should have had such 
 a result. Finally, he promised me that he would go 
 to the War Office* the following morning and do 
 all he could to set things right. He asked me to 
 say nothing to anybody on the subject, but to come 
 and see him the following evening at seven o'clock, 
 which I promised to do. 
 
 When I called the following evening, I found 
 
 *An independent account of General Scobell's visit to the War 
 Office is found in a letter written to me in 1914 by a General who was 
 on the Headquarters' Staff at the War Office in 1906, to congratulate 
 me upon the result of the trial of Adam v. Ward. After a graphic account 
 of what he calls " a stormy interview," he says that General Scobell 
 " got very angry and dashed out of the Office, saying he would go and 
 see the Chief of the General Staff — which he did." He closes his letter 
 thus — " Looking back on the interview, I feel sure that Scobell was 
 very much put out at your having been called upon to resign, and never 
 imagined for a moment that his report would have had so untoward 
 a result." Yours sincerely ....
 
 52 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the General a changed man, no longer alarmed or 
 distressed. He greeted me smilingly and said that 
 he had had a satisfactory interview with the Chief 
 of the Staff, had taken steps to " ensure that his 
 report should have no deleterious effect upon my 
 career," that the order sent to me to retire would 
 be cancelled, and that I would at once receive a 
 probationary appointment upon the Headquarter 
 General Staff. The General advised me to go on 
 leave pending the notice of my appointment. I 
 thanked him cordially, thinking the whole matter 
 was finally settled in a satisfactory manner. On 
 the 14th December I went on leave. Having heard 
 nothing, and being desirous to play in the annual 
 tennis tournament at Cannes, I wrote to Scobell 
 in January, and on the 14th of that month received 
 his reply confirming the situation. The Army 
 Council's letter, ordering me to take up my appoint- 
 ment is dated the 8th February, 1907, and a few 
 days afterwards I entered upon my duties at the 
 War Office. I was definitely confirmed in my 
 appointment to the General Staff some months 
 later, viz., 3rd August, 1907. 
 
 In April of that year General Julian Byng 
 succeeded General Scobell in command of the First 
 Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot, and in May General 
 Scobell was appointed Inspector General of Cavalry 
 on the Staff of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, 
 then Inspector General of the Forces. 
 
 At the beginning of September I received from 
 Colonel Graham a copy of a report upon myself, 
 which, he said, he was rendering to the Brigadier, 
 First Cavalry Brigade. As I had been already 
 seconded for service on the Staff, and my name 
 therefore was not borne on the strength of my
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 53 
 
 regiment, Colonel Graham had no right or reason 
 to send in any report at all upon me. I thought 
 at the time it was somewhat strange, but supposed 
 that he remembered what had happened the year 
 before, and wished to be on the safe side this time. 
 The document was a colourless one, and indeed 
 to my mind a meaningless one. It merely stated 
 that I " had been absent from the regiment on the 
 Staff during the past year, and that Colonel Graham 
 had nothing to add to his previous report of 1906," 
 which, written on the same sheet of paper as General 
 Scobell's report of that year, was the one about 
 which the latter had assured me in the previous 
 December that he had " taken steps to ensure 
 that it should have no deleterious effect upon my 
 future career." I sent the copy of the report back 
 to Colonel Graham, as he asked me to, and wrote 
 to him in a friendly way, telling him that I was 
 getting on famously at the War Office, and hoping 
 that he and all were flourishing, etc.* 
 
 I little knew what had been happening at Alder- 
 shot, though I had begun to hear rumours that all 
 was not well with the regiment. In fact one of my 
 brother-officers in a letter which I had recently 
 received had hinted that he would not be surprised 
 if some of the men were to cut up their saddlery, 
 the time-honoured fashion which, in extreme cases 
 of mutiny, cavalry troops adopt to express their 
 disapproval of authority, f As I had been away 
 
 *This report of Colonel Graham's went in the ordinary course of 
 routine to General Byng, who, as I learned from Sir William Franklyn 
 in 1912, wrote officially upon it that he knew nothing of Major Adam, 
 and had never seen him (See pp. 107 and 124, Note 2.) fThere had been 
 a case of this twelve years before at Aldershot in General Scobell's old 
 regiment in the very Squadron which he, then a Captain, commanded. 
 The matter had been condoned, and Captain Scobell permitted to remain 
 
 in the Service.
 
 54 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 from the regiment for such a long time, I had, 
 however, no personal knowledge of what was going 
 on, nor did I suspect that anything untoward was 
 about to happen, much less that anything was going 
 to happen, or indeed could happen, to me personally. 
 
 One morning about the middle of October, 1907, 
 on arriving at the War Office, I found upon my 
 table a small official envelope containing a slip of 
 yellow paper from the Adjutant of my regiment 
 at Aldershot saying that " on account of further 
 unfavourable reports " the Army Council* had 
 decided to place the five following officers of the 
 5th Lancers on half pay. Here followed the names 
 of the Major, Second-in-Command, two other Majors 
 (i.e., three Majors out of a total establishment of 
 four) of which I was one, the senior Captain and 
 another Captain of the regiment. 
 
 Here again in 1907, as in 1906, no attempt was 
 made by the military authorities to comply with 
 para. 214 of the King's Regulations, 1904 (see Note 
 on p. 45). At this time I had only heard of two 
 reports, one, the combined report of Colonel Graham 
 and General Scobell in 1906, of which Sir John French 
 had told me, which I had seen upon application 
 two months after it was rendered, which I had at 
 once appealed against, and which a few days later 
 General Scobell had personally led me to believe 
 was finally cancelled ; the other, Colonel Graham's 
 colourless report in 1907. 
 
 As may be imagined, I was greatly surprised 
 at this extraordinary and illegitimate action of the 
 Army Council, of which I had had no warning, 
 
 ♦At this time the Secretary of State for War was Mr Haldane, and the 
 four Military Members were Sir Neville Lyttelton, Sir Charles Douglas, 
 Sir William Nicholson, Major-General Hadden.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 55 
 
 and for which I could divine no reason. I imme- 
 diately wrote out an official application asking 
 that, in accordance with para. 214 of the King's 
 Regulations {see Note on p. 45) I might be shown the 
 " unfavourable reports " referred to in the official 
 communication, and also those previous unfavour- 
 able reports to which the word " further " applied. 
 I submitted this application officially through my 
 General, Sir Spencer Ewart, the Director of Military 
 Operations, and on the following day I was sent for 
 by the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Neville 
 Lyttelton, with whose private secretary I had a 
 long interview. This officer told me that the Army 
 Council had taken their decision, that they would 
 give no reason for it, and that if I pressed my applica- 
 tion (the justice of which he admitted), the only 
 result would be that I should be deprived of my 
 Staff appointment. In view of this attitude of the 
 Army Council, I had no other course left open to 
 me but to consent under protest to the withdrawal 
 of my application, and the private secretary tore it 
 up and put it on the fire. The following day I told 
 Sir Spencer Ewart what I had been forced to do, 
 and he said that being placed on half-pay would 
 make no difference to me as far as he was concerned ; 
 that I had four years at the War Office before me ; 
 that much might happen in four years ; that " once 
 on the Staff always on the Staff " was an old adage 
 of the Service in which there was much truth ; that, 
 not being on the list of my regiment to which I might 
 automatically revert in the intervals of Staff service, 
 the military authorities would feel bound to find 
 me continuous employment ; and that, if all went 
 well, he would recommend me for promotion when 
 my period upon his Staff expired. As the result of
 
 56 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 this interview with my General, I was lulled into a 
 sense of false security, and into the belief that this 
 action of the Army Council, which I recognised as 
 carried out in violation of the Kings Regulations, 
 would on the whole be beneficial to me. Expecting 
 that it would be recognized that for the sake of my 
 regiment I had consented to waive my right of 
 complaint, I decided to await the blow in silence. 
 
 The blow came when, on the 2nd November, 1907, 
 the announcement appeared in the Gazette that five 
 of the senior officers of the 5th Lancers had been 
 placed upon half-pay. 
 
 As was to be expected, the announcement created 
 a considerable scandal, and was a mystery even to 
 the officers concerned. It did my regiment a great 
 deal of unnecessary harm in the eyes of the public, 
 who naturally resent being kept in the dark upon 
 public matters, especially where injustice to indi- 
 viduals is suspected*. 
 
 There was a great outcry in the public Press, 
 and many conjectures, all equally groundless, were 
 put forward. The only paper that on the whole 
 correctly diagnosed the case was Truth, which in a 
 series of masterly articles, extending over a period 
 of more than nine years, has exposed the violation 
 of the King's Regulations and the injustice which 
 the Army Council committed, and has fixed the 
 blame on those originally responsible, General Scobell 
 
 ♦The announcement caused many unpleasant incidents in the regi- 
 ment, Colonel Graham being insulted by the officers, and booed by the men. 
 The sworn evidence, independently collected by members of the regiment, 
 amply proves the opinion of the 5th Lancers on the case. Space permits 
 only one example : " I wish to state that I know all the officers who were 
 placed upon half pay, and, in my opinion, they were worthy of their 
 cloth and position. Perhaps the public would be surprised if they knew 
 how one man can ruin a whole regiment and escape the punishment he 
 justly deserves."
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 57 
 
 and Colonel Graham.* I was visited daily at the 
 War Office by journalists, all wanting to know the 
 reason for this extraordinary action taken by the 
 Army Council. To one and all I truthfully gave the 
 same reply, namely, that I did not know. 
 
 In a short time the outcry became so great that 
 the Army Council felt compelled to publish in the 
 Press an official communique, which is in its way 
 quite a remarkable document, f Although exceedingly 
 short, it contains one damaging admission, two 
 falsehoods, and confessions of at least two acts of 
 injustice. The admission is contained in the ex- 
 pression " this cavalry regiment," thereby showing 
 that the alleged unsuitability was the personal 
 opinion of one individual Commanding Officer 
 (Colonel Graham). The first falsehood as to the 
 character of the officers was subsequently admitted 
 to be such by Mr Haldane himself in a public official 
 pronouncement. The second falsehood, that the 
 regiment was not inefficient to take the field, was 
 subsequently sworn to be such by the very man, 
 Sir John French, from whom the Army Council had 
 derived the statement upon which their communique" 
 
 *The dates of these articles are 13th and 20th November, 4th, nth 
 and 1 8th December, 1907; further articles on the case appeared in the 
 same journal on 4th November and 16th December, 1908 ; 10th, 17th, 
 and 31st March, 1909; 23rd March, 16th July, and 10th August, 1910 ; 
 25th February and 4th March, 1914 ; 17th March, 1915 ; and 28th March,' 
 1917. 
 
 t THE 5TH LANCERS. 
 
 " We are informed by the War Office that the recent action of the 
 Army Council in placing five officers of the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers on 
 half-pay was not due to any cause detrimental to the character of those 
 officers. Though they were not considered suitable to retain their posi- 
 tions as officers in this cavalry regiment, their services can be, and in 
 three cases are being, utilized in other appointments. The regiment is 
 not inefficient to take the field." (The Times, 2nd December, 1907). 
 
 B
 
 5 8 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 was based.* If the cause of the removal was as the 
 Army Council stated, all five officers should in 
 common justice have been offered extra-regimental 
 employment before any penal steps were taken 
 against them. Two were already employed in 
 positions of limited tenure, one was given similar 
 employment, the other two, though equally deserv- 
 ing, received no consideration, either then or since. 
 
 Each of my four brother-officers protested both 
 officially and unofficially against their treatment, 
 declaring that the reports were incorrect and illegiti- 
 mately rendered, the only result being that in one 
 case at any rate, and probably in another, further 
 penal action was taken by the Army Council against 
 the individual who had complained. 
 
 The injustice suffered by my four brother-officers 
 will be evident from their correspondence. 
 
 Captain W. wrote : "On the 17th December, 
 1906, I received from a junior officer of the regiment 
 a copy of an undated report by Colonel Graham. 
 I was not then under Colonel Graham's command, 
 as I was serving on the Staff at York, where I had 
 been for nearly a year. Colonel Graham's report 
 was a lie."f 
 
 *Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 394). Sir John French (on oath) : 
 " It was not my opinion that it (the 5th Lancers) was efficient to take the 
 field." Mr Duke : " That was not your opinion ? " Sir John French : 
 " No." -j-The developments of Captain Ws case are instructive. This 
 officer appealed to the King for justice, and by chance the circumstances 
 were published in The Daily Mail, whereupon the Army Council deprived 
 Captain W of his Staff appointment. He had previously been deprived 
 of his regiment. On the 14th July, 1910, Mr Haldane, speaking on the 
 case in the House of Commons, said : " The position in which Captain W 
 now finds himself is the direct outcome of his disregard for the regulations 
 of the Army." The sophistry of this statement was easily exposed at 
 the trial of Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 50) when Counsel for the Plaintiff 
 showed how a pretended breach of the Regulations committed in January, 
 1908, could not have had anything to do with the Army Council's action 
 in placing Captain Won half-pay in November, 1907. The Judge concurred.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 59 
 
 Captain X wrote : " I did not see the Report 
 or have a copy of it. I received my report of 1907 
 after applying for it." 
 
 Major Y wrote : " I did not get a copy of my 
 confidential report." 
 
 Major Z wrote : "In 1906 I heard nothing what- 
 ever about my confidential report from either the 
 Colonel or the Brigadier. I never saw what that 
 report said until November or December of 1907, 
 some time after I had been put on half-pay, and 
 while I was struggling to get what I considered 
 justice from the War Office. They merely ignore 
 one's statements, and state that facts occurred which 
 did not, etc." 
 
 Notwithstanding all the strenuous efforts of the 
 War Office to hush up the matter, the scandal did 
 not die, and some months later questions began to 
 be asked in the House of Commons, to which Mr 
 Haldane replied in ponderous accents, delivering 
 sententious and carefully worded misleading state- 
 ments about the matter.* 
 
 To me, personally at the time, the announcement 
 in the Gazette made no difference, for by the same 
 Gazette I was replaced on full pay and continued in 
 my appointment upon the General Staff of the Army. 
 
 *A few examples are given : " Full enquiry was made into these cases. 
 It is not considered necessary or advisable to make any further investiga- 
 tions into the matter " (23rd June, 1908) : " The whole circumstances 
 have been considered by me personally as well as in consultation, and in 
 my opinion and that of my military advisers it would not be in the interests 
 of the army or the public to," etc., etc. (30th July, 1908) : *' These 
 adverse reports were in every instance communicated to the officers 
 concerned" (29th October, 1908.). In response to Mr Nield's request 
 for a Court of Inquiry on the case, Mr Haldane replied : " The object 
 of convening a Court of Inquiry is to assist superior officers in eliciting 
 information on any subject of an intricated or disputed nature. In the 
 case in question there are, in the opinion of the Army Council, no grounds 
 for an Inquiry" (29th October, 1908.).
 
 60 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 The only thing I did in the matter about this time 
 was to take the precaution to secure, upon what was 
 the best authority, an independent statement of 
 the facts of the case, in so far as they were known. 
 I wrote to the Sergeant Major of the Squadron which 
 I had lately commanded, and asked him if he would 
 care to put what he knew of the matter into writing. 
 He did so and his statement (see Note 2 on p. 48) 
 forms a complete refutation of the report rendered 
 by Colonel Graham and General Scobell. I sub- 
 mitted a copy of this document to the officers of my 
 late Squadron, who each corroborated the facts 
 stated, and expressed his willingness to give evidence 
 to that effect at any Court of Inquiry (see p. 68) 
 that might be held. 
 
 The date of the statement (York, 26th January, 
 1908) shows that it was written at a time when the 
 violence of the Press agitation had somewhat abated. 
 Neither was I then in a position to bring any personal 
 or official pressure to bear either upon the writer of 
 the statement, or upon any of the officers who had 
 offered to come forward, when called upon, to corro- 
 borate the facts stated. 
 
 After my abortive attempt, in October, 1907, to 
 obtain justice through the official channel, I made 
 no further protest, but I took the earliest oppor- 
 tunity of placing the true facts of the case before 
 Major-General Cooke, who was our Colonel-in-Chief, 
 and had previously commanded the 17th Lancers. 
 He had had some personal experience of Colonel 
 Graham, and endeavoured, though in vain, to obtain 
 justice for the officers without increased scandal 
 such as further publicity would have caused. An 
 account of General Cooke's action on my own behalf 
 is given later (see p. 63.).
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 61 
 
 Everyone at the War Office was particularly 
 friendly to me, and, as time passed, I came to think 
 that the affair would do me no professional injury, 
 and that the outcry in the Press would lead, if indeed 
 it had not already led, to the fixing of the blame upon 
 those really responsible, Colonel Graham and General 
 Scobell. I was confirmed in this belief by what 
 happened to both these officers shortly afterwards 
 during the drill season of that year, 1908. 
 
 In September, 1907, my regiment had been moved 
 to York, and, in 1908, was sent south under com- 
 mand of Colonel Graham to participate in combined 
 Brigade manoeuvres, carried out by the 2nd Cavalry 
 Brigade under General Fanshawe, and the 4th 
 Cavalry Brigade under General Allenby, the whole 
 under command of the latter officer. What happened 
 at those manoeuvres is common knowledge, for at 
 the close of them General Allenby, with the approval, 
 and in the presence, of General Fanshawe, and before 
 all the assembled officers of the two Cavalry Bri- 
 gades, in no measured terms censured Lt. -Colonel 
 Graham for his incapacity either to lead the regi- 
 ment, or to carry out the orders which were given 
 him. In conclusion, General Allenby stated that 
 he would forward to the War Office a report to that 
 effect. 
 
 A somewhat similarly painful scene was enacted 
 at the close of the Divisional Cavalry manoeuvres 
 held a little later in the same year, when Sir John 
 French, who was Director-in-Chief of the manoeuvres, 
 officially censured General Scobell in front of all the 
 cavalry officers of the Division, telling him at the 
 same time that he would forward to the War Office 
 a report to the effect that in his opinion General 
 Scobell was incapable of commanding a Division
 
 62 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 and unfitted for his post as Inspector-General of 
 Cavalry. General Scobell immediately resigned his 
 appointment. Thus it came about in both cases 
 that what all officers of the 5th Lancers had known 
 about Colonel Graham, and all officers of the Cavalry 
 Brigade about General Scobell, in 1905, namely, 
 that they were both inefficient, came to the official 
 knowledge of the Army Council for the first time in 
 the autumn of 1908. 
 
 Very shortly after this both Colonel Graham and 
 General Scobell were transferred to Africa ; Colonel 
 Graham to Sierra Leone to command a West African 
 regiment of native infantry* ; General Scobell to 
 Cape Town to command troops, consisting of one 
 battalion of infantry and a few garrison gunners. 
 
 Unfortunately the departure of Colonel Graham 
 had not been early enough to prevent the resigna- 
 tion of one of the smartest officers of the regiment, 
 who had been transferred to us from the 17th Lancers, 
 when that regiment went to India, and who had 
 succeeded Captain Willcox in the Adjutancy of the 
 5th. The reason that Colonel Graham took a dislike 
 to him was that he had been a friend of Captain W, 
 and had refused to put the latter officer into 
 Coventry, as Colonel Graham had officially ordered 
 the officers of the regiment to do. When I saw 
 Captain M's resignation in the Gazette, I wrote to 
 say how sorry I was, and his reply! shows the state 
 
 ♦Some time afterwards an officer of this West African regiment told 
 me that Colonel Graham made his first year of command memorable by- 
 reporting adversely upon seventeen officers of the regiment. 
 
 f'MY Dear Adam. " llth Se P<- l< *° 8 - 
 
 " Very many thanks indeed for your letter. Yes, I am out of it. 
 Graham was too much for me, and some one has given me away [Captain 
 M had been seen at a theatre with Captain W. — This was contrary to 
 Colonel Graham's order to put Captain W in Coventry], but I have hopes 
 of finding out who it is. I must try to find a job now," etc., etc.
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 63 
 
 to which Colonel Graham had brought the regiment. 
 
 I had on several previous occasions been recom- 
 mended for the post of Military Attache in Paris, 
 as many recognized that my long acquaintance with 
 France and the French Army would stand me in 
 good stead in such a position. Lord Kitchener him- 
 self had recommended me for the post in 1901, but 
 his recommendation had arrived too late from South 
 Africa. In 1909 the post was again about to be 
 vacant, and I determined to apply for it. A great 
 friend of mine put my wishes before Mr Haldane, 
 who told him that he saw no obstacle to my appoint- 
 ment, and advised an official application. I sent 
 one in, and felt sure that this time my application 
 would be successful. To my disappointment my 
 request was not considered by the Chief of the 
 General Staff (Sir William Nicholson)* with whom 
 the final recommendation lay. Although actually 
 serving at the War Office, I was unable to discover 
 any reason for this refusal, and Sir Spencer Ewart who 
 had forwarded my application confessed that he 
 too was unable to account for it. I then began to 
 realize for the first time that it was possible that the 
 real facts of the trouble with Colonel Graham and 
 General Scobell were not known to the military 
 authorities, and if that were so, it was possibly a 
 reason for the existence of some prejudice against 
 my appointment. 
 
 I put the matter before Major-General Cooke 
 (see p. 60) who during the past eighteen months 
 had become one of my warmest friends. He offered 
 at once to see Sir John French and endeavour to 
 have the mystery cleared up. This he did, but all 
 
 *On the 2nd April, 1908, Sir William Nicholson had succeeded Sir 
 Neville Lyttelton as Chief of the General StafT
 
 64 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 his endeavours either by interview or correspondence 
 were of no avail.* After some time he and I agreed 
 that I should submit an official application for the 
 reconsideration of the whole case and for my re- 
 instatement upon full pay. 
 
 Accordingly, in October, 1909, with the help of 
 the Colonel under whom I worked at the War Office, 
 I submitted an application to this effect. This 
 document was submitted through, and by, Sir 
 Spencer Ewart, who kindly gave me the privilege 
 of his advice as to its final revision. The applica- 
 tion came before Sir William Nicholson, who 
 refused to grant it, saying that the case had been 
 carefullv considered. 
 
 I was preparing to pursue the matter further 
 through the official channel when rumours of an 
 approaching General Election came into circulation, 
 and as I was the Unionist Candidate for Woolwich, 
 I began to turn my thoughts into another direction. 
 If I should succeed in my election, nothing that had 
 happened to me professionally would matter in the 
 slightest degree, for I knew that I could hold what 
 I had won, and I should have lain down the sword 
 and donned the toga for ever. At the beginning 
 of the New Year I was elected Member of Parliament 
 for Woolwich by a majority of 295 over Mr Will 
 Crooks, the Labour Candidate, who had been 
 previously returned by a majority of 3,229, and 
 who had sat for Woolwich for seven years. But 
 as this event opened to me a new sphere of activity, 
 the ensuing events must be reserved for another 
 chapter. 
 
 *In the last letter which General Cooke sent me before his death 
 he wrote : " They all stand in with one another at the War Office, and 
 will not assign any reason for their action."
 
 THE STORM BURSTS. 65 
 
 NOTE B. (See page 51.) 
 
 (" THAT HE HAD NEVER INTENDED " . . .) 
 
 The following incident will go far towards establishing the truth 
 of this assertion. 
 
 It happened that in August, 1905, General Scobell was temporarily- 
 deprived of the services of his permanent A.D.C. and required a substitute 
 from the Brigade. A subaltern in my regiment undertook the duties. 
 Early in October this officer, whom I shall call Lieutenant S came to me 
 privately in my quarters and asked for my advice, as many of the junior 
 officers in the regiment were in the habit of doing. It appeared that 
 the annual confidential reports had been sent in to the General and had 
 been lying on his table in the Brigade Office for some time. One day, 
 prompted by a somewhat natural curiosity, Lieutenant S had, in the 
 General's absence, looked at the report rendered upon himself, and to 
 his surprise and distress saw that upon an otherwise good report General 
 Scobell had written, " This officer has a bad manner, and is unlikely ever 
 to make a good Staff Officer." On reading this, Lieutenant S was all 
 the more surprised as he had for many weeks been in daily personal 
 attendance upon General Scobell, who had always treated him on the most 
 friendly and familiar terms. The reports were ready to be sent on to the 
 Headquarters of the Aldershot Command, and it was evident that there 
 was no intention on the part of General Scobell to show his report to 
 Lieutenant S. Under these circumstances Lieutenant S asked me what 
 he had best do. I advised him to select some good opportunity, own up 
 to the General that he had glanced at his report, and ask him to be good 
 enough to reconsider what he had written, pointing out that it would 
 probably have a very serious effect upon his (i.e., Lieutenant S's) future 
 in the Service. He did so, and General Scobell laughingly and without 
 any hesitation wrote out another report, omitting all adverse comment. 
 General Scobell had evidently no intention of complying with, or evading, 
 para. 214 of the King's Regulations (1904). He was simply quite ignorant 
 of its existence. Nor did he intend to injure Lieutenant S in any way^ 
 in fact, as Lieutenant S told me afterwards, the General had no recollec- 
 tion of what he had written until his attention was called to it.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 (1910) 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRlA 
 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 
 In the right with two or three. — James Russell Lowell. 
 
 Woolwich is a large industrial and middle-class 
 Constituency, and my work, in 1910, as its Parlia- 
 mentary representative, was full of varied activity 
 and interest. I spoke in Parliament as soon as, 
 and whenever, I got the opportunity, and never 
 missed a sitting of the House. The new Parliament 
 met on the 15th February, and on the 7th March, 
 I made my maiden speech to a crowded House on 
 the subject of the unsatisfactory conditions under 
 which the Government employees worked in the 
 Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. For the purpose of 
 my narrative, however, I may limit the account 
 of my political activity to the part which I took in 
 bringing the case of my brother-officers and my 
 regiment before Parliament. 
 
 So many personal accusations have since been 
 levelled against me by unthinking people for the 
 part I took upon myself to play in this national 
 tragedy, that it may be well, in order to clear the 
 air, to pause for a moment at the beginning of 1910 
 and review my personal position at that moment. 
 
 A few days after my Election I received a charm- 
 ing letter of congratulation from my Chief at the 
 War Office, Sir Spencer Ewart, saying that, although
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRTA. 67 
 
 he had been unable for the moment to procure me 
 that step in promotion for which he had previously 
 promised to recommend me, he would keep my 
 case in mind, if he saw any opportunity of helping 
 me. A few days later I received information from 
 the War Office that a confidential report had been 
 rendered upon me by Sir Spencer Ewart after my 
 three years' work on the Headquarters Staff, and 
 that there was no occasion for me to see it, as 
 it was " most excellent in every way."* Now what 
 was my position, and had I at the commencement 
 of 1910 a personal grievance of any sort against 
 the Army Council ? 
 
 It is true, as we have seen, that, four years 
 previously, in my endeavours to secure a simple 
 measure of justice for one of the men of my own 
 Squadron, I had incurred the displeasure of my 
 Commanding Officer, who had since been trans- 
 ferred to a position on the West Coast of Africa 
 more suited to him than that of the command of an 
 English cavalry regiment. It is true that on account 
 of my action adverse reports had been rendered to 
 the War Office without my knowledge, and in 
 violation of the King's Regulations for the Army. 
 It is true that all this had caused me the most acute 
 sorrow some years previously, and that I should 
 never be able to forget the injustice which my 
 regiment, in which I had always taken, and still 
 take, the greatest pride, suffered at the hands of 
 the military authorities. All this is true, as no one 
 can deny. But it is also true that at the beginning 
 
 ♦At this time it was only adverse reports which had to be shown 
 to the officer concerned (see Note on p. 45). The Regulation that every 
 report, adverse or favourable, must be shown to the officer was only 
 introduced into the Army as the result of the 5th Lancers' case, in October, 
 1913-
 
 68 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 of 1910, looking at the case from the purely personal 
 point of view, there were other considerations which 
 outweighed the above, leaving me with no memory 
 of the personal wrong. In the first place I had 
 suffered no financial loss, I had been entrusted with 
 responsible duties upon the General Staff, which 
 my qualifications enabled me aptly and with pleasure 
 to fulfil. I had spent a hard but really interesting 
 three years at the War Office, and at its conclusion 
 had obtained a report which would ensure my 
 immediate re-employment on the Staff, should I 
 ever ask for further employment in the army. After 
 five years' hard political work, I had secured what 
 I had wished for, viz., a seat in the House of Commons 
 with the vista in front of me of a long political 
 career. My feelings at that time are well described 
 by the Military Secretary, Sir William Frankryn, 
 who referring to this period in his official Summary 
 of the case, made in 1912, wrote : " Major Adam 
 felt at peace with the world." 
 
 That was my attitude towards the case. I was 
 conscious that a great injustice had been done, but 
 all had come right as far as I was concerned, and 
 I was not the man to nurse the memory of a 
 grievance. 
 
 Of course it was a very different case with my 
 regiment and my brother-officers, who were still 
 suffering under a great injustice. As a public man, 
 who valued truth and justice high above all other 
 considerations, it was my duty to obtain for my 
 brother-officers an opportunity of giving regular 
 form to their protests before an impartial tribunal. 
 
 The ordinary way in the Service of clearing up 
 a difficulty of this sort is by a Court of Inquiry, 
 which has no executive power except to make a
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 69 
 
 report to superior authority within the terms of 
 reference. It is analogous, though of course in 
 lesser degree, to a Royal Commission appointed to 
 report to the Government of the day, upon any 
 matter on which the Government seeks information. 
 Courts of Inquiry are convened under the King's 
 Regulations for the Army, and are almost daily 
 incidents in army life. No complicated or little used 
 official machinery has to be set in motion. Courts 
 of Inquiry are frequent, simple and effective. I 
 made up my mind that it was my duty, as a Member 
 of Parliament, to obtain for my brother-officers a 
 Court of Inquiry, at which I should, if called upon, 
 be able to give evidence. As the circumstances of 
 the case were so palpably unjust, I did not anticipate 
 much difficulty in obtaining my request, when once 
 the circumstances were known to the Military 
 Authorities. When once a hearing had been granted, 
 I had no doubt whatever that my four brother- 
 officers would be reinstated in the regiment, especially 
 when it was taken into consideration that, since the 
 rupture had occurred, the two officers who had been 
 responsible for it, Colonel Graham and General 
 Scobell, had been removed from their commands. 
 As for myself, I could hope for no personal advan- 
 tage from any Court of Inquiry. I would have the 
 satisfaction of seeing removed the slur which had 
 been unworthily cast by Colonel Graham upon a 
 very gallant regiment, and I should have the further 
 satisfaction of knowing that I had done my duty, 
 but that would be the limit of my gain. By election 
 to the House of Commons I had placed myself upon 
 half-pay, and upon half-pay I should remain, for 
 at least five years. If during that time by any 
 unforeseen circumstance I should lose my seat in
 
 70 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the House, my excellent final confidential report 
 would give me immediate re-employment on the 
 Staff, and no result of any Court of Inquiry could 
 favour me more than I had at the time reason to 
 expect. 
 
 Having considered the whole case very carefully 
 de novo, and having made up my mind as to the path 
 of duty, I never wavered. The only matter for 
 further consideration was the best method in which 
 to proceed, so as to secure justice for my regiment 
 and for my brother-officers in the quietest manner 
 possible without doing injury to others. Several 
 methods suggested themselves to me, but what I 
 actually did was as follows : — 
 
 A few days after Parliament met in February 
 I sought a personal interview with the Secretary of 
 State for War, to whom I desired to appeal in order 
 to stop the ruthless discharges from Woolwich 
 Arsenal. At this interview I brought up the case of 
 the 5th Lancers, and, giving Mr Haldane the main 
 features of it, asked that something might be done 
 for Captain W and the other three officers, who had 
 been placed upon half-pay. Mr Haldane expressed 
 much plausible cordiality on the subject. He 
 alleged, however, that he was not conversant with all 
 the facts of the case, and was at first inclined to 
 treat the matter from the usual official standpoint 
 of the chose jugee. He told me, however, that if 
 any new evidence was forthcoming, it would receive 
 consideration, and finally promised that in any 
 event he would look into the matter and see what 
 could be done. I went away rather hopeful of 
 good results, but having waited ten days in vain 
 for any move on the part of the military authorities, 
 I thought it time to do something else.
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 71 
 
 Accordingly, I wrote to Colonel Milner, who had 
 been brought in from the Life Guards to command 
 the regiment, when Colonel Graham had been sent 
 to West Africa, and, briefly relating the facts of 
 which Colonel Milner had but slight knowledge, 
 asked him to apply officially for a private Inquiry 
 into the case. This in his official position Colonel 
 Milner could have easily done. His reply to my 
 letter is typical of the limitations of the military 
 mind, even when actuated by considerations of 
 honour in the ordinary affairs of life. He seemed to 
 think, and certainly there is every excuse for him, 
 that because he, the Colonel of the 5th Lancers, 
 was an honourable man, his predecessor could not 
 have made a culpable error.* He desired what 
 seemed to his limited horizon of view to be expedient, 
 and counselled me to " let sleeping dogs lie." Had 
 he taken a higher standard of conduct, the Army 
 Council could not very well have refused to accede 
 to his request ; all that further publicity, which 
 Colonel Milner dreaded, would have been avoided, 
 and justice might have been done to the regiment. 
 I replied stating that unless he could see his way 
 to ask for the Inquiry, or unless I could obtain it 
 in some other way, I should be forced to bring the 
 case before the House. In reply I received an angry 
 letter from him, refusing to make any move in the 
 case. He professed his inability to see that the 
 matter was one affecting the administration of the 
 
 ♦Colonel Milner wrote: "The insulting accusation of the Colonel 
 of the 5th Lancers having wilfully deceived those in authority, though 
 it is too ridiculous to affect the welfare of the regiment, will bring up its 
 name before the public again." Very different was the attitude of the 
 strong mind of Sir Edmund Allenby, when as Colouel-in-Chief of the 
 5th Lancers, he wrote to me in April, 1912 : "Dear Adam, I am glad 
 to hear that the Army Council are going into your case and that of the 
 Regiment." (The italics are mine.)
 
 72 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 whole army, and therefore of national importance, 
 and endeavoured to place upon my shoulders the 
 whole onus of the consequences. It is only too 
 true that most men can only see things which are 
 directly apparent ; they cannot take into considera- 
 tion what they see may be only the inevitable 
 effect derived from a cause to which they shut their 
 eyes, and leading to results in regard to which 
 they are equally blind. 
 
 On the afternoon of the same day, the 9th March, 
 upon which I received Colonel Milner's letter, I 
 introduced the case into my speech on the Army 
 Estimates in the House, without mentioning any 
 names. I had personally given Mr Haldane at our 
 interview in the previous month the main features 
 of the incident, and the guarded words I used in 
 addressing the House of Commons were fully 
 sufficient to enable the Secretary of State for War 
 to identify the case of the General to whom I alluded 
 as that of General Scobell.* 
 
 *I said : "A little time ago a general officer rendered reports on 
 officers under his command of a most prejudicial character, and those 
 reports contained not only statements of opinion, but statements also 
 of fact. For some reason or other, either wittingly or unwittingly, the 
 general officer had included in his report facts which had not really 
 occurred, and he had also stated that things had not occurred which had 
 actually occurred. These reports were rendered to superior authority 
 without being even shown to the officers, who were not warned in any way 
 that these reports were being rendered, and when, after a time, they 
 received word from the higher authority that these prejudicial reports 
 had come in, they naturally asked to see them. This was a request that 
 could not be refused, and, as soon as the reports were seen, some of the 
 officers appealed. But that appeal was suppressed by the very officer 
 who had rendered the reports. This and other questions have been 
 frequently brought to the notice of the Army Council, but the advice of 
 the first military member of the Army Council has always been that it 
 is better an injustice should be done to a few officers than that the Army 
 Council should stultify itself by reconsidering its decision. If the system 
 of confidential reporting has come to this, the sooner it is revised or 
 abolished altogether, the better it will be for the Army and for the Army 
 Council." (Hansard, 9th March, 1910, p. 1565.)
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 73 
 
 This speech, on the administration of the army, 
 was my second speech in Parliament, and attracted 
 a good deal of attention, especially from the Service 
 Members of the House and throughout the army. 
 It was gratifying to receive the congratulations of 
 my friends and constituents, and even of compara- 
 tive strangers. I received many letters from officers 
 of high rank, well-known in military and social 
 circles.* My speech was fairly well reported in the 
 daily Press, and many comments appeared in various 
 papers. Truth (23rd March, 1910) again published 
 an able article on the case, hitting fearlessly straight 
 from the shoulder. 
 
 As I had heard no more of Mr Haldane's promise 
 to me that he would look into the case, and as no 
 official notice had been taken of the expressly pointed 
 allusion in my speech of the 9th March, it became 
 incumbent upon me to make another move. Accord- 
 ingly after careful consideration I drafted a short 
 statement of the facts of the case (see p. 75 Note), 
 which I could substantiate by evidence on oath, 
 and, having done so, I showed it to a man for whose 
 opinion both professionally and socially I have 
 always entertained the highest regard, and I told 
 him that, if all other endeavours were vain, I was 
 prepared to read the statement to the House of 
 Commons. He agreed that the matter was one of 
 national importance to all those directly or indirectly 
 interested in the pure administration of the Army. 
 He approved of my taking every other step which 
 I suggested as possible to lead to a solution of the 
 
 *One is given as an example : " loth March, 1910. Allow me to 
 congratulate you on your able speech of last night, as, having served as 
 a regimental officer for twenty-eight years, I know well the curse of the 
 confidential report system, which is a scandal to our army."
 
 74 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 matter before I actually did what I was prepared 
 to do, and said that, as a man of honour, he was 
 unable to advise me not to bring the case, as a last 
 resort, before the House in some such manner as 
 I suggested. I promised him, however, before doing 
 so to take seriatim the two steps which held out 
 any hope of settlement. One was to send my 
 statement privately to Mr Haldane, and the other 
 was to send it to General Scobell. 
 
 Accordingly, on the 15th March, I wrote to Mr 
 Haldane, enclosing my statement, and asking for 
 his consideration. Mr Haldane refused to move 
 in the matter. On the receipt of Mr Haldane's 
 refusal, I sent the statement to General Scobell, 
 saying that I would await his reply. He could have 
 done his duty and sent the statement officially to 
 the War Office and asked for an Inquiry under the 
 King's Regulations. It was the identical statement 
 on which he took that very action a few months 
 later. If his honour was impugned by the statement 
 which he read in July it was equally impugned when 
 he received the statement in April. An accusation 
 is an accusation whenever it is made, and honour 
 is not a matter of dates. 
 
 No reply came from General Scobell, and at the 
 end of May I made up my mind to bring the matter 
 before the House of Comtiions. I had exhausted 
 every other effort, each of which had failed, and I 
 had to choose between the supreme effort or the 
 evasion of my duty. I never had a moment's doubt. 
 Out of consideration for others, I had taken all the 
 preliminary steps with cautious circumspection, but 
 now that the time had come for the final effort 
 I never hesitated out of consideration for myself. 
 For my action in bringing the matter before the
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 75 
 
 House I claim no special credit of any sort. I am 
 firmly convinced that any one of my fellow-citizens 
 endowed with ordinary honesty would have done 
 the same. 
 
 The opportunity came in June, when I again 
 addressed the House upon the subject of the Army 
 Estimates. On that occasion I spoke at consider- 
 able length, and gave a number of definite instances 
 where individual officers had suffered unjustly at 
 the hands of the Army Council. Among these I 
 instanced the case of Captain W, of my own regi- 
 ment, without naming the regiment, but naming 
 General Scobell. I read my short statement on 
 his case* to the House. Mr Haldane was in the 
 House when I began to speak and remained there 
 taking notes for a short time, but left as soon as I 
 began to criticise the Army Council's administration. 
 
 When the dinner-hour intervened, the Financial 
 Secretary of the War Office remained to guard the 
 interests of his Department. In a debate of this 
 sort one would expect an immediate reply from the 
 War Minister, but in a speech of some considerable 
 length, touching on all the other chief points which 
 had been raised in debate, Mr Haldane studiously 
 
 ♦Having mentioned that I had previously sent the statement to Mr 
 Haldane and to General Scobell, and that no move had been made either 
 by the latter or by the Army Council, I continued : '* The only way in 
 which I can benefit Captain W, even indirectly, is, I am advised, to 
 read that statement to the House. I have it type-written, so that there 
 may be no mistake, and that I may not be led away by rhetorical exaggera- 
 tion. It is as follows : 
 
 ' That Major-General H. J. Scobell, 5th Royal Irish Lancers, did 
 render to superior authority a confidential report, or confidential 
 reports, on an officer or officers under his command, which report 
 or reports contained wilful and deliberate mis-statement of fact, 
 thereby deceiving those in authority to whom the report or reports 
 were rendered, and causing injustice to be done to one of the regi- 
 ments under his command.' " (Hansard, 27th June, 1910, p. 763).
 
 76 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 avoided all reference to the explicit statement which 
 I had made about General Scobell. My speech 
 attracted much attention and was widely reported 
 in the Press, one of the great London Dailies devoting 
 a leading article to it. Comments and criticisms* 
 were numerous, and, with hardly any exception, 
 favourable. No reply, however, came from Mr 
 Haldane, and no move was made by the Army 
 Council. 
 
 I had actually begun to consider what my next 
 step should be, when late one night (13th July, 
 1910), without any previous warning to me or to 
 the House, Mr Haldane rose from his seat, and 
 asked permission to make a statement. The House 
 was crowded. It was nearly midnight, and I was 
 on the point of going home, when Mr Haldane rose. 
 He read his statement from a type-written sheet, f 
 The statement had been very carefully prepared, 
 and, if unchallenged, might have seriously misled 
 the public, J though it refrained from any personal 
 attack upon my professional character, such as the 
 Army Council made three weeks later in the Press. 
 
 *As examples, see Truth of 6th July and ioth August, 1910. 
 
 |For the analogous incident, see L' Affaire Dreyfus by J. Reinach 
 (Vol. n, p. 447) " Billot " (War Minister) " manceuvra tres habilement. 
 II monta a la tribune, des le debut de la seance, pour lire une declaration 
 dont chaque mot avait ete pese," etc. 
 
 Jin criticizing, for example, my statement, Mr Haldane said : " The 
 nature and dates of the reports, and the names of the officers reported on, 
 are not specified. Possibly the reason these particulars have not been 
 given is that the honourable and gallant Member is not acquainted with 
 them, and has based his charge on unverified rumours." (Hansard, 13th 
 July, 1910, p. 534). 
 
 " The honourable and gallant Member for Woolwich seems to think 
 that the removal of Captain W and other officers of the 5th Lancers to 
 half -pay was due to Major-General Scobell. He is quite mistaken. It 
 was due to the representations submitted to the Army Council in the
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. y 7 
 
 Mr. Haldane concluded his statement upon my 
 charge with the following words : "It now rests 
 with the Army Council to investigate the indefinite 
 charge made against Major-General Scobell, so far 
 as such a charge can be investigated without par- 
 ticulars being given.* Being well acquainted with 
 the case, f I feel confident that the result will be the 
 complete exoneration of Major-General Scobell." J 
 As Mr Haldane was the official judge, it seems 
 hardly worth while to have gone through the farce 
 of a so-called investigation, if no witnesses were 
 to be called. 
 
 It would seem that certainly on this date (13th 
 July, 1910), if not before, the Army Council had 
 decided how it were best from the individual point of 
 view of Mr Haldane, and the other Members of the 
 
 autumn of 1907 by responsible officers of much higher rank than Major- 
 General Scobell, who, from personal inspection, (the italics are mine) were 
 strongly of opinion," etc. {Hansard, 13th July, 1910, p. 534.) This is 
 the first allusion to a report, which, as set forth in the Army Council's 
 libel upon me, published by them three weeks later, was rendered over 
 the signature of H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught. Mr Haldane knew that 
 the Duke of Connaught had never personally inspected the 5th Lancers, 
 and that the report in question was written by Major-General Scobell 
 who four months previously had been transferred from command of the 
 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot to be Inspector-General of Cavalry on 
 the Duke's Staff. 
 
 *Mr Haldane is here exaggerating his difficulty. All he had to do 
 was to order a Court of Inquiry, and he would have got all the particulars 
 he wanted from me and four or five hundred officers, non-commissioned 
 officers and men of the 5th Lancers. 
 
 fSee, however, the account of my interview with Lord Haldane in 
 1912, p. 102. 
 
 ^Hansard, 13th July, 1910, p. 535. Analogous to the statement made 
 by the French War Minister, General Mercier, in the Press in 1894, three 
 weeks before the opening of the Court Martial on Captain Dreyfus : " The 
 guilt of this officer is certain."
 
 78 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Council* to deal with the case in order to save them- 
 selves. They would have no Inquiry, official or 
 unofficial, public or private. They would throw 
 this interim statement to the House as a sop in order 
 to stifle further inquiry and comment, which a 
 complete refusal to reply to the charge I had made 
 would only have enhanced. They would make it 
 appear to the public that they had held an Inquiry, 
 and then when the House had risen and I was unable 
 to reply from my seat there, they would launch, as 
 they did, through the columns of the public Press 
 an attack upon me, which published with the seal 
 and sanction of officialdom would, they hoped, 
 once and for all close my political and professional 
 career. It was a plot worthy of its authors, and it 
 met with a temporary measure of success. But 
 time is long, and the end of the matter is not yet. 
 When Mr Haldane sat down I rose at once from 
 my place below the gangway, and in reply pointed 
 out that the Secretary of State had not disproved 
 any of the facts stated by me in my previous speech, 
 and asked the House to wait, before giving its ver- 
 dict, until the Inquiry should shew the truth of my 
 statements. I charged Mr Haldane with dis- 
 courtesy, f The House was crowded at the time of 
 
 *Sir William Nicholson, Sir Iau Hamilton, Sir Herbert Miles, and 
 Sir Charles Haddon. 
 
 -j-I said : " At this late hour, and being totally unprepared to speak, 
 I can do nothing but go over the points touched upon by the Secretary 
 of State for War. I think, however, that if the right hon. Gentleman 
 had intended to allude to the speech which I made on the Army Estimates 
 some ten days ago, it would have been more courteous, especially to a young 
 member of the House, to have warned me of his intention. I can only 
 say in reply to the Secretary of State that I listened intently to what he 
 has addressed to the House, and in all his remarks there is not one single 
 confutation of any fact which I stated in my former speech." I then 
 reviewed Mr Haldane's statement, and in reference to the case of Captain
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. yg 
 
 the incident, and Mr Haldane's action aroused much 
 opposition, which prolonged the sitting till after 
 half-past three in the morning. The following 
 Members of the Opposition took part in the debate,: 
 Mr George Wyndham, Sir Alexander Acland-Hood, 
 Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Balcarres, Viscount Castle- 
 reagh, Marquis of Tullibardine, Viscount Helmsley, 
 Mr Stanley Wilson, and others.* 
 
 W, of the 5th Lancers, said : " The Secretary for War refuses to re-open 
 the case because, he says, there has been full inquiry into it. I do not 
 know what the Members of this House understand by the word ' inquiry.' 
 To my limited knowledge an inquiry should cover and hear both sides of 
 the question. But the inquiry conducted into the case of Captain W 
 has only dealt with one side of the question. It has only seen the reports 
 of the colonel commanding the regiment and of Major-General Scobell. 
 It has never heard what Captain W has to say. The appeal which he made 
 in this case was suppressed by the very officer or officers who had rendered 
 the reports, and Captain W is still asking for an inquiry. 
 
 " I take it in cases like this — and we have many of them — I have 
 only picked out three or four haphazard — I say in cases where there is 
 doubt as to an officer's efficiency for his position, and it is the intention 
 of the Government to supersede him or to place him outside the active 
 list of the army, then surely, in justice to himself and to the whole of the 
 army, that officer should be told on what ground he is condemned ; he 
 should be given a full right of appeal against the decision, and, if that 
 appeal is not to be entertained, then surely he ought to have, in common 
 justice, a Court of Inquiry, before which the facts on both sides of the case 
 might be stated. The Army Council and the Selection Board judge these 
 cases on reports by senior officers. They never hear the other side of the 
 case. I sincerely hope, for the sake of Captain W and for the sake of 
 those other officers (Lieutenant G, Colonel C, Colonel G, and Major-Gen. 
 B), the Government will see fit to hold — what should have been held in 
 the first instance — a Court of Inquiry to hear both sides of the question." 
 (Hansard, 13th July, 1910, pp. 537-9.) 
 
 *Mr Wyndham, reviewing the case, said : " The right hon. gentleman 
 (Mr Haldane) said the matter was so grave that he had had to commit 
 his statement to writing. If it was of that gravity, was there not some 
 other channel of communication which he might have chosen, or if he 
 thought this was the proper channel of communication, was there not 
 some other hour of the day or night more suited than the present for 
 the declaration of a statement so grave that a Minister of the Crown who 
 has an easy command of words felt it necessary to commit it to writing
 
 80 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 This scene in the House created much comment 
 in the Press, far more than any previous incident 
 in the case had occasioned. Meanwhile, corrobora- 
 tion of my statement came from an unexpected 
 quarter, for Colonel C whose name had been men- 
 tioned in the debate both by myself and Mr Haldane, 
 published a statement in The Morning Post, in 
 direct contradiction of Mr Haldane's statement.* 
 
 and read it out to the House. He did not impugn either the honour of 
 the hon. and gallant gentleman (Major Adam) or the veracity of the state- 
 ments he made, and I think it was most unfortunate to make such a 
 statement at such an hour " (after midnight). 
 
 Sir Alexander Acland-Hood said: " I have a very strong feeling, 
 and I think every old soldier will agree with me, that this system of 
 confidential reports requires very careful consideration and overhauling. 
 I complain that the right hon. gentleman should take the opportunity 
 of making an attack on my hon. and gallant friend (Major Adam), and 
 I say the right hon. gentleman ought to have given my hon. and gallant 
 friend (Major Adam) notice that he was going to deal with this matter." 
 
 Lord Hugh Cecil moved the adjournment " in view of the way the 
 Government have handled their business and of their unfairness and 
 discourtesy to my hon. and gallant friend (Major Adam)." 
 
 The motion for adjournment was seconded by Mr Worthington-Evans. 
 
 Viscount Castlereagh said : " The right hon. gentleman (Mr Haldane) 
 rose in his place and read to us a type-written statement — a statement 
 which I have no doubt he has taken sixteen days to prepare. Well, he 
 has had sixteen days to inform the hon. and gallant Member (Major 
 Adam) of his course ; and I think it would have been very courteous on 
 his part if he had first of all taken some other opportunity of making this 
 very important statement, and if he did not take another opportunity, 
 certainly of giving notice to the House and my hon. and gallant friend 
 (Major Adam)." {Hansard, 13th July, 1910, p. 539, et seq.). 
 
 *Mr Haldane said : " He (Major Adam) stated that Colonel C was 
 practically expelled from the Army owing to his supersession by a junior 
 officer. In regard to that I can only say that Colonel C was not super- 
 seded." (Hansard, 13th July, 1910, p. 532.) 
 
 Colonel C wrote : ' ' That I was superseded is not a question of opinion 
 but a matter of fact." Letter of 14th July, published in Morning Post 
 of 19th July, 1910.) 
 
 Mr. Haldane in reply wrote : " I see nothing in my statement which 
 is inaccurate or misleading, and I do not propose to modify it." (Letter 
 of 15th July, published in Morning Post, 19th July, 1910.)
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 81 
 
 Colonel C's publication contained some correspon- 
 dence upon the subject which had recently passed 
 between himself and the Minister for War. Colonel 
 C challenged the Secretary of State for War to 
 traverse his statement, a course which Mr Haldane 
 carefully refrained from adopting. 
 
 Just at this time, a short notice of a volume of 
 poems written by me appeared in The Times, and 
 thereupon I received an anonymous letter from the 
 War Office.* It serves to illustrate the limited 
 horizon of honour and intelligence of some officer 
 employed upon the War Office Staff. As the facts 
 stated in my speech in the House are now publicly 
 known to have been correct, I expect the writer is 
 already repentant. 
 
 Just about this time a Member of the House, 
 one of my own party, met Sir Ian Hamilton, the 
 Adjutant-General, at dinner in London, and the 
 conversation turned upon the case of the 5th Lancers 
 which I had raised in Parliament. The Member 
 was much surprised to hear Sir Ian Hamilton express 
 himself so bitterly against me, and he understood 
 from the General that the Army Council was pre- 
 paring a surprise for me. 
 
 On the 24th July I received an undated official 
 letter from the Adjutant-General (Sir Ian Hamilton), 
 
 *The reviewer of Rus Divinum wrote : " The Unionist M.P. for 
 Woolwich has abundant fancy." The anonymous letter was written on 
 officially stamped War Office note-paper, and ran, " Is this criticism 
 confined to the poetry, or can The Times possibly be alluding to recent 
 statements in Parliament ? "
 
 82 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 asking me if I wished to forward to him any evidence 
 in substantiation of the charge which I had brought. 
 As this was four weeks after the date of my speech, 
 and eleven days after Mr Haldane had read to the 
 House the type-written document stating that he 
 was well acquainted with the case and felt confident 
 that the result of the investigation would be the 
 complete exoneration of Major-General Scobell {see 
 p. yy), it seemed to me then (and my opinion has 
 since been amply corroborated) useless to allow 
 myself to be made the plaything of an official scandal, 
 and to submit evidence to Sir Ian Hamilton on a 
 matter into which he and the other Members of 
 the Army Council had decided not to hold any inquiry 
 and upon which Mr Haldane had already made it 
 perfectly clear that his mind was made up as to 
 the course he intended to pursue. 
 
 I therefore informed Sir Ian Hamilton officially 
 that I was writing to the Secretary of State on the 
 subject of the official letter, and on the same date 
 I wrote to Mr Haldane, pointing out that an episto- 
 lary inquiry would be quite inadequate to meet the 
 case, and would be unfair to Major-General Scobell, 
 and expressed the hope that he would have the 
 case investigated in some reasonable way. 
 
 On the same day, Mr Walter Long put a question 
 in the House reminding Mr Haldane of his promised 
 inquiry into the case of General Scobell, but Mr 
 Haldane refused to give any satisfactory reply. 
 A few days later, on the 4th August, 1910, the House 
 rose for the Summer recess, which gave the Army 
 Council the opportunity for which they had waited 
 six weeks. 
 
 On the very next day Mr Haldane's private 
 secretary wrote to me saying that Mr Haldane had
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 83 
 
 transferred my letter to the Army Council for con- 
 sideration. The matter might have been considered 
 on or since the 27th June, but if not, one would 
 expect the consideration to commence only after 
 the receipt of my letter. That Sir William Nicholson 
 had drafted the Army Council's libel upon me in the 
 form of a letter to General Scobell previous to the 
 receipt of my letter is conclusively proved by the 
 fact that on the 1st August, Sir Spencer Ewart, whose 
 correspondence shows him to be constantly in my 
 favour, was appointed Adjutant-General and Second 
 Military Member of the Army Council. The draft 
 of the letter had been previously approved of by his 
 predecessor, Sir Ian Hamilton.* The fact is clear 
 that the Army Council (i.e., the three Members of 
 it, Mr Haldane, Sir William Nicholson and Sir Ian 
 Hamilton) had decided upon their course of action 
 at the end of June or the beginning of July, and all 
 their statements in the House and their official 
 letter to me asking for the evidence which they knew 
 only too well that they themselves possessed, had 
 no other object than to blind the public to the fact 
 that they had been convicted of conduct which 
 they could not hope to justify. 
 
 On the same day on which Mr Haldane's private 
 secretary wrote to me, the Army Council sent to 
 the Press an official communique, containing five 
 
 *In Adam v. Ward, Sir Edward Ward stated on oath that the draft 
 of the libel was in the handwriting of Sir William Nicholson (Off. Rep., 
 P- 33°)i that it bore the initials of Sir Ian Hamilton (Off. Rep., p. 331), 
 and that he thought that Sir Spencer Ewart was appointed Adjutant 
 General about ten days or a fortnight afterwards (Off. Rep., p. 330). This 
 chronology exactly fits in with the natural order of events, and proves 
 that the material portions of the libel were drafted, corrected, copied 
 and signed between the 15th and 20th July, 1910, i.e., before I was even 
 asked to give evidence.
 
 84 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE, 
 letters,* the last one of which became at a later 
 
 * (i) (Letter from the War Office to Major Adam) 
 
 War Office, 
 Confidential. July 1910. 
 
 77582/35 (A.G.3.) 
 Sir, 
 
 With reference to the charge which you brought against Major- 
 General H. J. Scobell, c.v.o., C.B., in the House of Commons on 27th 
 June, 1910, and to the statement of the Secretary of State for War in 
 regard thereto on the 13th instant to the effect that the General Officer 
 in question had officially called attention to the charge in accordance 
 with paragraph 446 of the King's Regulations, and that it now rested 
 with the Army Council to investigate it, I am commanded by the Council 
 to enquire whether you wish to forward for their consideration any 
 statement in amplification or substantiation of the charge, and if so to 
 request that you will do so as soon as possible. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 [Signed) E. D. WARD. 
 Major W. A. Adam, 
 House of Commons. 
 
 (2) (Letter from Major Adam to the War Office). 
 
 House of Commons, 
 
 29th July, 19 10. 
 Sir, 
 
 I have the honour to acknowledge your undated confidential letter 
 (77582/35, A.G.3), and to inform you that I have written to the Secretary 
 of State for War concerning the matter to which it refers. 
 
 I am, etc., 
 
 (Signed) W. A. ADAM. 
 To The Secretary, 
 
 War Office. 
 
 (3) (Letter from Major Adam to Mr Haldane). 
 
 House of Commons, 
 
 zgth July, 1910. 
 Dear Mr Haudane, 
 
 I have received an undated confidential letter from the Secretary 
 of the War Office, asking me if I wish to forward for the consideration of 
 the Army Council any statement in amplification or substantiation of the 
 charge which has been brought against Major-Gen eral H. J. Scobell, 
 
 C.V.O., C.B.
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 85 
 
 For three years the Army Council has been deaf to all applications 
 for an inquiry into the case of Major-General Scobell, and that officer, 
 whenever approached, has declined to move in the matter. While not 
 denying that injustice has been done to Captain W the Army Council 
 has during all this time sheltered itself by laying the responsibility for 
 the original report upon Major-General Scobell, while Major-General 
 Scobell has sheltered himself by laying the responsibility for the resultant 
 action upon the Army Council. 
 
 Under these circumstances it would appear that the scope of an 
 inquiry must include investigation into the administration of the Army 
 Council, as well as into the conduct of Major-General Scobell, and it will 
 be evident to you that an epistolary inquiry conducted by the Army 
 Council, such as is proposed by the letter to hand, would be unfair to 
 Major-General Scobell, would command the confidence neither of Parlia- 
 ment nor the public, and would, in fact, be totally inadequate to meet 
 the demands of the case. 
 
 I have the strongest desire not to embarrass your administration 
 (for your personal share in which I have a high regard), but I think you 
 must be aware that the Army Council has forfeited the confidence which 
 the Army and the public were prepared to place in it at its inception, 
 and therefore I hope that you will see your way to investigate the case 
 of Major-General Scobell (and the many other cases awaiting investiga- 
 tion) by some means other than the proposals embodied in the Secretary's 
 letter. I am, etc., 
 
 (Signed) W. A. ADAM. 
 
 (4) (Letter from Mr. Haldane's private Secretary to Major Adam). 
 
 War Office, 
 
 DEAR SIR, 5'* AU Z USt - I9I °- 
 
 I am desired by the Secretary of State for War to acknowledge the 
 receipt of your letter, dated 29th July, 1910. Mr Haldane presumes 
 that this letter is to be regarded as your answer to the official letter 
 addressed to you by the Army Council, which was inadvertently undated, 
 but was signed and despatched on July 23rd, and in which you were 
 asked whether you desired to put forward for the consideration of the 
 Council any further statement in amplification or substantiation of your 
 charge against Major-General Scobell. Mr Haldane bases his assumption 
 on your official reply to the Secretary of the War Office, dated July 29th, 
 to the effect that you were addressing the Secretary of State for War on 
 the subject of the Council's official letter above referred to. 
 
 Mr Haldane has accordingly transferred your letter under reply to 
 the Army Council for consideration, though he can find nothing in it which 
 can be regarded as pertinent to your charge against Major-General Scobell. 
 The letter appears to Mr Haldane to consist of a repetition of the vague 
 allegations which you made against the Army Council in the House of 
 Commons on June 27th, and which in his statement in the House on July
 
 86 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 13th he declined to discuss. To that statement Mr Haldane has nothing 
 
 to add. 
 
 The Secretary of State proposes to publish your letter, and the reply 
 
 which I am instructed to make thereto. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 {Signed) A. E. WIDDOWS, 
 
 Major W. A. Adam, m.p. Private Secretary. 
 
 (5) (Letter from the Secretary of the War Office to Major-General Scobell). 
 
 War Office, 
 cj ir $th August, 1910. 
 
 In reply to your letter of the 8th July, 1910, asking that an inquiry 
 should be instituted in regard to a statement made by Major W. A. Adam, 
 m.p., in the House of Commons on June 27th, to the effect that while in 
 command of the 1st Cavalry Brigade you rendered confidential reports 
 on certain officers, which reports contained wilful and deliberate mis- 
 statements of fact, I am commanded by the Army Council to inform you 
 that a thorough investigation has been made of the reports made by you 
 at that time on certain officers of the 5th Lancers, who were afterwards 
 removed from the regiment, and to whom it is believed that Major Adam's 
 statement bore reference. Major Adam is himself one of these officers. 
 The Council also thought it proper to address a letter to Major Adam 
 on the 23rd ultimo, inquiring whether he desired to forward for their con- 
 sideration any statement in amplification or substantiation of his charge 
 against you. On the 29th idem a reply was received from Major Adam 
 to the effect that he had written to the Secretary of State for War on the 
 subject, but his letter of the same date to the Secretary of State is found 
 to contain nothing pertinent to the present investigation. The Council 
 are satisfied that not only did your reports contain the unbiassed and 
 conscientious opinion you had formed on the officers in question, but that 
 the conclusions at which you arrived were correct, as they were after- 
 wards borne out not only by the opinion of your successor in command 
 of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, but also by a special report on the 5th Lancers 
 made by H.R.H. the then Inspector-General of the Forces, and confirmed 
 by the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the Aldershot Command. 
 Further, as showing the absence of hostile bias, the Army Council note 
 that in the case of Major Adam, who in 1906 was called upon to retire 
 from the Service in consequence of adverse reports which were duly 
 communicated to him, you intervened on his behalf and urged the Council 
 to give him another chance in an extra-regimental appointment. In the 
 result it was decided to give Major Adam this chance. I am to add that 
 the Council are of opinion that the charge brought against you by Major 
 Adam is without foundation. 
 
 I am, etc.. 
 To MAJOR-GKNERAX Scobell, (Signed) E. D. WARD, 
 
 c.v.o., C.B.
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 87 
 
 date the cause of action in the case of Adam v. Ward. 
 An analysis of this letter is given elsewhere (see pp. 
 122 et seq.), so it will be enough to say here that 
 this letter, which was drafted by Sir William Nichol- 
 son, submitted to Sir Ian Hamilton, and approved 
 of by Mr Haldane, was a net-work of statements 
 misleading throughout, publicly attacking me in 
 a capacity in which its authors knew that I was 
 unable to reply, viz., as an officer in the army.* 
 These five letters, one of which had been marked 
 " Confidential " by the Army Council themselves, 
 constituted the first important published statement 
 of the 5th Lancers case. 
 
 I was in the country when I read the communique 
 in the morning paper, but returning to London 
 without delay I wrote to Mr Haldane pointing out 
 that as no Inquiry had been held by the Army 
 
 *In the trial of Adam v. Ward, neither Sir William Nicholson, Sir Ian 
 Hamilton, nor Lord Haldane came forward to justify their conduct. After 
 pointing out to the Jury that any and all of the three could easily have 
 come forward, Mr Duke continued {Off. Rep., p. 616) : "I will say to 
 you a few deliberate words about the conduct of these three men. . . Is 
 this not a true allegation, that they inflicted a grave sentence upon a fellow 
 citizen without having heard him in his defence ? . . . That is one thing. 
 I say this further, that, having sat in Committee, and in secret, without 
 hearing evidence on a matter which affected the character and livelihood 
 of a fellow-citizen, they published their censure of this man with the 
 statement that it was the result of a thorough investigation. That is 
 what I say about the three Members of the Army Council and Sir Edward 
 Ward. It is not only true, gentlemen, it is incontestible. All that can 
 be said in extenuation of it, if it can be truly said, is that it is consistent 
 with the custom of the Army. Gentlemen, if it is consistent with the 
 custom of the Army, it is time here in a free country, in the twentieth 
 century, that such a custom disappeared. It might be well enough for 
 the government of an army of a despotic power, but is inconsistent with 
 the justice and the fairness upon which, in this country, we pride 
 ourselves."
 
 88 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Council, the truth of my charge remained unshaken.* 
 I sent a copy of this letter to the Press for publica- 
 tion. I took no notice of the Army Council's 
 personal attack upon my professional character ; 
 as an officer on the active list of the Army I was 
 prohibited by the Regulations from doing so, which 
 the Army Council well knew.f That they them- 
 selves had by their communication to the Press 
 violated the Regulations was no reason why I should 
 do so. I decided to bring up the matter again in 
 Parliament at the first opportunity. 
 
 As to the best method of raising the matter in 
 the House I consulted one of our Party Whips well 
 versed in Parliamentary procedure, and acted upon 
 the written advice given me by him. Parliament 
 did not meet again till the middle of November, 
 when, in accordance with the advice given to me, 
 I at once asked the War Minister three questions. J 
 
 * (Letter from Major Adam to Mr Haldane). 
 
 Carlton Club, S.W., 
 Dear Mr Haldane, m August, 1910. 
 
 My attention has been called to the publication by you of some corres- 
 pondence relating to Major-General Scobell. This correspondence proves 
 that the evidence of no one concerned except that of Major-General Scobell 
 has been taken, and no inquiry into his case has been held. The fear of 
 Major-General Scobell and the Army Council to face open inquiry corro- 
 borates the facts which I stated in the House of Commons on the 27th 
 June last, and until an inquiry has been held, the very serious and definite 
 accusation which has been publicly made against Major-General Scobell 
 must be accepted. Believe me, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) W. A. ADAM. 
 
 fThis was admitted by Sir Edward Ward in Adam v. Ward (Off. 
 Rep., p. 364). J (1) Whether he would state the date or dates in July 
 or August on which the investigation into the case of Major-General H. J. 
 Scobell was held ? (2) Whether he would state the names of the officers 
 who conducted the investigation ? (3) Whether he would state the names 
 of all the witnesses called ?
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 89 
 
 Mr Haldane did not reply for four days, when to the 
 first he gave an incorrect reply,* to the second he 
 gave no reply, and in answer to the third he admitted 
 that no witnesses had been called. He also stated 
 that the various reports had been " independently 
 rendered." This statement is incorrect. 
 
 On the day on which I received Mr Haldane's 
 reply to my questions, Mr Asquith announced to 
 the House that the Government intended to dissolve 
 the following week. 
 
 The next day I put down seven starred f questions 
 asking for more definite information on the points 
 raised. J Mr Haldane refused to give the informa- 
 tion asked for or to do anything further in the 
 case, and supplementary questions met with a 
 further refusal, or were left unanswered. § 
 
 *The dates Mr Haldane gave were " between July 9th and August 
 4th." These dates have been shown above to be impossible. 
 
 fA starred question is urgent and requires a reply within twenty-four 
 hours across the floor of the House. J The questions were : (1) On what 
 actual dates was the investigation into the case of Major-General Scobell 
 held between July 9th and August 4th, and how long did the investiga- 
 tion last on each day that those conducting it sat ? (2) Whether any short- 
 hand note was taken of the proceedings ; and, if so, whether it has been 
 printed ? (3) Whether at the investigation, Captain W was represented 
 by Counsel or otherwise ? (4) Whether the two officers mentioned as 
 having corroborated the reports of Major-General Scobell were asked 
 to give evidence at the investigation ? (5) Whether all the Members of 
 the Army Council were present at each sitting of the investigation ; and 
 whether every Member of the Council heard all the evidence produced ? 
 (6) Whether he will state the names of those who gave evidence ; and 
 whether the witnesses were examined on oath ? (7) Whether it is the 
 intention of the Army Council to publish the proceedings of the investiga- 
 tion ? 
 
 §Mr Haxdane in reply said : "I must remind the hon. and gallant 
 Member that the proceedings of the Army Council are confidential, and 
 I am therefore not prepared to furnish the detailed information asked for 
 in questions (1) to (7). On the 18th hist. I gave him an accoimt of the 
 procedure adopted by the Army Council in arriving at their decision, and
 
 9 o THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 The following day I left for my Constituency. 
 The Election was a most strenuous contest. The 
 Labour Party made great capital out of the false 
 facts about me published by the Army Council, 
 and on the eve of the poll issued a leaflet containing 
 the Army Council's libel upon me of the previous 5th 
 August (see p. 86). 
 
 This decided the Election at Woolwich and I lost 
 the seat which had taken me five years' hard work 
 
 to that statement I have nothing to add." (Mr Haldane's statement 
 that the proceedings of the Army Council are confidential appears to 
 refer only to cases in which their own conduct is taken exception to. In 
 cases in which the character of individual officers of the army is attacked 
 by the Army Council, that body is apparently untrammelled by any such 
 convention.) Major Adam: " May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if 
 he would kindly give me a definition of the word ' investigation ' as under- 
 stood by the Army Council ? " Mr Haldane : " There was an investiga- 
 tion made in conformity with the King's Regulations " (this is incorrect : 
 the only investigation sanctioned by the King's Regulations is a Court of 
 Inquiry, which I had asked for, and which Mr Haldane had refused), " and 
 the hon. and gallant Member knows the object of that investigation." 
 Major Adam : " Does the right hon. Gentleman not see that it would be 
 much fairer to Major-General Scobell to have an open investigation on a 
 charge openly made ? " Mr Haldane : " The hon. and gallant Member 
 made a charge against Major-General Scobell. The Army Council there- 
 upon, in answer to Major-General Scobell, took action to investigate the 
 charge, and by a request in writing called on the hon. and gallant Member 
 to substantiate his allegations. Several days were allowed to elapse, 
 and the hon. and gallant Member did not respond to the invitation," 
 (for the true facts see Note on p. 83) " therefore an investigation took 
 place by the Army Council in the ordinary course." (But the letter of 
 Mr Haldane's private Secretary acknowledging my letter bears the same 
 date as the Army Council's libel upon myself). Major Adam : " Under 
 the circumstances, considering the fact that no evidence has been called 
 and no investigation has been made, I ask what the right hon. Gentleman 
 intends to do ? " Mr Haldane : " The hon. and gallant Member had the 
 opportunity of substantiating the allegations he made against Major- 
 General Scobell. He did not choose to do so, the matter is over, and I 
 decline to take any further action." Major Adam : " May I ask if the 
 right hon. Gentleman is not aware that there are many people, not myself, 
 at all, but besides myself, who are ready and willing to substantiate the 
 allegations that have been made ? " No answer was returned. (Hansard, 
 22nd November, 1910, pp. 254-5).
 
 PRO FRATRIBUS, PRO PATRIA. 91 
 
 to win by the narrow majority of 236. This was 
 the third Election I had fought at Woolwich, and 
 I was beaten not so much by the efforts of my 
 political opponents, as by the effect of this 
 unfair action of the Army Council.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 (1911-1913) 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND 
 
 He that filches from me my good name, 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
 And makes me poor indeed. — Shakespeare. 
 
 Having lost my seat in Parliament, I was forced 
 to retire (I hope only temporarily) from political 
 life, and after the excitement of the General Election 
 and of the Christmas Holidays had subsided, I began 
 to think about returning to military employment. 
 I called upon my late General, Sir Spencer Ewart, 
 who, on the 1st August, 1910, had been appointed 
 Adjutant General and Second Military Member of 
 the Army Council. He received me most kindly 
 and promised at once to put forward my name for 
 re-employment upon the General Staff. Shortly 
 afterwards I called upon him again, and he told me 
 most sympathetically that he had put my name 
 forward to Sir William Nicholson and Mr Haldane, 
 and strongly recommended me for Staff employment, 
 but that they had agreed that an officer, who had 
 behaved as I had in Parliament, could not be 
 employed. That my action in Parliament has been 
 the cause of my subsequent non-employment is 
 strongly hinted at by Sir William Franklyn in the
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 93 
 
 last paragraph of the official Summary on the case, 
 which he, as Military Secretary, drew up in 1912, 
 and my note on that passage deals with the uncon- 
 stitutional view taken by Mr Haldane (see p. 106, 
 Note 1). To put the matter plainly, I had not 
 only been deprived of my political career by the 
 Army Council's public attack upon me in my pro- 
 fessional capacity, but I was now in addition to be 
 deprived of my professional career, because I had 
 done my duty in my political capacity. Sir Spencer 
 Ewart had, however, only privately confided to me 
 what he thought to be the reason of the Secretary 
 of State's refusal to re-employ me, and as I should 
 have been automatically brought again upon the 
 list of my regiment to fill the first vacancy, had I 
 not been placed on half-pay in 1907 in violation of 
 the Regulations, I decided that the only thing left 
 for me to do was once more to open the whole case, 
 have it considered, and obtain the justice which had 
 been denied to me. I felt that as soon as the facts 
 of the case were known to the military authorities, 
 I should at once be permitted to resume service 
 with my regiment, if I were not immediately re- 
 employed upon the General Staff, to which my 
 qualifications and my excellent report as a Staff 
 Officer of the previous year entitled me. 
 
 I considered it advisable to connect my re-opening 
 of the case with some official act which had gone 
 before, and I decided that my best course would be 
 to ask officially what had become of my Appeal 
 against General Scobell's report rendered in 1906 
 (see p. 49). It will be remembered that General 
 Scobell had given me his personal guarantee that he 
 had taken steps to " ensure that that report should 
 have no deleterious effect upon my career " (see
 
 94 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 p. 52), a statement which the sequel shows to have 
 had no meaning at all. Accordingly I drafted an 
 official letter to the Military Secretary which was the 
 first of a long series of letters, both private and 
 official, written in the endeavour to obtain justice, 
 a series which is not yet closed. On the 5th March, 
 191 1, I made my official application to the Military 
 Secretary, and on the following da}/ 1 wrote a private 
 letter on the subject to Mr Haldane, from whom 
 I received a reply, saying he would give the matter 
 his careful consideration. 
 
 The official answer* 21st March, 1911, to my 
 application is undoubtedly one of the most im- 
 portant of the many letters in the case. That it 
 was considered to be so by the Army Council 
 themselves is proved by their frequent reference 
 to it as an authority in subsequent correspondence. 
 The letter, therefore, requires our careful consider- 
 ation. My letter of the 5th March, had asked one 
 definite question, viz., what had become of my 
 Appeal lodged in 1906, to which this War Office 
 reply entirely omits any reference whatsoever. 
 The first paragraph states that General Scobell 
 had communicated to me on the 7th October, 1906, 
 his report of that date,f and is incorrect. This 
 communication I had already denied in my official 
 application of the nth October, 1909, and again in 
 my letter of the 5th March, 1911. In case, however, 
 that the Army Council should have doubted my 
 word, they had had in their possession since 
 1906 my official application to see the report of 
 
 *This and the subsequent official correspondence were disclosed 
 at the trial of Adam v. Ward three years later. 
 
 f " General Officer commanding ist Cavalry Brigade, whose remarks 
 dated 7th October, 1906, were duly communicated to you at the time 
 by that Officer."
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 95 
 
 the Brigadier, endorsed by the Commanding Officer, 
 and the Brigadier himself and dated the nth 
 November, 1906.* This they produced at the trial 
 of Adam v. Ward in 1914. The statement therefore 
 contained in the first paragraph is not only untrue, 
 but it is made in defiance of official documentary 
 evidence from an outside contemporaneous source, 
 evidence relied upon as such by the Army Council 
 themselves, and produced by them officially in the 
 High Court of Justice. 
 
 The next point worthy of comment is the matter 
 contained in the second paragraph of this Army 
 Council letter, which is the first intimation given to 
 me, either officially or unofficially, of any report 
 at all rendered by Sir John French, f Although, as 
 Sir William Franklyn declared in his Summary of 
 June, 1912, that it was this report rendered in 
 November, 1906, which caused the Army Council 
 to order me to resign my commission, J it will thus 
 be seen that I first heard of the existence of any 
 such report in March, 191 i.§ 
 
 *The reason for my application to see the report is clearly stated 
 in the application, viz., that I had not been shown the report by the 
 General Officer commanding the ist Cavalry Brigade, as required by 
 King's Regulations (1904) para. 214. 
 
 fA " report dated 3rd November, 1906, was specially submitted 
 to the Army Council by the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief at 
 Aldershot " [Sir John French]. 
 
 I " I [Sir William Franklyn] explained to him [Major Adam] that 
 the action taken by the Army Council was not based on any report on 
 Army Form B. 194, but on a letter from the General Officer Commanding, 
 Aldershot." 
 
 §Even the Army Council's libel upon me, published on the 5th August, 
 1910, which details seriatim the reports connected with the case, contains 
 no reference to this fundamental one. The legal assumption is that 
 Sir William Nicholson, who composed the libel, knew that I had never 
 seen or heard of this report.
 
 96 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 The Army Council's letter went on to state that 
 Sir John French had reported to the Army Council 
 that his letter of the 3rd November, 1906 (here for 
 the first time called " a report ") had been com- 
 municated to me on the 8th November, 1906. As 
 the letter bears date of 3rd November, a breach of 
 the King's Regulations is here admitted, even if 
 it had been shown to me on the 8th. But it was 
 not. I have never seen it yet. The statement that 
 it had been communicated in November, 1906, is 
 a fortiori incorrect. Paragraphs 3 and 4 are official 
 confessions of administrative acts carried out by 
 the Army Council in violation of the obligations 
 imposed upon them by the King's Regulations. 
 In these paragraphs they condemn themselves. 
 Paragraph 5 re-affirms what happened in 1909 when 
 the Army Council committed themselves once more 
 officially to the incorrect statement about the care- 
 ful consideration given to the case. The final para- 
 graph contains an official invitation to appeal to 
 
 *In the trial of Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 381) Mr Justice Darling 
 (to Major Adam) : " Is the attached report that document upon two 
 pages before the memorandum ? " Major Adam : Certainly not. I 
 have never seen that in my life, and never knew about it." Mr Justice 
 Darling : Those two pages contain Sir John French's report." What 
 had been done was this. Over my original application to see General 
 Scobell's report, someone had at some later date pinned a copy of Sir 
 John French's report, with the effect of making it appear that my applica- 
 tion referred to the latter (see pp. 46-47), which therefore I must have seen. 
 This was easily exposed by Mr. Duke in his address to the Jury in Adam 
 v. Ward. Speaking of the refusal of the War Office to produce at the trial 
 any document which might have given me the slightest assistance, Mr. 
 Duke said (Off. Rep., p. 599) : " The memorandum addressed to him 
 (Major Adam) that his promotion would be stopped was not produced ; 
 the registers were not produced in which that memorandum and its 
 acknowledgment by him would be recorded, and what was ultimately 
 produced was a colourless document which had pinned to it, it being a 
 document discoloured by time, the two tissue sheets of a crisp copy of a 
 document not discoloured by time."
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 97 
 
 the King under Section 42 of the Army Act.* 
 In my reply to this letter I dealt with the facts 
 of the case, commented upon the refusal of the 
 Military Authorities to give any answer to my 
 question about my Appeal made in 1906, and 
 accepted the Army Council's invitation under Section 
 42. After some further correspondence with the 
 Army Council, my Appeal was lodged on the 3rd 
 April. 
 
 No reply was received till the following August, 
 when I was informed that my Appeal had been 
 rejected, though no grounds of rejection were given. 
 These official Appeals, under Section 42 of the Army 
 Act, are merely a device to throw dust in the eyes 
 of the army, and draw an officer into the belief that 
 he possesses a means of redress, which really he 
 does not possess. As Mr Justice Darling clearly 
 pointed out at the trial of Adam v. Ward, the decision 
 on these Appeals rests solely with the Secretary of 
 State, who is not likely voluntarily to reverse a 
 decision which he has himself already given. The 
 political morality of the present day appears to be 
 based on the assumption that the politician should 
 think of himself first, last, and all the time. Only 
 when he thinks that he is safe, do considerations of 
 State, or even the common dictates of moral justice, 
 have any weight with him. It follows that an Appeal 
 to Caesar against a decision of Csesar's is foredoomed 
 to failure. The practical result accruing from the 
 
 *Section 42 runs thus : " If an officer thinks himself wronged by his 
 commanding officer, and, on due application made to him, does not receive 
 the redress to which he may consider himself entitled, he may complain 
 to the Army Council in order to obtain justice, who are hereby required 
 to examine into such complaint, and through a Secretary of State make 
 their report to His Majesty in order to receive the directions of His 
 Majesty thereon."
 
 98 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 fact that the decision on an Appeal rests with the 
 Secretary of State is to divest the procedure of all 
 finality. The opinion of one War Minister is not 
 likely to be identical with that of his successor, 
 who, especially if he belongs to another political 
 party, will probably not hesitate to reverse the 
 previous decision. 
 
 My Appeal having been rejected, I wrote to Sir 
 Spencer Ewart about employment, and saw him 
 by appointment a few days later. He fully agreed 
 that the rejection of my Appeal gave me a stronger 
 claim to employment, and promised to ask for the 
 sanction of the Secretary of State for War. After 
 about five weeks Sir Spencer wrote me a short letter 
 saying that his intervention had been fruitless, and 
 at an interview with him a few days later, gave me 
 clearly to understand that my action in the House 
 of Commons was the reason for my non-employment. 
 
 On the nth November, 191 1, there appeared 
 in the Outlook a remarkable article entitled " The 
 British Dreyfus Case," written over the initials 
 " L. P. J."* It is well informed and informative, 
 and suggested to me the sub-title of the present book. 
 
 ♦The writer closed his article with a summary of the parallel, thus i 
 
 " In reading the two accounts (i.e., of the French Captain Dreyfus and 
 
 the English Captain W and the 5th Lancers) we cannot but be struck 
 
 by the remarkable parallel, as well as by those points of dissimilarity 
 
 which reflect discredit upon the military authorities who are responsible 
 
 for the British case. In both we have a Staff officer accused ; in both 
 
 we see the spectacle of a secret condemnation on secret evidence not 
 
 even shown to the accused, followed by a public degradation. The French 
 
 officer was informed of the accusations against him, though not of all the 
 
 accusations ; the British officers were not so informed, have not yet been 
 
 so informed. The French officer had a trial, though a mock one ; the 
 
 British officers have had no trial, their repeated requests for trial having 
 
 been invariably refused. The French officer protested his innocence of 
 
 a particular charge ; the British officers protest their innocence of any 
 
 hostile charge whatever that may have been made against them. The 
 
 French officer had by his arrest and trial full warning of the treatment
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 99 
 
 I put myself in communication with the Editor of 
 The Outlook who informed me that a special Messen- 
 ger had been sent from the War Office to purchase 
 a number of copies. This shows that the official 
 mind had taken alarm, and probably accounts for 
 the tone of the official correspondence sent to me 
 during the two following months. 
 
 After some further endeavours to clear up the 
 mystery in which the War Office had enveloped the 
 whole case, I decided to ask officially why I had been 
 placed upon half-pay, and took Sir Spencer Ewart's 
 advice on the matter. A few days later I put the 
 question to the Army Council, and, no reply being 
 received, I officially requested permission to publish 
 
 which he was to expect ; the British officers had no such warning. The 
 French officer's military career was ruined in the very prime of his pro- 
 fessional life ; the British officers too, with an average of twenty years' 
 honourable service in peace and war, wearing military decorations, neither 
 inexperienced nor fossilized, incurred military ruin at the very time when 
 they had become a valuable national asset. Picquart was serving upon 
 the Headquarter General Staff when he received information of the 
 French officer's innocence ; Adam was in similar employ when he too 
 learned the truth. Castelin and Scheurer-Kestner brought forward the 
 case in the Chambers of the Legislature ; Adam acted the same part. 
 Zola publicly accused the generals and the French War Office of knavery ; 
 Adam made similar charges against General Scobell and the British 
 War Office. Mercier, Billot and Cavaignac, from their place in the 
 Government as successive Ministers for War, defended the illegal pro- 
 ceedings of their military subordinates with manufactured evidence and 
 gross misrepresentation ; Mr Haldane did the same. 
 
 " Both the French and British War Ministers asserted that the 
 charges made were fully known to the officers concerned. The French 
 Minister after many years had to confess that the contents of the docu- 
 ment containing the principal charge against Dreyfus had never been 
 communicated to him ; the British Minister — — , but why go further ? 
 
 " In the end, after seven years, public opinion in France rose, and 
 demanded that the French officer should have the same impartial treat- 
 ment as is given in every civilized country even to a murderer after his 
 foul act. We in England are passing through the seventh year [191 1] 
 during which we have kept this skeleton in our national cupboard. As 
 a British man, I ask you, British men, to say whether the time has not 
 also arrived for us to do justice to our fellow-men ? "
 
 ioo THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 a statement of the facts, with special reference to 
 the Army Council's letter of the 5th August, 1910, 
 which to my surprise I found was generally believed 
 to be true. It is not an unknown procedure of 
 politicians to influence the Public through the 
 Press, and if one is able to gag one's opponent, 
 success is assured — for a time. 
 
 My request to be informed of the reason why 
 I was placed on half-pay led to further corres- 
 pondence, in which the Army Council refused to 
 tell me, merely re-asserting the incorrect statements 
 which they had made in their letter of the previous 
 21st March. 
 
 My request for permission to publish a statement 
 of the case called forth a reply from the Army 
 Council dated the 18th January, 1912, in which they 
 refuse to allow any publication, and express their 
 desire to close all further discussion on the subject. 
 This letter was drafted by Sir Nevil Macready.* 
 
 *In Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p. 332) Mr Duke, having read aloud 
 the letter, asked : " Do you think that Major-General Macready drafted 
 that ? " Sir Edward Ward (on oath) : " Yes." In this letter Sir 
 Nevil Macready, referring to the Army Council's letter of the 5th August, 
 1 910, which they later had to admit in the High Court of Justice to have 
 been a false and malicious libel, wrote : " The Army Council can find 
 nothing in this letter which could give rise to an erroneous impression, 
 the statements made therein being correct, complete and pertinent to 
 the investigation which it was the duty of the Army Council to under- 
 take." Again, referring to the fact that I had called the attention of the 
 Army Council to the fact that the publication of their letter (i.e., the 
 libel) had caused me to lose my seat in Parliament, Sir Nevil Macready 
 wrote : " The Army Council are not concerned with the election of Mem- 
 bers of Parliament, and when you thought fit publicly to bring a charge 
 against Major-General Scobell, it was for you and you alone to consider 
 what effect that charge if not substantiated [the writer here omits to state 
 that I had publicly offered to substantiate the charge before any impartial 
 tribunal, p. 85, Letter 3, and Note on p. 90, etc.] might have on your pros- 
 pects of re-election." In this connection the opinion of Sir Edward Ward, 
 then Secretary to the Army Council, is illuminating. In Adam v. Ward, 
 when Sir Edward Ward was under cross-examination, Mr Duke put
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 101 
 
 Thereupon I wrote to Sir Spencer Ewart, asking 
 that the Military Secretary (Sir William Franklyn) 
 would give me an interview, but received a refusal 
 from the latter. 
 
 At one of the many interviews I had with Sir 
 Spencer Ewart, he had suggested that I should bring 
 the matter forward again, when Sir William Nichol- 
 son's appointment as Chief of the Imperial General 
 Staff expired. He did not give me any reason for 
 his advice, but it was not hard to guess. Accordingly, 
 as soon as Sir John French was nominated to succeed 
 Sir William Nicholson, I sought and obtained an 
 interview with General Allenby, my late Commanding 
 Officer, and then Colonel-in -Chief of the 5th Lancers, 
 who, as Inspector General of Cavalry, was serving 
 at that time on the Staff of Sir John French, then 
 Inspector General of the Forces. I laid the whole 
 case shortly before General Allenby, and at his 
 request drafted a statement of it, which I sent him 
 to put before Sir John French. After some further 
 correspondence with General Allenby and Major 
 Watt, private secretary to Sir John French, in 
 January, 1912, I had my first interview with the 
 latter, who promised me his assistance when the 
 case came before him officially later on. 
 
 the following question (1938) : " Had you any doubt when you issued 
 this (the libel), that it would seriously affect him whenever he became 
 a candidate for Parliament again ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Well, I 
 cannot say at that moment I thought about that ; but I can see that it 
 would." (1939) Mr Duke: " You can see it would ? " Sir Edward 
 Ward : " Yes." Referring to my charge against Major-General Scobell 
 Sir Nevil Macready wrote that a " thorough investigation of that charge " 
 had been made. This statement went further than the Army Council's 
 libel which only referred to their " investigation of the reports." (See 
 p. 86, Letter 5.) Sir Nevil Macready closed his remarkable letter 
 by stating that " correspondence with the War Office on this matter must 
 now cease."
 
 102 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Having now succeeded in obtaining the good 
 offices of the prospective Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff, I thought it would be advisable to 
 solicit those of the Secretary of State for War. 
 Accordingly on the 28th February, 1912, I had a 
 personal interview with Lord Haldane. I gathered 
 from him, whether rightly or wrongly, that he relied 
 mainly for his information upon Sir William 
 Nicholson, and that he had but little first-hand 
 knowledge of the case. This accounted for a good 
 deal, and also largely for the suggestions thrown 
 out from time to time and the advice given to me 
 by Sir Spencer Ewart. As Sir William Nicholson 
 had never met me and had never had any opportunity 
 of judging of my capacity professional or otherwise 
 in any way whatsoever, it was becoming evident to 
 me that the mystery which I could not unravel was 
 after all probably only his idea of retaliation upon 
 me for having done my duty in reporting his conduct 
 irom Japan through and with the approval of His 
 Majesty's Minister accredited to that country (see 
 Note C at end of this Chapter). Man}' things which 
 Lord Haldane told me at our interview were very 
 surprising, but cannot in honour be revealed. I am 
 firmly convinced, too, that much of what I told 
 Lord Haldane must have shaken the faith of any 
 intelligent man in the capacity of the permanent 
 official, if indeed he had ever been prone to entertain 
 any. I ma}', without betraying any confidence, 
 say that our interview was pleasant and satisfactory, 
 and that Lord Haldane promised to re-consider my 
 case and gave me instructions as to how to act, 
 which I gladly consented to follow. 
 
 On the 15th March, 1912, the day on which Sir 
 John French took over the duties of Chief of the
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 103 
 
 Imperial General Staff, General Allenby, in his 
 official position as Colonel-in-Chief of the 5th Lancers, 
 laid my statement before him and asked for a revision 
 of the case. On the same day General Allenby 
 wrote to me saying that the Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff was unwilling to move in the matter 
 without an order from the Secretary of State for 
 War. I at once wrote to Lord Haldane, enclosing 
 General Allenby's letter, and the Secretary of State 
 in reply sent me his instructions as to how to act. 
 Upon receipt of Lord Haldane's letter, I wrote him 
 a short reply of thanks, and also, acting upon his 
 advice, sent him an official application for revision 
 of the case. The Army Council in reply invited me 
 to submit new evidence. Settlement was at last 
 in sight. 
 
 The next day I married, and if ever the history 
 of my married life comes to be written, it will be 
 found to contrast strongly in its idyllic happiness 
 with the stormy persecution carried on against me 
 in my professional and public life. My wife and I 
 went to Paris, staying a few days there en route to 
 Spain. It therefore happened that the Army 
 Council's invitation, which was addressed to my 
 Bankers, was not received by me until three days 
 after my arrival in Paris. The following day, 3rd 
 April, 1912, I wrote an official reply stating that at 
 the moment I had no access to documents, that I had 
 always been unaware what evidence was before 
 the Army Council when they arrived at their deci- 
 sion, but submitting some evidence which must 
 be new, and offering to submit more, if required, 
 upon my return.* 
 
 *I wrote: " As I have always been unaware what facts were, and 
 were not, before the Council when they arrived at the decision referred
 
 104 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 About the middle of April I wrote to General 
 Allenby from Spain thanking him for his good offices, 
 and telling him how successful they had been, as 
 things were on the point of settlement. In his 
 reply he expressed his pleasure at the news not 
 only for my sake, but also for that of the regiment. 
 (See Note p. 71.) 
 
 Towards the end of April I began to wonder 
 that I had received no reply to my last letter to the 
 War Office, as my Bankers, to whom a reply would 
 have been sent, had my address in Madrid. Before 
 leaving that city, therefore, for Cordova, Granada, 
 etc., I wrote to Lord Haldane to tell him I was on 
 the move. 
 
 We returned from Spain via the Riviera, Milan 
 and the Swiss Lakes, and reached England about 
 the middle of June. As I had received no reply to 
 my official letter of the 3rd April I lost no time in 
 calling upon Sir Spencer Ewart to find out how the 
 progress of the settlement stood. He seemed sur- 
 prised to hear that I had received no answer, and 
 suggested that the best way to get the matter finally 
 settled would be to have an interview with the 
 Military Secretary, which Sir Spencer offered to 
 arrange for me. 
 
 to in your letter, I would ask them to be so good as to take into con- 
 sideration the difficulty of selecting facts to be submitted. Moreover, 
 being now in Paris and leaving in a few days for Madrid, I have no 
 immediate access to the few documents in my possession." I then 
 proceeded to point out the material fact that I had not been shown General 
 Scobell's report in October, 1906, as required by the King's Regulations, 
 and that this fact must be new evidence to the Army Council or they would 
 not have stated the contrary in their letter of the 21st March, 191 1. 
 [See p. 94.] I continued : "I am in hopes that the submission of this 
 one fact alone will be sufficient to justify a reconsideration of the decision 
 referred to in your last letter, but, if not, I beg that further orders may be 
 sent to me."
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 105 
 
 On the 27th June, 1912, I had my first interview 
 with the Military Secretary, Sir William Franklyn. 
 Eight days afterwards I had a second interview with 
 the same officer, and these two interviews form an 
 important crisis in the unravelment of that mystety 
 in which the War Office have by their archaic 
 methods kept the case of the 5th Lancers more or 
 less successfully wrapped. The occasion of these 
 interviews was the first and indeed the only one, on 
 which the War Office ceased temporarily to be the 
 impersonal brainless machine grinding along its 
 road, as it had always done, without regard to 
 exterior events ; deaf to reason and impervious to 
 truth. It became for one bright moment the human 
 agent endeavouring in unforeseen circumstances 
 to do its duty to the individual and to the State. 
 
 Sir William Franklyn was a stranger to me, and, 
 though he received me most courteously, was at 
 first rigidly formal and correct. As the interview 
 proceeded, and the story of the case was unrolled 
 before him, he became more sympathetic. By a 
 simple, straightforward narrative of events I finally 
 succeeded in gaining his warmest sympathy, and he 
 frequently expressed to me his recognition of the 
 fact that a great injustice had been done to me. 
 His friendship and esteem I retained up to the day 
 of his death two years later.* 
 
 The procedure adopted at our interviews was 
 as follows : — 
 
 I told my story, answering the Military Secre- 
 tary's questions as I went along. The first interview 
 
 *I was in constant correspondence with Sir William Franklyn up to 
 the 27th October, 1914, on which day he died. In one of his very last 
 letters to me he wrote : " I hope all your anxieties will find a satisfactory 
 ending some day."
 
 io6 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 lasted about three hours. Sir William Franklyn 
 drafted from memory a resume of it, which he read 
 to me at the commencement of our second interview 
 and allowed me to criticize and revise. After the 
 second interview, which lasted nearly four hours, 
 he sent me by post a combined resume of the two 
 interviews for my approval, upon which at his 
 request I sent him some notes and suggestions.* 
 Besides the facts contained in the Summary and my 
 Notes there were other points raised at our inter- 
 views, and to some of these it may be as well to 
 make a brief allusion. 
 
 I mentioned the fact that I had received no 
 reply to the official letter which I wrote from Paris 
 in April. Sir William said he thought one had been 
 sent, and searching through the correspondence 
 he found a copy of an Army Council letter written 
 in reply, f He read it over to himself and told me 
 it was only couched in the usual official style, and 
 advised that we should get on better if we dis- 
 regarded it for the time being and tried whether 
 we could not " work our way to salvation by another 
 
 ♦At the close of his Summary Sir William Franklyn wrote : " I (Sir 
 W. F.) told him (Major A.) that I considered if he had remained silent 
 in Parliament, things might have righted themselves." My official 
 comment on this statement was: " The attitude herein expressed [i.e., 
 that I was being punished by the military authorities for what I had said 
 in Parliament] would, if adopted, constitute a breach of Constitutional 
 l,aw. It has long been recognized that freedom of discussion in Parlia- 
 ment is the first essential of the liberty of the subject. To take penal 
 action against an officer in his professional capacity for performing his 
 duty as a Member of the House is, constitutionally speaking, as dead 
 as the Royal Veto. It has not been done since the year 1764, when 
 General Oonway was deprived of his Commission for speaking in the House 
 of Commons against the Government on the question of general warrants. 
 In the following year the practice was officially discontinued." 
 
 fThis letter, if ever despatched, must have been lost in the very 
 irregular Spanish post.
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 107 
 
 road." My consent to his proposal contained the 
 implied condition that the other road should be 
 successful. 
 
 As regards the reports rendered in 1906, he told 
 me that General Scobell's report of October, 1906, 
 was not received by the War Office till January, 
 1907. He acknowledged that all General Allenby's 
 reports upon me, including that of 1905, had been 
 favourable, and said that the War Office had heard 
 nothing but good of me till after General Allenby 
 had given up command of the regiment. He acknow- 
 ledged that it was apparently an unprecedented act 
 to call upon me to resign my commission upon a 
 single report, whether I had seen it or whether I 
 had not, in the face of para. 204 of the King's Regula- 
 tions (1904) (see Note 3, (1) on p. 49). He said he 
 had no other reports about me except those rendered 
 in 1906, and a report from General Byng in 1907 
 to the effect that this officer had never seen me. 
 When I asked for the report of the Inspector General 
 rendered in 1907, Sir William Franklyn replied that 
 he could not produce it, as he had not got it. He 
 did not say that he had never seen it, but he suggested 
 that it was a general report on the regiment, not 
 specifying individual officers by name. I maintained 
 that that might well be, but that if it was proposed 
 to take action against individual officers upon the 
 report, it should by the King's Regulations have 
 been shown to those officers against whom action 
 was contemplated. Sir William acknowledged that 
 it was impossible to gainsay that fact. I also called 
 General Franklyn's attention to the fact that the 
 phraseology of General Scobell's report upon me 
 which General Franklyn showed me, was different 
 from that which I had previously seen. (See Note
 
 108 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 i on p. 48). He said he was unable to account for 
 this, and I am certain that he was not a party to 
 any kind of fraud in the matter. 
 
 As regards my action in Parliament, Sir William 
 Franklyn took up, what seemed to me at the time, 
 and seems so still, a very strange attitude, namely, 
 that as the matter did not concern my constituency 
 of Woolwich, it was not right for me to bring it 
 forward. He did not deny the correctness of my 
 action from any other point of view. He said he 
 considered it most chivalrous and so on. I quoted 
 Burke's words to the electors of Bristol,* and pointed 
 out that to Woolwich, as a large military constituency, 
 the correct administration of the army was of great 
 importance, and that if each Member of Parliament 
 confined himself to purely local matters, as Sir 
 William suggested they should, there would be no 
 necessity for Parliament. I did not, however,, 
 convince him, and on this point alone he never came 
 to see eye to eye with me. In fact he expressly told 
 me that in his opinion, if I had held my tongue in 
 the House, I should have been commanding a cavalry 
 regiment long before the time at which we were 
 then speaking. I asked him, " What about 
 honour ? " and he replied by asking me " What 
 about expediency ? " and there we agreed to differ, 
 as I always would with one who could place the 
 latter on the same level as the former. 
 
 During our second interview we exchanged many 
 points of view, and I recollect one of real importance 
 
 •" Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation with one 
 interest, that of the whole ; where not local purposes, not local prejudices, 
 ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason 
 of the whole. You (the electors) choose a member indeed ; but when you 
 have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of 
 parliament." Speech at Bristol, 3rd November, 1774.
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 109 
 
 to my case. Sir William told me that his own 
 personal opinion was that the " fons et origo mali " 
 was my difference with Sir William Nicholson in 
 Japan. (See Note C at end of this Chapter.) He 
 acknowledged he knew nothing about it officially 
 and little otherwise, but when I told him what had 
 actually occurred, and that it was I who had reported 
 the case home to the War Office with the approval 
 of the British Ambassador, Sir William Franklyn 
 expressed very genuine surprise. It was evident 
 that the version which he had received did not 
 correspond with the facts of the case. And there 
 we left it. Before proceeding on his annual summer 
 leave Sir William Franklyn wrote to me saying that 
 he had submitted his Summary and my comments 
 officially to the Army Council. I then wrote to 
 General Allenby telling him what had been done, 
 and he replied expressing his pleasure at the news. 
 
 Unfortunately since my very satisfactory inter- 
 view on the case with Lord Haldane in the preceding 
 February, the Secretaryship for War had passed 
 into the hands of Colonel Seely. Whether he took 
 the trouble to acquaint himself with the facts or 
 not will never be known, but at any rate he took 
 what seemed to him to be the line of least resistance, 
 and declined to comply with my request. His 
 decision was communicated to me officially in a 
 War Office letter of the 22nd August, 1912. 
 
 Upon receipt of this letter I at once called upon 
 a great friend of mine, who is a very well known 
 man, a late Member of a Liberal Government, and, 
 as I happened to know, a friend of Colonel Seely's. 
 I put the case fully before him, and he promised at 
 once to write to the Secretary of State for War, and 
 ask him to give me military employment. In due
 
 no THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 course he received a reply in an envelope heavily 
 sealed and marked " Private and Confidential." 
 Colonel Seely refused the request for a reason which 
 he said he could not write, but could only tell my 
 friend verbally in confidence. I do not know whether 
 he ever told him, but it is probable that Colonel 
 Seely's mysterious reason was either some secret 
 record made by Sir William Nicholson, or my 
 action in Parliament. Had Colonel Seely given 
 the matter any intelligent consideration, he must 
 have seen that either reason would be legally or 
 constitutionally invalid. Had the reason alleged by 
 Colonel Seely to exist been a valid one, he need have 
 had no hesitation in informing my friend, or in 
 communicating it direct to me. 
 
 When Sir William Franklyn returned to the War 
 Office in September, I had another interview with 
 him, when he expressed his sincere regret at the 
 Secretary of State's refusal, and reiterated his deep 
 sense of the injustice of which I was the victim. 
 I decided that the time had arrived when I must 
 take some other course of action to get justice from 
 the War Office. I had waited six years for justice, 
 and during the last two years I had exhausted 
 every means, official and unofficial, to obtain an 
 impartial hearing or suitable employment. Accord- 
 ingly I placed the matter in the hands of my solicitor, 
 who took Counsel's opinion. Counsel was in favour 
 of an action for libel against the Secretary of the 
 War Office, Sir Edward Ward, for the Army Council's 
 letter signed and published by him in the Press. 
 (See p. 86, Letter 5.) By Counsel's advice I wrote 
 to the Secretary, again asking for leave to publish 
 a reasonable statement, but the War Office refused 
 permission. Thereupon, acting under Counsel's
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. in 
 
 advice, I wrote a personal letter to Sir Edward Ward, 
 containing a similar request, but Sir Edward Ward 
 refused to do anything in the matter. I wrote a 
 final letter of recapitulation to Sir Edward Ward, 
 and a few days later my solicitor served a writ upon 
 the Defendant in the coming action. 
 
 NOTE C 
 
 WHAT OCCURRED IN TOKYO IN 1904. 
 
 Towards the end of 1903 upon the recommendation of my Commanding 
 Officer, Colonel Allenby, I was selected with three other officers, one from 
 each arm of the Service, to proceed to Japan to study the language and 
 army of our Oriental Ally. After a short prescribed course of study in 
 London I sailed for Japan travelling via the United States of America, 
 and had reached Salt Lake City when I heard of the commencement of 
 the War between Russia and Japan. I pushed on at once for San Fran- 
 cisco, but on arrival in that city I found to my disappointment that the 
 boat in which I had intended to sail for Yokohama had, with all Japanese 
 liners, been taken as a transport by the Japanese Government, and I had 
 to remain three weeks in San Francisco waiting for a White Star Liner. 
 
 On arrival at Yokohama, I proceeded at once to Tokyo and called 
 on our British Ambassador, Sir Claude Macdonald, and saw the Military 
 Attache, Colonel Hume. I asked him if I could proceed at once to 
 Port Arthur, which the Japanese were already besieging, pointing out 
 that I was a Staff College graduate, spoke Russian well, and already had 
 some working knowledge of Japanese. He agreed that I should be one 
 of the first officers to go up to the front, but said that Sir William Nicholson 
 was on his way out from England, and that it would be best to await his 
 arrival before final arrangements were made. 
 
 It appeared that Mr Arnold Forster, had recently constituted the 
 Army Council, and sent all the chief officials of the War Office away. As 
 it was necessary to find these something to do, Sir William Nicholson 
 and others had been sent to Japan. It was an unfortunate selection, 
 for the Japanese, who are a very courteous and well-bred nation, never 
 understood Sir William Nicholson's brusqueness. 
 
 Anyhow there was nothing for me to do but to await his arrival, 
 of which Colonel Hume kindly promised to send me immediate word. 
 I found that if I stayed in Tokyo I should talk much English and little 
 Japanese, so I determined to wait at Kamakura, a pleasant little seaside 
 village about an hour by train from Yokohama, where I should mix only 
 with Japanese people and could study the intricacies of their charming 
 language without interruption.
 
 ii2 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 In about three weeks' time I got a letter from Colonel Hume telling 
 me that the boat with Sir William Nicholson on board was expected to 
 arrive the next day. Accordingly on the following morning I set out for 
 Tokyo, where I found that Sir William Nicholson and his Staff Officer, 
 Et. -Colonel Haldane, had registered at the Imperial Hotel. I sent up 
 my card asking if Sir William Nicholson could see me. While I was 
 waiting in the hall of the hotel, I met a newspaper correspondent, Mr B, 
 with whom I had travelled from San Francisco to Yokohama. We were 
 talking together when Colonel Haldane came down, and I told him what 
 I had come for and asked if I could go to the front as soon as possible. 
 He told me that Sir William Nicholson and he had only just arrived a few 
 hours before, that they had had a very bad sea-journey and that Sir 
 William Nicholson was at the moment recovering from its effects and 
 having a bath. He told me that the General's present idea was that a 
 certain number of officers should go to the front in three-months' reliefs, 
 that he would note my name as having applied, and that he would let 
 me know in due course what arrangements had been made. I thanked 
 Colonel Haldane, who went upstairs again, while I continued my inter- 
 rupted conversation with Mr B, who had been sitting by while Colonel 
 Haldane was talking. 
 
 I returned to Kamakura, quite satisfied with the promise that had 
 been made to me. I completed my active service kit and packed my 
 valise ready to move at a moment's notice. I then settled down to really 
 hard study, working sixteen hours a day in the determination to make 
 myself proficient in the Japanese language, which, as all Europeans who 
 have studied it know, is not an easy task. 
 
 At the same time I devoted myself to the study of the campaign 
 which was in progress, by careful perusal and collection of the official 
 reports, of which Colonel Hume, whom I often saw at Kamakura, gave 
 me pretty full accounts. 
 
 Months passed on, and rumours floated to me of other officers having 
 been sent to the front, all of whom, however, had either been longer in 
 Japan, were of higher rank than myself, or belonged to one of the King's 
 Oversea Dominions. One day I had occasion to visit a dentist in Yoko- 
 hama, and went on to Tokyo, where I saw Sir Claude Macdonald, who to 
 my surprise told me that a certain infantry officer, Captain H, who had 
 arrived in Japan some months after me, and who was junior to me in 
 service, had been sent to the front. Upon my return to Kamakura I 
 wrote to Sir William Nicholson, mentioning the case of Captain H, and 
 reminding him of his promise to me. I was not under Sir William Nichol- 
 son's command. I had been ordered to Japan by the War Office many 
 months before there was any thought of Sir William Nicholson's coming 
 out to the East. I remained directly under the orders of the War Office, 
 as transmitted to me by Colonel Hume, the accredited official Military 
 Attache to Japan. I wrote to Sir William Nicholson merely as one who 
 had asked to come under his orders by being sent to the front, and had 
 received a promise that I should be when my turn came. In reply I was
 
 THE RE-OPENED WOUND. 113 
 
 surprised to receive a letter from him couched in very discourteous terms, 
 and flatly denying that he had given me any such promise. I wrote back 
 giving him particulars of how the promise had been made to me, and 
 saying that Mr B could corroborate my statement. In reply I got a 
 letter from Sir William Nicholson, who stated that he had referred the 
 matter to Lt. -Colonel Haldane, and that no promise of any sort had been 
 given to me. I replied pointing out that it was quite possible that Sir 
 William Nicholson had no knowledge of the promise and that Irt.-Colonel 
 Haldane had forgotten having made it, but that, in view of my statement 
 and the evidence which could be given by Mr B, to state that no 
 promise had been given to me was to impugn my veracity, to which by 
 the King's Regulations I was not allowed to submit. Sir William Nichol- 
 son refused to modify his statement, and I requested him, as I was bound 
 to do by the Regulations* to submit the matter to the War Office for 
 settlement by superior authority. I went to Tokyo and laid the whole 
 matter before Sir Claude Macdonald, who called it a storm in a tea-cup, 
 but approved of my action saying that under the Regulations I had no 
 other course open to me but the one I had taken. Sir Claude, although a 
 diplomatist, had formerly been an officer in a Highland regiment and 
 was therefore well fitted and able to form a correct opinion, and give 
 profitable advice. 
 
 Having completed my full time in Japan, I passed an official exam- 
 ination in the language and returned to England in 1905. I rejoined my 
 regiment at Aldershot in May of that year, having been promoted to 
 Field Rank in the previous February. After my return to England I 
 heard no more of the incident at Tokyo, and concluded that the Military 
 Authorities had taken the same view as the Ambassador as to the pro- 
 priety of my conduct throughout the very difficult situation in which Sir 
 William Nicholson's uncalled-for attitude had placed me. If it be true 
 that the Military Authorities did not take that view, it might explain, 
 though it could not justify, much of what occurred later. If Sir William 
 Nicholson sent to the War Office any adverse report of, or comment upon, 
 this incident he should by the Regulations have sent me a copy before 
 submitting it to superior authority. Such a report, if sent in by him, 
 would not have been justified by the facts of the case, which have been 
 here disclosed as they actually took place. 
 
 I was surprised to learn later in 1905 from Colonel Allenby that he 
 was aware, not of the facts of the case, but of the fact that some incident 
 between Sir William Nicholson and myself had occurred in Japan. Sir 
 Spencer Ewart, too, told me enough to show that he had received an in- 
 correct version of the facts. In the following year, 1906, I was ordered 
 to resign my commission by the Army Council, of which Sir William 
 Nicholson had meanwhile become a Member, ostensibly upon a single 
 
 ♦Every officer, whose character or conduct as an officer and gentleman 
 has been impugned, must submit the case within a reasonable time to his 
 commanding officer, or other competent military authority, for investiga- 
 tion. King's Regulations (1904) para. 417.
 
 ii 4 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 report, whereas the King's Regulations expressly lay down [para. 204 (1904)} 
 that no official action shall be taken except after such reports have been 
 rendered for two consecutive years. (See Note 3 (1) on p. 49.) In 1909 
 Sir William Nicholson refused my application for consideration. In 1910 
 Sir William Nicholson drafted the libel which the Army Council ordered 
 to be published, and which they did not attempt to justify before a Judge 
 and Jury. In 1912 Sir William Franklyn told me that the incident in 
 Japan was the fons et origo mali, but expressed great surprise when he 
 heard some of the true facts of the case, of which he had previously quite 
 an erroneous conception. When he had listened to me, he told me that 
 I had done my duty with extraordinary courage. Later, in 19 15, a 
 responsible official at the War Office informed me that Sir William Nichol- 
 son had cancelled the excellent report which I had received from General 
 Ewart in 1910. If this is so, Sir William Nicholson acted without justifica- 
 tion, as he had had no opportunity whatever of judging my work, the 
 excellence of which was certified to by my own Chief, General Ewart. 
 Such action on Sir William Nicholson's part would, moreover, be a viola- 
 tion of the Regulations.* No reasons have ever been given by the Army 
 Council for their systematic refusal to consider my case, though their 
 official explanations have been always proved and recently admitted to 
 be incorrect. To an official application of March, 1915, asking whether 
 any record concerning myself had been left at the War Office by Sir 
 William Nicholson (then Lord Nicholson), no reply was returned. (See 
 
 P- 153.) 
 
 In the autumn of 19 15 Sir Neville Lyttelton who had been chief of 
 
 the General Staff in 1904 told me personally he was aware that I " had 
 fallen foul of Nicholson " in Japan. When in 19 16 I directly charged 
 Lord Nicholson with having left such a record, he could not deny it. (See 
 p. 167.) 
 
 *" As soon as all the opinions of the superior officers have been 
 entered, the report will be returned to the unit for communication by the 
 Commanding Officer to the officer concerned, who will initial the report 
 at the place assigned for the purpose to show that he has seen it. A note 
 will be made in the report that these instructions have been duly attended 
 to. Similar procedure will be followed in the case of adverse reports 
 other than those made in the annual reports." Army Order (No. 107) 
 on adverse confidential reports, published in May, 1908, and incorporated 
 in King's Regulations (1912), para. 133.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 (February, 1914) 
 ADAM v. WARD 
 
 It is the first function of the law to see that no one shall 
 injure another. — Cicero. 
 
 During the whole of the year 1913 the preliminaries 
 of the Action were in the hands of Counsel, and after 
 many delays the case came on for hearing before 
 Mr Justice Darling and a Special Jury on the 12th 
 February, 19 14. I was represented by Mr (now 
 Sir Edward) Duke, K.c, m.p., and Mr (now Sir) Hugh 
 Fraser, a prominent Barrister, who has written the 
 recognised text-book on the Law of Libel. Sir 
 Edward Ward was represented by the Law Officers 
 of the Crown, Sir John Simon, k.c, m.p., Attorney- 
 General, and Sir Stanley Buckmaster, K.c, m.p., 
 Solicitor-General, instructed by The Treasury 
 Solicitor. The case excited much interest, not only 
 in the army, but amongst the general public. Every 
 day the Court was crowded to overflowing, and many 
 were unable to obtain admission. During some of 
 the time General Allenby with a party of friends 
 occupied seats in the Judge's private box. The 
 trial lasted six days, and resulted in a verdict in my 
 favour, with £2,000 damages.
 
 n6 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Although the nominal defendant was Sir Edward 
 Ward, who had resigned the Secretaryship to the 
 Army Council only a very short time before the 
 trial, the real defendants were the Military Members 
 of the Army Council (Sir William (later Lord) 
 Nicholson and Sir Ian Hamilton) and the Govern- 
 ment as represented by the Secretary of State for 
 War (Lord Haldane).* The case affords one of the 
 most unpleasant examples on record of the Law 
 Officers of the Crown, whose fundamental duty is 
 to see that justice is impartially administered to all 
 His Majesty's subjects, striving day after day with 
 all the art of practised advocates to defend a Govern- 
 ment Department and a Minister of the Crown who 
 had done a serious wrong to a loyal citizen and 
 soldier, f The cause of action was the letter pub- 
 lished over Sir Edward Ward's signature by the 
 Army Council on the 5th August, 1910. This was 
 the letter, the statements in which the Army Council 
 in their official correspondence had characterized 
 as "correct, complete and pertinent."! When, 
 however, they were called upon to defend their own 
 letter before a Judge and Jury, they had to admit 
 
 *Mr Justice Darling to the Jury {Off. Rep., p. 626) : " This is not 
 really an action against Sir Edward Ward, it is an action against a Govern- 
 ment Department, which has done wrong. What will satisfy you that 
 this is not an action against Sir Edward Ward simply as Sir Edward Ward, 
 is this, that the Law Officers of the Crown, who are appearing in the case, 
 are not allowed to take private practice. This will shew you in what 
 sense it is an action against the Government Department, that portion 
 of the War Office known as the Army Council." 
 
 |MR Duke {Off. Rep., p. 621) : " It is a grievous affair that the Law 
 Officers of the Crown should come here to demonstrate the possibility 
 that an officer in His Majesty's Army may be ruined without being heard. 
 That is a lamentable thing." Even the Attorney General admitted {Off. 
 Rep., p. 585) : "It may very well be true that as a matter of fact there 
 has been a mistake made here. That may very well be so." 
 
 ^See Note * on page 100.
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 117 
 
 that they were unable to justify their statements, 
 and fell back upon a defence of " qualified privi- 
 lege." This course was strongly criticized at the 
 trial,* and in the Press. f 
 
 Throughout the whole trial the difficulty that 
 the Attorney General had, in order to give some 
 colour to his plea of privilege, was to prove that 
 it was the Army Council's duty to publish facts 
 which the Army Council could not justify. J 
 
 *Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 613) : " The War Office could have come here 
 to justify these statements. They dare not do that." 
 
 tAn example is given : " When the documents and other evidence 
 were looked into by a legal eye the impossibility of justifying the libel was 
 perceived ; in other words, the War Office had in its own possession the 
 means of knowing that its statements were unjustifiable. So much for 
 the ' inquiry ' which Lord Haldane offered, which Major Adam wisely 
 refused, and which was then held without the presence of the parties I 
 
 " Again, when the lawyers found that the War Office could not possibly 
 justify its libel, what was the one right and proper thing for a Minister 
 and officers acting in the name of the King to do ? Obviously to admit 
 their mistake, apologize to Major Adam, and make some tardy attempt 
 to right all the wrong that had been done from the beginning. But 
 what did the War Office do ? It fell back upon the sole plea of ' privilege,' 
 claiming, that is to say, not only the right to libel officers privately in 
 official documents, but to disseminate such libels broadcast throughout 
 the public press." — Truth, 25th February, 1914. 
 
 " If they could plead nothing better than privilege, the War Office 
 ought not to have fought the case. An officer had been libelled by the 
 Permanent Secretary as the agent of the Army Council. The libel could 
 not be justified, though it certainly would have been if it could, as the 
 history of the action in its earliest stage pretty clearly shows. When a 
 public body in the position of the Army Council does a wrong to one of 
 its subordinates it ought not to go into court with no better plea than 
 a technical defence — especially one which amounts to a claim to commit 
 such wrongs at pleasure with impunity. It ought to apologize and make 
 amends." — Truth, 17th March, 1915. 
 
 JThe Attorney Generai, {Off. Rep., p. 517) : " The subject matter 
 may be perfectly proper for the public to know about, although the actual 
 things said were not true." The Attorney Generax {Off. Rep., p. 520) : 
 " It is never proper for the public to know what is not true, except in a 
 novel or a fairy tale."
 
 n8 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 The difficulty that my Counsel had throughout 
 was that material documentary evidence in the 
 case, the production of which would have imme- 
 diately proved my contention up to the hilt, was in 
 the possession of the Army Council who refused to 
 produce it, on the plea that its production would be 
 contrary to the public interest. Time after time 
 Mr Duke called for the production of some material 
 document,* and was met by a refusal,! although in 
 cases where the document seemed to help the Army 
 Council, there was no hesitation in its production. 
 The Army Council even refused to produce the 
 official registers which were certainly not confidential, 
 and which would have given contemporaneous 
 
 ♦Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 26) : " If the trial is to be a trial and not a 
 burlesque, I take it that this document will be produced." Mr Duke 
 {Off. Rep., p. 92) : " It may be that by the morning reflection will have 
 brought about the view that these documents had better be produced." 
 Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 596) : " Beset from day to day with the legions 
 of the War Office with portfolios of documents out of which they will 
 not produce a line that can help Major Adam, and out of which, by some 
 strange accident, document after document emerges which is to help the 
 theory that he is wrong in this case." Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 600) : 
 " Those who are behind the Defendant (Army Council and Government) 
 here, produced such documents as they thought fit, and they refused 
 to produce the documents which would show aye or nay whether Major 
 Adam is right." 
 
 -j-The Law Officers secured the attendance of Sir Reginald Brade, who 
 had succeeded Sir Edward Ward as Secretary to the Army Council, to 
 state the Army Council's refusal to produce the documents. When asked 
 by the Judge to produce a certain material document (General Scobell's 
 report) Sir Reginald Brade said {Off. Rep., p. 71) : " I raise an objection, 
 my Lord, to producing it. I have carefully perused it, and I am satisfied 
 that it would be contrary to the public interest to produce this document." 
 Mr Duke, objecting that the opinion of a subordinate official was not 
 sufficient to exclude the document, the Judge sent for Colonel Seely, 
 Secretary of State for War, who, upon arrival, being asked to produce 
 the document, replied {Off. Rep., p. 93) : " In my judgment it would be 
 contrary to the public interest to produce a document of this character."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 119 
 
 evidence of the truth or falsity of their allegations.* 
 The Judge's opinion on the attitude of the War 
 Office in the matter is clear, f 
 
 The Army Council's letter, which was the cause 
 of the action, ran as follows : 
 
 " War Office, 
 
 " $th August, iqio. 
 n Sir, 
 
 " In reply to your letter of the 8th July, 1910, 
 asking that an enquiry should be instituted in regard 
 to a statement made by Major W. A. Adam, m.p., in 
 the House of Commons on June 27th, to the effect 
 that while in command of the 1st Cavalry Brigade 
 you rendered confidential reports on certain officers, 
 which reports contained wilful and deliberate mis- 
 statements of fact, I am commanded by the Army 
 Council to inform you that a thorough investigation 
 has been made of the reports made by you at that 
 time on certain officers of the 5th Lancers, who were 
 afterwards removed from the regiment, and to whom 
 it is believed that Major Adam's statement bore 
 reference. Major Adam is himself one of these 
 
 *Mr Duke (Off. Rep., p. 599) : "I called for the documents. I 
 challenged them to produce the register in the General's office, and the 
 regimental registers which are sworn to exist . . . the registers were not 
 produced." 
 
 fMR Justice Dartjng {Off. Rep., p. 19) : " There must be documents 
 in the War Office which could be seen, because they published this " {i.e. 
 the libel, which gives the purport of the documents). Mr. Justice 
 Darling {Off. Rep., p. 95) : " Supposing the General made an absolutely 
 unjustifiable imputation on an officer, and sent it to the War Office, it 
 might be gravely to the detriment of the public interest that such a thing 
 should be produced, so as to show all the world that Generals were report- 
 ing on things which they knew nothing about." Mr Duke : "I take 
 that as a sufficient indication of your Lordship's view, and I leave the 
 matter."
 
 120 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 officers. The Council also thought it proper to 
 address a letter to Major Adam on the 23rd ultimo, 
 inquiring whether he desired to forward for their 
 consideration any statement in amplification or 
 substantiation of his charge against you. On the 
 29th idem a reply was received from Major Adam 
 to the effect that he had written to the Secretary 
 of State for War on the subject, but his letter of the 
 same date to the Secretary of State is found to 
 contain nothing pertinent to the present investiga- 
 tion. The Council are satisfied that not only did 
 your reports contain the unbiassed and conscientious 
 opinion you had formed on the officers in question, 
 but that the conclusions at which you arrived were 
 correct, as they were afterwards borne out not only 
 by the opinion of your successor in command of the 
 1st Cavalry Brigade, but also by a special report 
 on the 5th Lancers made by H.R.H. the then 
 Inspector-General of the Forces, and confirmed by 
 the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the Alder- 
 shot Command. Further, as showing the absence 
 of hostile bias, the Army Council note that in the 
 case of Major Adam, who in 1906 was called upon 
 to retire from the Service in consequence of adverse 
 reports which were duly communicated to him, 
 you intervened on his behalf and urged the Council 
 to give him another chance in an extra-regimental 
 appointment. In the result it was decided to give 
 Major Adam this chance. I am to add that the 
 Council are of opinion that the charge brought 
 against you by Major Adam is without foundation. 
 
 11 I am, etc., 
 
 " (Signed) E. D. WARD. 
 To Major-General H. J. Scobell, 
 
 " C.V.O., C B."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 121 
 
 That this letter was a libel the Army Council 
 made no attempt to deny.* Nor did they deny 
 its publication in the Press, f The letter gave the 
 contents of many of that class of documents, confi- 
 dential reports, which Colonel Seely had refused to 
 produce in the public interest.} In fact the Army 
 Council by their publication of the letter did exactly 
 what the Judge in another connection laid down 
 they could not legally do.§ The actual authors of 
 the letter were Sir William (later Lord) Nicholson, 
 Sir Ian Hamilton, and Mr (now Lord) Haldane.|[ 
 
 *Mr Justice Darling {Off. Rep., p. 624) : " It has not been contended 
 by the Attorney General for a moment that on the face of it this letter 
 of the 5th August, which was written to General Scobell and published 
 by the War Office, is not a libel." 
 
 fMR Duke (Off. Rep., p. 5) : " The libel was sent out to all the Press 
 Agencies " (p. 444, " One of the news agencies is an Australian news 
 agency ; another is a news agency at the Cape "), to a vast number of 
 newspapers " (about 62), " to the Army Agents, and apparently to every- 
 one in whose eyes it would prejudice Major Adam or by whose means it 
 could be circulated to his prejudice." 
 
 +Mr Duke to Sir Edward Ward {Off. Rep., p. 365) : *' Confidential 
 reports are forbidden, by the King's Regulations, to be disclosed, are they 
 not ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." Mr Duke : " Did it occur to 
 you that in this document [the libel] a series of confidential reports were 
 set out for the condemnation of Major Adam, contrary to the King's 
 Regulations ? " (No answer returned). 
 
 §Mr Justice Darling {Off. Rep., p. 222) : " The War Office must 
 be in this position. Either they say : ' On behalf of the public we object 
 to producing the document altogether,' or they say : ' We produce it 
 all.' But they are not entitled to say : ' We will tell you it is a (docu- 
 ment of such and such a description), but we will not produce it.' ' 
 
 ||Mr Justice Darling to Sir Edward Ward (Off. Rep., p. 330) : " Do 
 you know whether the letter of the 5th August was all in one hand- 
 writing ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Speaking from memory, I think it 
 was. There may be some small alterations by one of the other members, 
 but the body was in one hand-writing." Mr Duke : " Whose hand- 
 writing was that ? " Sir Edward Ward : " The Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff." Mr Justice Darling : " Do you mean General Nichol- 
 son ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." Mr Duke : *' Whose were the 
 alterations ? " Sir Edward Ward : "If there were any alterations, 
 they would be, I suppose, by the adjutant general, the other military 
 member who was concerned in the draft" Mr Duke : " Who was the
 
 122 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 For the purpose of its composition these officials 
 had before them all the reports on the case, of some 
 of which they admit having made a thorough investi- 
 gation. Yet the letter which is the result of their 
 deliberations and their investigation, lasting as Mr 
 Haldane stated, from July 9th to August 4th, 1910, 
 was misleading in almost every particular. A brief 
 examination of the statements made in the letter 
 will suffice to make this clear. 
 
 A thorough investigation has been made of the 
 reports made by you (General Scobell). This means 
 no more than that the reports in question had been 
 re-read, a matter of a few minutes. The word 
 thorough is misleading. Without hearing both sides, 
 no thorough investigation, or indeed any investiga- 
 tion at all, could be said to have been made, f Yet 
 
 adjutant general in August, 1910 ? " Sir Edward Ward : "Sir Ian 
 Hamilton." Mr Duke: " As I understand the matter, a document of 
 this kind which comes to you must have the initials upon it of the members 
 of the Army Council who vouch for it ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." 
 Mr Duke : " What initials had this document upon it ? " Sir Edward 
 Ward : " It had the initials of Sir William Nicholson, Sir Ian Hamilton, 
 and the Secretary of State, Mr Haldane." 
 
 fMR Duke, to Sir Edward Ward (Off. Rep., p. 342) : " The thorough 
 investigation which is referred to in the letter " (i.e., the libel) " is an 
 investigation consequent upon General Scobell's complaint ? " Sir 
 Edward Ward: "Yes." Mr Duke: "Was General Scobell heard 
 before the Army Council?" Sir Edward Ward: "No; at least I 
 suppose he was not." Mr Duke : " Did Major Adam have an opportunity 
 of attending before them ? " Sir Edward Ward : "I do not know. 
 I should not think so." Mr Duke : " Tell us what you are going to say." 
 Sir Edward Ward : "So far as I am aware, none of these officers were 
 called." Mr Duke : " Did you not know, as far as moral certainty goes, 
 that neither of them had been heard ? " Sir Edward Ward : " As far 
 as I knew, neither of them had been heard."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 123 
 
 Mr Haldane had stated that an investigation had 
 been made in conformity with the King's Regula- 
 tions,* and the Army Council had stated that a 
 " thorough investigation of that charge " had been 
 made. (See Note on p. 101.) 
 
 Removed from the regiment. The officers were 
 placed upon half -pay. That the expression used 
 by Sir William Nicholson is stronger than the fact 
 justified was admitted by Sir Edward Ward.f 
 
 Major Adam is himself one of these officers. Here 
 commences the personal defamatory attack upon 
 myself. A reference to my speech in the House 
 on the 27th June, 1910 (see p. 75 and Note) makes it 
 clear that I asked for an Inquiry for the sake of 
 Captain W-, my brother-officer. No Inquiry such 
 as I asked for could have benefitted me, or given 
 me the re-instatement which it would certainly 
 have given to my brother-officers. J In fact Sir 
 
 *In the House of Commons on 22nd November, 19 10 (see Note on 
 p. 90). 
 
 fMR Duke to Sir Edward Ward (Off. Rep., p. 352) : " It is a little 
 more damaging to say that Major Adam has been removed from his 
 regiment, than to say he has been put on half-pay ? " Sir Edward 
 Ward : " I should say so." Mr Duke : " It is more comprehensive ? " 
 Sir Edward Ward : " It is more comprehensive." 
 
 I By election to the House of Commons I placed myself automatically 
 upon half -pay and there I should remain. When cross-examined in this 
 connection by the Attorney General upon what General Scobell had said 
 about me in his report, I replied (Off. Rep., p. 255) : " It did not matter 
 two straws to me what he had said. I had left the Army, as I thought 
 for good."
 
 124 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Edward Ward admitted that this letter to General 
 Scobell was used by the Army Council as an instru- 
 ment with which to attack me.* 
 
 His {Major Adam's) letter of the same date (29th 
 November) is found to contain nothing pertinent to 
 the present investigation. A reference to this letter 
 (see Note on p. 85, Letter 3) will show that it denied 
 the competency of the Army Council to deal with 
 the case by an epistolary Inquiry, which would be 
 unfair to Major-General Scobell, and would command 
 the confidence neither of Parliament nor of the public. 
 
 The Council are satisfied that not only did your 
 reports contain the unbiassed and conscientious opinion, 
 etc. As far as I know General Scobell's report 
 contained no expression of opinion, but it did con- 
 tain, as I have always asserted, mis-statements of 
 fact (see my speech in the House, p. 75). Sir 
 William Nicholson here deliberately avoids the issue. 
 
 The conclusions at which you arrived were borne 
 out by the opinion of your successor in command of 
 the 1st Cavalry Brigade (Brigadier-General Byng). 
 This is untrue, f 
 
 ♦Mr Duke, to Sir Edward Ward {Off. Rep., p. 347) : " This letter 
 is directed to Major Adam's case ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." 
 
 |Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 8) : " What opportunity General Byng could 
 have had for forming conclusions I do not know. Major Adam had not 
 served under him, and had no sort of subordination or active military 
 duty to General Byng." Mr Duke to Major Adam {Off. Rep., p. 87) : 
 " Had you been brought in any way into communication with General 
 Scobell's successor, General Byng, at that time ? " Major Adam : " No, 
 I never saw him. I never saw General Byng." Mr Justice Darung : 
 ' Do you mean you never have seen him ? " Major Adam: " No, I 
 never have seen him." Mr Duke : " You say you have never seen 
 him ? " Major Adam: " No." Mr Duke: " Nor received any com- 
 munication from him?" Major Adam: "None." Mr Duke, to Sir 
 Edward Ward {Off. Rep., p. 345) : " Take the report of General Byng. 
 He succeeded General Scobell, did he not ? " Sir Edward Ward : " He 
 di<l." Mr Duke: "Do you know he never commanded the brigade
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 125 
 
 A special report of the 5th Lancers made by His 
 Royal Highness the then Inspector General of the 
 Forces. This is the first mention ever made of 
 this report, which was undoubtedly written by 
 Major-General Scobell,* and appears to have been 
 a general report upon the regiment since Colonel 
 Graham took over the command. The Duke of 
 Connaught had never seen the regiment, f 
 
 Absence of hostile bias. I had never suggested 
 that hostile bias was the motive force governing 
 General Scobell's actions. In this instance what 
 prompted him was genuine regret for his negligence, 
 and terror of the possible results of it. (See p. 51, 
 and Note). 
 
 while Major Adam was there ? " Sir Edward Ward : " I do not know." 
 Mr Duke : " Just let us see about that. You have given me the date 
 when Major-General Scobell was promoted and appointed Inspector of 
 Cavalry?" Sir Edward Ward: "Yes." Mr Duke: "That was 
 May, 1907?" Sir Edward Ward: "Yes." Mr Duke: "General 
 Byng succeeded him ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." Mr Duke : 
 " Major Adam was at the War Office at that time, was he not ? " Sir 
 Edward Ward: " Yes." Mr Duke: " Were you not aware that he 
 was at the War Office ? " Sir Edward Ward : "I was." Mr Duke : 
 " So that General Byng could not have reported upon him as brigadier 
 with any personal knowledge of his performances in the regiment ? " 
 Sir Edward Ward : " No." (Surprise in Court). Mr Duke, to Sir 
 Edward Ward {Off. Rep., p. 365) : "It " (the libel) " states what the 
 confidential report of General Byng was ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes, 
 the conclusions." Mr Duke : " That is, that he condemned Major Adam 
 if this is true ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes." Mr Duke : " Although 
 Major Adam had never been an officer under his command ? " (No 
 answer returned). The Attorney General avoided re-examination on 
 this point. See also page 107. 
 
 ♦Major Adam [Off. Rep., p. 199) : " The Inspector General's report 
 was written by his Cavalry Inspector, who was Major-General Scobell." 
 
 fMAjOR Adam (Off. Rep., p. 199) : " The Duke of Connaught never 
 saw the regiment, and knew nothing about me or anyone else in the regi- 
 ment. He has to trust in these matters to his Inspector-General of 
 Cavalry. There is no other way for him to get the information. As 
 Major-General Scobell had become Inspector-General of Cavalry in May, 
 1907, he was the man to report/'
 
 126 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Major Adam, who in 1906 was called upon to 
 retire from the Service. No mention is made of the 
 fact that the Army Council issued this unwarrant- 
 able order in known violation of the Kings Regula- 
 tions. The circumstances and chronology of events 
 are now well known by the public, but they were 
 not when Mr Haldane published the libel. By a 
 clever inversion of events it was made to appear 
 that I was, with other officers, " removed from the 
 regiment " and afterwards to have been found so 
 inefficient as to be " called upon to retire from the 
 Service." In this connection Sir Edward Ward's 
 admissions are of interest.* 
 
 In consequence of adverse reports which were duly 
 communicated to him. This is untrue, as the Army 
 Council have since acknowledged. Sir William 
 Nicholson knew, and had before him when he wrote 
 independent contemporary documentary evidence 
 to prove that of all the reports rendered during the 
 course of two years by various officers over various 
 signatures, not a single report had been " duly 
 communicated " to me, or apparently to any one 
 of the officers of the regiment. The Army Council 
 decided to order me to retire in November, 1906. 
 The only adverse report that I have ever seen did 
 not reach the Army Council till January, 1907. 
 The report on which they acted I have never yet 
 seen. 
 
 *Mr. Duke, to Sir Edward Ward (Off. Rep., p. 358) : " It is worse 
 to be called upon to retire from the Service than it is to be removed from 
 your regiment, is it not ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes, I should think 
 so." Mr Duke: "It is a different thing?" Sir Edward Ward: 
 ' Yes." Mr Duke : " It is a more extreme step ? " Sir Edward Ward : 
 'Yes." Mr Duke: "And involves a greater condemnation?" Sir 
 Edward Ward: " Yes." Mr Duke: " And with the kind of person 
 who is not very familiar with military life, it is more calculated to hurt 
 than the other, is it not ? " Sir Edward Ward : " Yes."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 127 
 
 Urged the Council to give him another chance 
 in an extra-regimental appointment. Sir William 
 Nicholson omitted to mention what the nature 
 of the extra-regimental employment was.* 
 
 The Council are of opinion that the charge brought 
 against you by Major Adam is without foundation. 
 This statement is evidently, from its position almost 
 as a postscript, an afterthought, yet it is the only 
 statement in the whole letter pertinent to its object. 
 It is one which the Council had no right to make, 
 for Sir William Nicholson knew that no serious 
 investigation had been held, no witnesses heard, 
 no evidence read. I had stated in Parliament that 
 a report or reports rendered by Major-General Scobell 
 contained wilful and deliberate mis-statement of 
 fact. To that statement I adhere. It is true for 
 all time. At the trial the Army Council did not 
 attempt to justify their statement that Scobell had 
 written what was true.f 
 
 ♦Mr Duke, to Sir Edward Ward, who had just said that he thought 
 I deserved the whole letter. (Off. Rep., pp. 361-2) : " Do you think 
 Major Adam deserved to be put in this position, that when he had been 
 given a lucrative post, relatively, and a staff appointment, it should be 
 said about him : ' The Army Council gave him another chance.' Do 
 you think that was fair to him ? " Sir Edward Ward : " No." Mr 
 Duke : " Do you say he deserved to have it put in this manner which 
 might mislead people?" Sir Edward Ward: "No." Mr Duke: 
 " Really Major Adam, when he was transferred from a cavalry majority 
 to a staff appointment at the War Office, was getting what in substance 
 would have been regarded, except for the circumstances, as a very good 
 bit of promotion ? " Sra Edward Ward : " As promotion, certainly." 
 Mr Duke : " Can it be thought to be fair to describe a man's promotion 
 as giving him another chance ? " (No answer). Mr Justice Darling, 
 to Sir Edward Ward : " Well ? " (No answer). (Sensation in Court). 
 Mr Duke : " I will leave it." 
 
 fMR Duke {Off. Rep., p. 3) : " In the year 1906, in the autumn, a 
 confidential report was rendered with regard to Major Adam. It was 
 absolutely untrue." And then he challenged the other side : " I do not 
 think anybody will profess in this case to set it up as a statement of truth."
 
 i 2 8 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 One point which I was glad to have the oppor- 
 tunity at the trial of making perfectly clear was that 
 General Scobell was not at heart a bad man, or a 
 man actuated by malice against anyone. He was 
 a weak man, easily influenced by others, incapable 
 of forming an independent judgment, and not 
 possessed of a sufficiently high degree of intelligence 
 to realise what the result of his actions might be. 
 He had been placed by the military authorities in 
 a position for which he was unfitted, but for this 
 he was not to blame. Had any Court of Inquiry 
 been held it would have been made perfectly clear 
 that he was the ready tool of another, who made 
 use of his name for a sinister purpose.* 
 
 Mr Duke {Off. Rep., pp. 598, 615) : " General Scobell's statement con- 
 tained false statements of fact — this is uncontradicted and unchallenged 
 evidence. False these statements were — sworn to and not cross-examined 
 to." The Attorney General {Off. Rep., p. 567) : " I have never said, 
 and I do not say, that they {i.e., the reports rendered by General Scobell) 
 were true." 
 
 *Major Adam {Off. Rep., p. 203) : " General Scobell could have 
 applied to have his Court of Inquiry, and if a Court of Inquiry had been 
 held he would have been absolved of all malice or any intention of that 
 sort, and the real blame would have been brought home to the man who 
 had verbally reported to him what he carelessly and negligently wrote 
 in his report and signed with his name." Mr Justice Dating, to Major 
 Adam {Off. Rep., p. 204) : " When you read out this type-written thing, 
 why did you not begin it with ' Colonel Graham of the 5th Irish Lancers 
 did,' and so on, instead of saying that Major-General Scobell did it ? " 
 Major Adam : " Because I have seen the report, and Colonel Graham's 
 was not practically a bad report, but Major-General Scobell's report, 
 the report which he rendered to a superior authority, did contain deliberate 
 mis-statements of fact. These statements of fact were such that he could 
 not on his own observation have made them, they must have been, as 
 Sir John Simon knows— he has probably seen the report — they must have 
 been verbally made to him by Lieutenant-Colonel Graham, and that 
 would have come out on any Court of Inquiry." Major Adam {Off. Rep., 
 p. 200) : " Major-General Scobell had no malice against any body." The 
 Solicitor General (Sir Stanley Buckmaster) : " Let us take that down : 
 Major-General Scobell had no malice against any body.' ' When 
 pressed further by the Attorney General as to the extent of my reflection
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 129 
 
 As the claimant in the action, I was the only 
 witness, and during my examination, which lasted 
 three days, the story was revealed as far as possible, 
 the Law Officers of the Crown (Sir John Simon and 
 Sir Stanley Buckmaster) objecting on every possible 
 occasion to the production of documents and evi- 
 dence. On no single point was my evidence shaken. 
 
 For the defence, Sir Edward Ward gave evidence. 
 He was only in the box for a short time, during 
 which an expert analysis of his evidence shows 
 that he contradicted himself upwards of forty times,* 
 and made many statements which were wholly in- 
 correct, f As, however, Sir Edward Ward was only 
 used as a whipping boy by the Army Council, his 
 evidence is of little personal importance. He had 
 to admit that he knew I had been most unfairly 
 treated by the Army Council. 
 
 The surprise of the whole trial occurred at the 
 conclusion of Sir Edward Ward's examination. Sir 
 
 upon what General Scobell had done, the Judge intervened thus : Mr 
 Justice Darung, to the Attorney General (Off. Rep., p. 258) : " He 
 (Major Adam) makes this reflection that he (General Scobell) wrote reck- 
 lessly and carelessly.' The Attorney Generai, : " If you please." 
 Major Adam : " I go a little further than that, if you will allow me. He 
 wrote recklessly reports which he knew would ruin the career of officers 
 under his command, and he neglected to carry out the Regulations, which 
 say that he must show those to the officers before sending them on." 
 
 *It is not necessary to give more than one example. The five officers 
 of the 5th Lancers having been placed on half-pay as the immediate 
 effect of the report on the regiment written by General Scobell, signed 
 by the Duke of Connaught and rendered in September, 1907, Sir Edward 
 Ward was asked by Sir Stanley Buckmaster [Off. Rep., p. 311) : " Had 
 you any knowledge of the reports and circumstances which led to that 
 step (i.e., the placing on half-pay) being taken ? " Sir Edward Ward : 
 " No." Later when he was asked by Mr Justice Darung (Off. Rep., 
 p. 366) : " Have you read it (the Duke of Connaught's report) ? " Sir 
 Edward Ward : "I read it carefully. I can give the purport of it." 
 
 fMR Duke (satirically) to the Judge (Off. Rep., p. 353) : " If I may 
 say so, Sir Edward Ward is an excellent witness."
 
 130 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 John Simon, who might have called upon Colonel 
 Graham* or Lord Haldane, or Lord Nicholson, or 
 Sir Ian Hamilton, f any one of whose evidence would 
 have had immediate bearing on the points at issue, 
 chose to call upon Field Marshal Sir John (now 
 Viscount) French whose evidence must, and indeed 
 proved to, be irrelevant. Legally Mr Duke could 
 have objected to the witness, and the Judge would 
 have been right in supporting his objection, but my 
 Counsel preferred to take a broader view of the case 
 in the interests of the army, and of truth, and raised 
 no objection. Had I conceived it possible that Sir 
 John French's memory was going to commit him 
 to irrelevant statements for the immediate refuta- 
 tion of which my Counsel was unprepared, I might 
 at the time have taken a different view as to the 
 advisability of allowing Sir John French to give 
 evidence. But I suspected nothing. I did not 
 think that Sir John French was capable of saying 
 behind my back anything contrary to what he had 
 
 * In the course of the trial the Jury sent a note to the Judge asking 
 why Colonel Graham had not been called. Whereupon Sir Edward Ward 
 was examined by the Attorney General {Off. Rep., p. 422) : " Can you 
 tell the Jury where Colonel Graham is ? " "At the present moment he 
 is in Sierra Leone." " Is he any longer in Army employ ? " " No." 
 ' What is his present position ? " "I understand he is practising at the 
 Bar in Sierra Leone." Cross-examined by Mr Duke. " Do you know 
 that there is a process by which a commission can issue, to take evidence 
 of a witness at a place like Sierra Leone ? " "I believe there is." " You 
 believe that is so ? " "I have heard of it." " As it is revelant to this 
 matter, I think I ought to ask you this. Your solicitor here is Solicitor 
 for the Treasury ? " " Yes." " And your Counsel are the Law Officers 
 of the Crown ? ' ' They are." Mr Duke : " May it please your 
 Lordship." 
 
 fMR Duke {Off. Rep., p. 616) : " The Defendant could have called 
 them (the three mentioned), if he thought they could help his case ? "
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 131 
 
 said to my face,* nor did I imagine that his memory 
 was so defective as his sworn evidence proved it 
 to be. In order to realize my estimation of Sir 
 John French at the moment when he stepped into 
 the witness box, it may be well to recapitulate my 
 previous association with the Field Marshal. 
 
 The first time I came under Sir John French's 
 command was on the 31st October, 1899, when I 
 joined his cavalry brigade of four regiments in 
 Ladysmith. The Boers were encircling us and we 
 were about to be besieged. On the 2nd November 
 Sir John French and his personal staff escaped from 
 Ladysmith a few hours before the final investment, 
 and I did not again come under his command till 
 1902 in Cape Colony, where I was in command of 
 the Headquarters of my regiment. When I returned 
 from Japan in May, 1905, and took over command 
 of my Squadron at Aldershot, I again came under 
 Sir John French's command and close supervision. 
 That year Sir John French saw my work during 
 Squadron Training, Regimental Training, Brigade 
 Training and Divisional Manoeuvres, and in October, 
 1905, rendered to the War Office an excellent report 
 upon me, endorsing that of the Regimental Com- 
 mander, Colonel (now Field Marshal Viscount) 
 Allenby. f During Winter Training Sir John French 
 had further frequent opportunities for observation, 
 
 * Major Adam {Off. Rep., p. 188) : "I should never have thought 
 that Sir John French would have sent a letter or report to the War Office 
 without communicating it to me." Major Adam {Off. Rep., p. 245) : 
 " I do not suppose Sir John French would say anything behind my back 
 that he would not say to my face." 
 
 fMR Duke {Off. Rep., p. 9) : " The annual report of him (Major Adam) 
 in 1905 by his Commanding Officer, Colonel Allenby, was undoubtedly 
 a favourable report." Sir John French, to Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 394) : 
 " I certainly heard no adverse report from General Allenby about him 
 (Major Adam)."
 
 132 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 and again during the Spring Drills and Squadron 
 Training. At the conclusion of the Training of my 
 Squadronin May, 1906, Sir John French accompanied 
 by his Chief of the Staff, Colonel (now Lt. -General Sir 
 Archibald) Murray held an official inspection of my 
 Squadron, and subjected every officer, man and 
 horse to the closest personal examination, at the 
 conclusion of which Sir John French publicly on 
 parade before the Brigadier (Major-General Scobell) 
 and Regimental Commander (Lt.-Col. Graham) 
 complimented me highly upon the results which 
 I had achieved.* Between this date in May and the 
 18th June, 1906, Sir John French never saw my 
 Squadron on parade, as we were engaged in the 
 
 *Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 12) : " There was an inspection of the regi- 
 ment at Aldershot by the General Commanding at Aldershot, Sir John 
 French, and Sir John French at that time, in either May or June, 1906, 
 openly complimented Major Adam upon the efficiency and fitness of his 
 Squadron and of the officers, men and horses in it." Mr Duke, to Major 
 Adam [Off. Rep., p. 66) : " Did General Sir John French, who was the 
 General Commanding-in-Chief at Aldershot, inspect the 5th Royal Irish 
 Lancers ? " Major Adam: " He inspected us squadron by squadron." 
 The Solicitor General: "Is this in 1906?" Mr Duke: "Yes." 
 (To Major Adam) " What took place, as far as Sir John French is con- 
 cerned, with regard to your squadron ? " Major Adam : " He was very 
 pleased with it ; he congratulated me on the spot on the efficiency of the 
 men and the condition of the horses, and I told him I had a very good 
 lot of officers, non-commissioned officers and men." Mr Duke, to Sir 
 John French [Off. Rep., p. 392) : " Do you remember the instance Major 
 Adam mentioned in his evidence, when you complimented him on the 
 condition of his squadron, at an inspection in the summer of 1906 ? " 
 Sir John French : "I have no recollection of it whatever, but I may 
 say that I do not think it is by any means impossible." Mr Duke : " I 
 hope not? " Sir John French: " I mean to say that I think it is 
 extremely likely, that on that occasion I may have seen the squadron, 
 and that it was being very well worked on that particular morning. I 
 might have thought the horses were looking very well, and the men were 
 riding very well, and have certainly told Major Adam so." Mr Duke: 
 " And paid him the compliment such as you would pay to a commanding 
 officer of a properly cared for squadron ? " Sir John French : " Cer- 
 tainly."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 133 
 
 annual course of musketry and other duties. On 
 the 18th June occurred the incident on parade 
 related on page 41. On the following day I took 
 over command of the Reserve Squadron of my regi- 
 ment which did not attend parades. On the nth 
 November I received the Memorandum from Sir John 
 French mentioned on page 44, and on the 14th 
 December I left his command.* On the 22nd 
 March, 191 1, I was informed by the Army Council 
 that Sir John French had reported to them upon 
 me on the 3rd November, 1906. This was the first 
 intimation I had that Sir John French had ever 
 rendered any report at all. (See p. 95.) 
 
 Yet at the trial, at the request of the Government, 
 Sir John French came forward to endeavour to 
 attack me in a professional capacity and to give 
 evidence to show that his opinion was the result 
 of his own observation.! From a military point 
 of view it was at least an " unsportsmanlike " thing 
 to do. From a legal point of view it was stigmatized 
 by an eminent K.C. as sharp practice, because by 
 the rule of the Courts I was debarred from calling 
 upon General Allenby or anyone else to refute evi- 
 dence given after the case for the plaintiff had 
 closed. From another point of view, I shall say no 
 more than that it disclosed a deplorable memory. 
 
 It will be remembered that in December, 1907, 
 the Army Council had issued to the Press a com- 
 munique stating that the five officers of the 5th 
 Lancers who had been placed upon half -pay " were 
 
 •Major Adam (Off. Rep., p. 245) : " Sir John French's only conversa- 
 tion with me was highly laudatory, when he saw my squadron, the last 
 time he saw it." 
 
 fYet when further pressed upon this point, Sir John French in an 
 access of honesty, exclaimed: "I consulted . . . {Off. Rep., p. 377), 
 but was immediately interrupted by Sir John Simon, and asked another 
 question.
 
 134 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 not considered suitable to retain their positions as 
 officers in this cavalry regiment," (see p. 57). This 
 communication, without further explanation, was 
 an improper one to make, and was the first and only 
 intimation of the sort that I ever saw. It will be 
 remembered that no Commanding Officer and no 
 General Officer had ever found any fault with me,* 
 or as far as I know with my brother officers, and it 
 was reserved for me as a surprise to hear from the 
 lips of one of the men responsible for the whole 
 scandal, some seven or eight years after the event, 
 that he had formed an adverse opinion on the capaci- 
 ties of all the senior officers of the 5th Lancers except 
 the Officer Commanding the regiment. This ques- 
 tion of suitability or non-suitability for the cavalry 
 seems to have originated at the War Office. Cer- 
 tainly in the reports of Colonel Graham and General 
 Scobell, however erroneous General Scobell had 
 acknowledged his reports to be, this question was 
 not raised. Nor as far as I know was the expression 
 ever used by Sir John French in any report ; he 
 certainly never used it in his evidence at the trial. 
 He hinted, he suggested, that mistakes had been 
 made, yet when pressed he talked only of a collective 
 impression and could not specify a single instance, f 
 
 ♦When asked by Mr Duke the date on which I had first heard of this, 
 my reply {Off. Rep., p. 280) was : " Last Friday was my first intimation " 
 (i.e., on the 13th February, 1914). 
 
 f Mr DUKE, to Sir John French (Off. Rep., p. 391) : " Could you tell 
 the Court what the mistake was which left an impression on your mind ? " 
 Sir John French: 'It is rather difficult to speak of what particular 
 instance I remember, especially at this distance of time. 1 can only 
 speak of the general impression which was left on my mind." Mr Duke : 
 " I am not asking you about a collective impression. I am dealing with 
 a particular instance ? " Sir John French : " Not a particular one." 
 Mr. Duke : " I am right in saying that there is none which has left such 
 an impression on your mind, that you can identify it ? " Sir John 
 French : " I can give you no particular instance at this distance of time."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 135 
 
 The real fact is that whatever report Sir John 
 French sent to the War Office on November 3rd, 
 
 1906, was based solely on the report which he received 
 from Major-General Scobell on the 7th October. 
 It will be remembered that the Memorandum which 
 he sent to me on the nth November (see p. 45), 
 stated this explicitly. In fact the whole evidence 
 of Sir John French disclosed a deplorable memory 
 of fundamental facts. He frequently used expres- 
 sions of doubt, uncertainty and hesitation.* Some- 
 times his memory was so much at fault as to lead 
 him, even though he was on oath, to make state- 
 ments which were contrary to truth. For example, 
 he stated (Off. Rep., p. 313) that the 5th Lancers 
 were under his command at Aldershot in November, 
 
 1907, whereas they had left that station in the 
 previous September. His memory as regards 
 material dates was peculiarly defective, f Some of 
 his sworn statements on matters about which he 
 had had recent opportunity to refresh his memory 
 were peculiarly instructive. J Sir John French from 
 
 *" I am talking to the best of my recollection," [Off. Rep., p. 388). 
 " At this distance of time I cannot say more than that," (Off. Rep., p. 
 388). " I cannot tell you exactly," {Off. Rep., p. 391). " It is very 
 difficult for me to remember it at this distance of time," (Off. Rep., p. 
 391). " I am not quite sure," (Off. Rep., p. 394). " I cannot say exactly," 
 (Off. Rep., p. 395). " I find a difficulty in answering," (Off. Rep., p. 396). 
 " I have no recollection about it," (Off. Rep., p. 397). 
 
 fSiR John French (Off. Rep., p. 394) : " Colonel Allenby was only 
 a short time at Aldershot. I think he gave up command of the regiment 
 very soon after I came." But Sir John French came to Aldershot in 
 September, 1902, and Colonel Allenby in September, 1904. The latter 
 left Aldershot in October, 1905, i.e., more than three years after Sir John 
 French came there. 
 
 |The Attorney General to Sir John French (Off. Rep., p. 378) : 
 " Major Adam has told us that his impression is " (my words were " I am 
 absolutely certain," Off. Rep., p. 221, and elsewhere) " that he never saw 
 a copy of that report of yours ; what do you say about that ? " Sir 
 John French: "Well, I am morally sure that he did see a copy of it."
 
 i 3 6 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 his military position and length of service might be 
 expected to have some knowledge of the administra- 
 tion of the army, but his memory on its elementary 
 details was peculiarly defective.* At the time of 
 the trial Sir John French was Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff and issued the orders to the army. 
 Just four months previously, in October, 1913, he 
 had issued an Army Order (No. 340) directing that 
 all reports on officers, whether adverse or favourable, 
 shall be shown to them and initialled by each. Yet 
 Sir John French repeatedly denied on oath any 
 knowledge that such an Order was in force, f If 
 Sir John French is unable to recollect one of his 
 own Orders, of great importance, issued by him only 
 four months previously, it is scarcely possible that 
 a jury or the public can attach much value to his 
 recollection of what had occurred eight years before. 
 
 The Attorney General : " Why do you say that you are morally sure 
 that he did ? " Sir John French : " Because I have seen a memorandum 
 of his and a signature of his to that effect." No such memorandum was 
 ever written or signed by me. 
 
 *One example, that of the Regulations governing the communication 
 of an adverse report to the officer concerned, will suffice. Sir John French 
 said its communication was " comparatively modern," " quite modern," 
 " within the last ten years." (Off. Rep., p. 400). In the Army Regula- 
 tions for 1873 it is officially laid down that any officer adversely reported 
 on is to be informed of the particulars. It had therefore not only been 
 the custom of the army to communicate an adverse report, but it had been 
 the Official Regulation for over forty years. 
 
 fMR Justice Darling, to Sir John French [Off. Rep., p. 400) : " Is 
 it the practice now to show a report (*.*., to the officer concerned) whether 
 it is favourable or unfavourable ? " Sir John French : " That is prac- 
 tically uuder consideration at the present moment, but it is not quite 
 decided." Mr Justice Darung : " I was under the impression they 
 showed them ? " Sir JonN French : " I think it is left more or less 
 at present to the commanding officer's own discretion, and there is a 
 question before the Army Council now as to whether it should not be 
 made an order." Mr Justice Darling: " If it is a favourable report 
 he may show it to the officer, but he is not at present bound to do so ? ' 
 Sir John Frknch : " Yes, that is so."
 
 ADAM v. WARD. 137 
 
 In the event it proved that no advocacy by the 
 Law Officers for the Crown; no witnesses they 
 called ; no unfair production, f no misleading 
 combination of documents (see Note on p. 96), 
 etc., could blind the Jury to the fact that the Army 
 Council had published a false and malicious libel 
 upon me, and they brought in a unanimous verdict 
 in my favour. 
 
 Eleven jurymen wished to give me damages of 
 between £30,000 and £40,000 recognizing that 
 such a figure alone would in any sort recompense me 
 for the enormous pecuniary loss and injury which 
 had been inflicted upon me by the Army Council. 
 One of the twelve, however, would not agree, as he 
 was not convinced that Sir Edward Ward would 
 not have to pay the damages out of his own pocket. 
 This juryman assessed the damages at the modest 
 figure of £2,000, and finally after trying to dissuade 
 him for nearly two hours, the jury had to return 
 to Court with a verdict in my favour, and damages 
 assessed at that amount. 
 
 After the verdict most of the jurymen came to 
 shake hands with me and express their great personal 
 sympathy, apologizing for the inadequacy of the 
 damages. After all, the principle was the main 
 thing, and that had been established for all time to 
 the lasting satisfaction of all honest men, namely 
 that no body of men in office, such as the Army 
 Council, could with impunity ruin a loyal servant 
 of the Crown, break their own Regulations, and 
 deny him for ever the justice which was his due. 
 
 t Mr Duke [Off. Rep., p. 388) : " Until the latest stage of this case, 
 the Plaintiff has been prevented from having any of these documents 
 and it is impossible to conduct the Plaintiff's case fairly to the Plaintiff 
 if they are introduced on the part of the Defence at a late stage in the course 
 of the Defence."
 
 138 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 England thought with satisfaction that this 
 elementary principle which is contained in the 
 clauses of Magna Charta, had been re-affirmed and 
 more firmly established. 
 
 How the Army Council continued once more to 
 evade its responsibility and escape the penalty due 
 to it is described in Appendix I, page 179.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 (1914-1917) 
 THE WORLD-WAR 
 
 They also serve who only stand and wait. — Milton. 
 
 No sooner was the result of the trial published 
 than congratulations began pouring in from all 
 sides. They came by wire, by post, by hand. They 
 came from relatives, from friends, from acquain- 
 tances, from strangers. They came signed, they 
 came anonymously ; they came from men, from 
 women, from old, from young, from peers, from 
 commoners, from soldiers, from civilians, from 
 barristers, from politicians, from journalists, from 
 high, from low ; from all sides of the United King- 
 dom, from the Dominions, from foreign countries.* 
 
 *A few specimens are given : 
 
 From a Peer : "If your success will have any effect, as I have no 
 doubt it will, in obtaining a fairer system of confidential reports, the Ser- 
 vice will owe you a considerable debt of gratitude." 
 
 From a Member of Parliament : " My warmest congratulations 
 to you on having destroyed a most intolerable system." 
 
 From a Cabinet Minister : " Need I say how very pleased I was 
 to read of the result of your trial. It is very satisfactory to have vindicated 
 your position." 
 
 From a Relative: " All manner of congratulations on successful 
 ending of your trial. I alwa3 ? s maintained that the refusal of ' audi alteram 
 partem ' would not be allowed by any jiiry." (Mr Duke {Off. Rep., p. 
 5) : " Major Adam has never been heard upon this matter from first 
 to last.")
 
 140 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 They were all very gratifying, but perhaps the most 
 pleasing of all were those from my late constituents 
 at Woolwich,* from officers on the active list, f a ^d 
 
 From an Eminent Barrister: " Splendid and right triumphant! 
 Congratulations ! I was not at the verdict, but I could see that Duke 
 had beaten Simon hollow before I left the Court. You are famous. 
 I take it Haldane is really to blame. Still I scarcely hoped for such a 
 tremendous defeat of the Army Council. You should have had ten times 
 the sum they awarded in damages. I think it will give a knock-out 
 blow to the really iniquitous way in which the plea of privilege is so often 
 put forward by the Crown. I admire the fine courage with which, single- 
 handed, you have fought the whole resources of our ' Government,' if 
 indeed the word is an any sense applicable." 
 
 From a Well-known Journalist : " Yours is a case which for con- 
 stitutional importance has not been matched since the days of Junius 
 and Lord Mansfield." 
 
 From a Friend : " Well done ! splendid ! Your quiet dauntless 
 courage should be a real lesson to all narrow-minded men and women. 
 I suggest you put up a statue in front of the War Office in the best classical 
 style of Adam. That good man has been neglected in London. One is 
 sick of Nelson and Cromwell and Quintin Hogg and all the other Kings 
 of England, and the first man in the land left out." 
 
 From a Stranger : " Sincere congratulations in common with many 
 thousands of Englishmen. I am as pleased at your victory as if I had 
 won the case myself." 
 
 Anonymous : " The army which is certainly on your side is fortunate 
 in having someone bold enough and able to expose the shady behaviour 
 of persons in high position." {Signed, " NEC ASPERA Terrent.") 
 
 *A few specimens are given : 
 
 " As Victor Hugo once wrote to a friend, ' I send you a shake of the 
 hand from the bottom of my heart.' " 
 
 " I do not know of any case in which a verdict has been obtained 
 by an officer except by yourself." 
 
 (Western Australia). " Well played, Sir, well played indeed ! When 
 I read the news of your £2,000 victory, I was as pleased as if I had got 
 it myself. Your signed photograph as of yore occupies a prominent place 
 in my drawing-room. Will you please convey my respectful congratula- 
 tions to Lady Antonia, and to yourself I wish the best of luck and happi- 
 ness. Amongst us few Woolwichers here you will always occupy a 
 piunacle." 
 
 " No soldier or sailor ought to be damned in private, refused all 
 redress, insulted, degraded, and all this by men who dare to use, 
 and shelter themselves behind the Royal Prerogative, and plead ' the 
 interests of the Service ! ' "
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 141 
 
 officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 
 5th Lancers who had served with or under me, 
 many of whom were still with the regiment.* Espec- 
 ially gratifying was the formal Resolution passed 
 
 " Since I have known you publicly, I have always admired you as 
 a man and a thoroughly honourable gentleman." 
 
 " No doubt this law suit has served the purpose of demonstrating 
 to the world that you are a brave and distinguished soldier. But to those 
 who understood you best at Woolwich, no such demonstration was 
 necessary. We knew it all the time." 
 
 " I earnestly wish I were congratulating you on your success as our 
 Member, a place which all your supporters teel no one can fill so honourably 
 as yourself." 
 
 " We are so glad, but we do wish you would came back again to 
 Woolwich." 
 tA few specimens are given : 
 
 From Friends : 
 
 " You have done a noble work in showing up an iniquitous system, 
 and it will be a great relief to the officers of the army." (COLONEL.) 
 
 " You have done the British public an immense sendee by exposing 
 the methods of Government Departments, which, if allowed to continue, 
 will prove exceedingly injurious to the public interest." (Major.) 
 
 From Strangers : 
 
 " I was on General . . .'s Staff for about three months the summer 
 that your regiment was at . . . It was of course well known how brilliant 
 a regimental officer you were, and how hopelessly inefficient Graham 
 was." 
 
 " The whole army, at least that portion of it composed of gentlemen, 
 will join in my hearty congratulations." 
 
 " Every officer in the army owes you a debt of gratitude." 
 
 " Every honest soldier in our army is congratulating you to-day. 
 The shameless system to which you have now dealt so smashing a blow 
 deprived the army of one of its most efficient officers when you left, but 
 somehow I cannot help thinking now that it was for the best, and that 
 a man of your strength of character and brilliancy can do more good 
 as a modern Hercules." 
 
 *A few specimens are given : 
 
 From an Officer : "I congratulate you most heartily upon your 
 pluck, perseverance and victory. Your case will be a classic. I couldn't 
 get into the Court, although I should bike to have supported my Squadron 
 Leader of 1S95." 
 
 From an N.CO. :_ " Allow me to congratulate you on your splendid 
 victory. I was Squadron Quarter Master Sergeant of C Squadron when 
 you were in command of it. I am glad you got the best of the War Office ; 
 it wants a bit of doing."
 
 142 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 by the Old Comrades Association of my regiment.* 
 Such a Resolution was clear evidence of the Army's 
 distrust of the Army Council and of the system 
 which did so much to impair one of the greatest 
 national assets, regimental esprit de corps. Under 
 such a flood of congratulations one realized that 
 one had done something for the army, that, even 
 if one were to die to-morrow, one had struck a 
 blow for justice and for truth. 
 
 One of the most pleasing congratulations was 
 conveyed in the spontaneous words of a stranger, 
 who was a Member of my Club. One day I was 
 writing an important letter in the writing room of 
 the Carlton Club, when I became aware of a man 
 striding across the room towards me, and looking 
 up I saw that he had stopped suddenly in front 
 of the table at which I was writing, and that he was 
 holding out his hand. I placed mine in it, and he 
 shook it heartily. " I felt I had to shake you by 
 the hand," he said in a quick jerky fashion, " you 
 have done a great work for the country. Stick it 
 out." Almost before I realized the situation, the 
 man had turned away, and the door had closed 
 behind him. I was alone. The man, whom I had 
 known only by sight, was the late Sir Thomas 
 Bucknill, Judge of His Majesty's High Court. Thou 
 
 From a Trooper : "As an old member of C Squadron, 5th 
 Lancers, allow me to offer you my sincere congratulations on your splendid 
 victory in the Law Courts." 
 
 * " Sir, I am requested by the Old Comrades, 5th Lancers, to convey 
 to you a resolution passed at a meeting held on the 10th hist. : 
 
 ' Congratulations on your verdict obtained against the Army Council.' 
 
 " Yours respectfully, 
 
 " (Signed) .... (ex-Sergeant Major), 
 " Hon. Sec. 0/ the $th R. I. Lancers Old Comrades' Association."
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 143 
 
 hast since passed beyond the barrier of death, but 
 have no fear, valiant soul ; I shall " stick it " to 
 the end. 
 
 The only personal advantage I could hope to 
 obtain from the proceedings at the trial was re- 
 instatement in the army, so that I should be able 
 to take my proper place in the great war which, 
 as I have said, I had long seen approaching. I had 
 for more than twenty years been a serious student 
 of my profession, more especially of the languages 
 and armies of those European Powers which were 
 likely to take their place as belligerents. For me 
 the strategy of the coming campaign had long been 
 a fascinating study, both in theory and in practice, 
 along the actual routes which were likely to be 
 traversed by the opposing armies. It had been 
 quite clear to me, even before the date of the Alge- 
 siras Conference (1906), that the struggle for world 
 power could not be long delayed, and I had warned 
 my constituents clearly, and had spoken more 
 guardedly in the House of Commons on the necessity 
 for preparation. I felt now that it would once more 
 be possible to take my active share in the forthcoming 
 struggle whenever it should commence, because 
 the War Office could now no longer deny to me 
 the justice for which I had asked so long in vain. 
 
 With this end in view I wrote to Sir Spencer 
 Ewart in March and had a hopeful interview with 
 him at his own house. Ear Her in the month I had 
 re-opened nty correspondence with Sir William 
 Franklyn, and, acting on his advice, submitted an 
 official application for ante-dated promotion and 
 suitable employment. To my surprise and great 
 disappointment I received an official refusal of my 
 request, though no reason was assigned. The official
 
 144 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 communication contains another repetition of the 
 untrue statement as to the circumstances of the 
 case being fully known to the authorities.* 
 
 So matters stood when the great European 
 struggle for world-supremacy commenced, on the 
 25th July, 1914, by Austria's declaration of war 
 upon Serbia. I now hoped that my application for 
 military employment would receive its due considera- 
 tion, and I proceeded to use every endeavour, both 
 official and unofficial, to get some suitable post. 
 Amongst others to whom I applied then and shortly 
 afterwards were Major-General H. H. Wilson, Direc- 
 tor of Military Operations ; Major-General F. J. 
 Davies, Director of Staff Duties, Lieut. -General Sir 
 Charles Douglas, Chief of the Imperial General 
 Staff, Lieut. -General Sir William Franklyn, Military 
 Secretary, Lieut. -General Sir Henry Sclater, Ad- 
 jutant General, Major-General Sir Archibald Murray 
 Commanding a Division at Aldershot, Colonel Mac- 
 donogh, Intelligence Staff at the War Office, Lieut.- 
 General Sir Alfred Codrington, Military Secretary 
 at the War Office, Lieut. -General Sir Spencer Ewart, 
 Commanding-in-Chief Scotland, Sir George Arthur, 
 private Secretary to Lord Kitchener who had been 
 appointed Secretary of State for War, and Sir Horace 
 Smith Dorrien, Commanding-in-Chief at Salisbury. 
 
 On the 3rd August I received a wire from the 
 Chief of the Imperial General Staff, informing me 
 that my name was noted for employment, and on 
 the following day England declared war upon 
 Germany. I made hasty preparations to sail on 
 
 *If that were so, why do they make an untrue statement of fact so 
 Lite as in their letter of the 2nd October, 1915 ? {See p. 158).
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 145 
 
 active service, but not receiving the expected orders, 
 I renewed my official application to the Adjutant 
 General. 
 
 Sir Alfred Codrington, an ex-Guardsman, had 
 just been appointed Military Secretary in the room 
 of Sir William Franklyn, who was placed in command 
 of one of the New Divisions, which were being 
 raised at home. On the 10th August I called upon 
 Sir Alfred Codrington at the War Office who was 
 exceedingly kind and sympathetic, promising to do 
 all he could to help me. After leaving him, I called 
 at the Horse Guards, and saw Sir John French 
 (recently appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Ex- 
 peditionary Force) and Sir Archibald Murray who 
 had been appointed his Chief of the Staff. The 
 latter promised to remember my wish for service 
 with the Expeditionary Force, and do all he could 
 to further it. 
 
 Rumours of the departure of the Expeditionary 
 Force for France were current and I now began 
 to suspect that the military authorities intended to 
 exclude me from it, and being anxious to discover 
 the reason decided to seek an interview with Sir 
 Arthur Wynne who had been Military Secretary 
 at the War Office from 1906 to 191 1. He had 
 received his military education in an infantry line 
 regiment, and his professional attitude had always 
 apparently been marked with that official correctness 
 and precision which is popularly called " red-tape." 
 He had never been friendly to me since I had 
 appointed his cousin, the late Alfred Wynne, a man 
 for whom I always entertained the greatest admira- 
 tion, to be land agent for my Cavan and Louth 
 properties, till their sale under the Wyndham Act. 
 I knew in fact that Sir Arthur Wynne, in his capacity
 
 146 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 as Military Secretary, had in 1906 secretly opposed 
 my appointment to the General Staff, and had for 
 that purpose visited Sir Neville Lyttelton, the Chief 
 of the General Staff, but his intervention in opposi- 
 tion to me had not been successful. In 191 1 he had 
 been appointed Keeper of the Crown Jewels with 
 residence at the Tower. Accordingly I wrote to 
 him asking for an interview, and in reply I received 
 a wire fixing an appointment for the following day. 
 On the 18th August I called upon him and was 
 received with politeness. It was evident to me 
 that he knew far more of the 5th Lancers' case than 
 he cared to say, and while expressing his desire to 
 help me, he also explained his inability to do so in 
 his present position. He told me that he had offered 
 his services to the War Office, and that if they were 
 accepted, he might find himself in a position in the 
 immediate future to assist me. He gave me, how- 
 ever, neither information nor assistance. 
 
 On the same day the safe arrival in France of 
 the British Expeditionary Force was officially 
 announced in the Press — an announcement which 
 caused me to realize that up to the present all my 
 applications for employment with it had been in 
 vain. 
 
 On the following day, my old friend, General 
 Callwell, was appointed Director of Military Opera- 
 tions at the War Office, and to him I next applied. 
 Some days later I had a personal interview with him 
 at the War Office, when he promised me his assis- 
 tance. The same evening I received a letter from 
 Sir Alfred Codrington's private Secretary (an old 
 friend of mine, Captain Sheppard, of the 19th 
 Hussars, and later of the Grenadier Guards) saying 
 that Sir Alfred Codrington had not forgotten my
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 147 
 
 desire for employment. A few days later I called 
 a second time upon the Military Secretary at the 
 War Office, and found him still quite hopeful of soon 
 finding me suitable employment on the Staff. 
 
 I next applied direct to General Lambton, who 
 had been a student with me at the Staff College, and 
 was now Military Secretary to Sir John French in 
 France. I also applied for employment to Sir 
 Archibald Hunter, whom I had known in Ladysmith 
 during the siege, and who had lately been appointed 
 to command at Aldershot. 
 
 Early in October I received from Sir Arthur 
 Leetham, who held an ad hoc position at the War 
 Office dealing with officers' appointments, a letter 
 asking for particulars of my service and what sort 
 of appointment I desired, to which I replied by 
 return of post, and two days later I called at the 
 War Office to see him. He was out, but his private 
 Secretary told me that he had placed my name 
 for employment upon the Secretary of State's list. 
 
 The following morning I received an official 
 letter from the Military Secretary's Department 
 offering me a post in one of the units which was 
 being raised for the New Army. I knew that the 
 War Office was hard pressed to find senior officers 
 of experience to train these new infantry units, 
 so I decided that it might assist the Military Authori- 
 ties if I were to accept the post temporarily, while 
 at the same time continuing my endeavours to obtain 
 some suitable employment in which I could turn 
 my strategic and diplomatic knowledge of the 
 European situation to account. Accordingly I 
 wrote at once to Sir Alfred Codrington, putting the 
 situation clearly before him. A few days later Sir 
 Alfred Codrington telephoned to me orders to wait
 
 148 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 where I was until I heard further, as he was trying 
 to get me an appointment on the Staff. More than 
 a week elapsed before I heard from him again saying 
 that his efforts had been unsuccessful. On the 25th 
 October I saw him by appointment for the third 
 time (previously on 10th August and 7th September) 
 at the War Office. I pointed out to him that the 
 position which I had been offered was most un- 
 suitable and uncongenial to me, and pressed my 
 claims for re-appointment to the General Staff of 
 the Army in Flanders. He fully agreed with me, 
 but said that there was a difficulty in rinding good 
 senior officers for the New Army, that when once 
 in harness I should be in a much better position 
 for my application for suitable Staff employment 
 to receive attention, and that he would remember 
 my name for the first appointment he could offer 
 me. Three days later I went to Aldershot and 
 reported for duty. Having waited four days I wrote 
 to Sir Alfred Codrington reminding him of his promise 
 to help me, and he replied that he had ceased to 
 be Military Secretary, but would send on my letter 
 to his successor. 
 
 On the 5th November I submitted through the 
 usual official channel to the Secretary of State for 
 War an Appeal under Section 42 of the Army Act,* 
 
 *My first Appeal to the King under this Section had been submitted 
 o;i the 3rd April, 191 1 (see p. 96). In my second Appeal I recounted 
 the familiar features of the case, and pointed out the facts which had 
 recently been proved at the trial of Adam v. Ward, viz., that the original 
 reports were false reports, that they were rendered in violation of the 
 King's Regulations, and that all action taken upon them by the Army 
 Council was also in violation of the King's Regulations, and therefore 
 invalid. I further pointed out that I had been invariably reported on 
 favourably as a cavalry officer by General Allenby, and as a Staff Officer 
 by Sir Spencer Ewart, and that the only officers who had reported un- 
 favourably upon me and four of my brother officers had been immediately 
 '.tterwards deprived of their appointments on account of incapacity.
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 149 
 
 and two days later I began a correspondence with 
 the new Military Secretary, Sir Frederick Robb. 
 
 After about three weeks service at Aldershot, 
 the Officer Commanding the infantry regiment to 
 which I was attached offered to recommend me for 
 command of a regiment. I stipulated that it should 
 be a cavalry regiment, but nothing came of his 
 offer as the Army Council wrote, officially refusing 
 to promote me, though assigning no reason for their 
 refusal. This refusal was made at a time when my 
 contemporaries and juniors in the Service were 
 being promoted daily to the rank of General 
 Officers. 
 
 I now thought it was time to act upon Sir Alfred 
 Codrington's advice and submit an official applica- 
 tion for re-employment upon the General Staff. 
 Accordingly I sought personal interviews with the 
 Brigadier and Divisional Commander, laid before 
 them particulars of my service and qualifications, 
 and obtained their separate consents to recommend 
 any application for re-employment on the Staff 
 which I cared to put forward. Accordingly I sub- 
 mitted through the official channel an application 
 for such employment, which the Army Council in 
 spite of the Military Secretary's promise {see p. 148) 
 refused to entertain. 
 
 It must be remembered that I was a graduate 
 of the Staff College, had served for three years upon 
 the Headquarters' Staff, had upon the conclusion 
 of my Staff appointment received a report from my 
 General which was " wholly excellent," had special 
 linguistic qualifications for service in Europe, and 
 was a highly trained officer with twenty-seven years' 
 military experience. At the moment too, the Army 
 Council was offering responsible positions on the
 
 150 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Staff to civilians without any qualifications what- 
 soever. 
 
 Just about this time the General Officer Com- 
 manding the Royal Field Artillery in East Anglia 
 asked me to go to Suffolk to take command of one 
 of his Territorial Batteries, and I consented to do 
 so, as another temporary arrangement. The mili- 
 tary authorities in East Anglia informed me that 
 my transfer was approved by the War Office. 
 
 This, however, fell through later, for, towards 
 the end of January, 19 15, I received a War Office 
 letter asking me to sign an enclosed paper upon 
 transfer to the Territorial Field Artillery. I had 
 only consented to temporary attachment, and this 
 letter aroused my suspicion. I consulted a legal 
 friend, who agreed with my preconceived opinion 
 that this was really an insidious attempt to deprive 
 me of my commission, and I officially returned the 
 letter and paper unsigned, asking whether or not 
 my opinion was well founded. To this official 
 enquiry I never received any reply, which confirms 
 me in thinking that the opinion w r hich I had formed 
 of the object of the War Office was only too well 
 founded. 
 
 On the last day of January I received an official 
 letter from the Army Council offering me a transfer 
 to a Reserve Cavalry Regiment. I replied at once, 
 officially accepting the offer, but asking that the 
 transfer might remain in abeyance, pending the 
 result of my Appeal to the King under Section 42 
 of the Army Act, which had then been under con- 
 sideration for nearly three months, and to which 
 I was daily expecting a satisfactory reply. 
 
 On the same day I requested an interview with 
 Sir Frederick Robb, with whom I had been in corres- 
 pondence since the beginning of November. The
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 151 
 
 Military Secretary refused my request but invited 
 me to submit my wishes to him in writing. In 
 accordance with this invitation I wrote out a concise 
 statement of my case, asking to be told the reason 
 why the Army Council refused to give me suitable 
 employment and allow me to proceed to France. 
 This correspondence with Sir Frederick Robb lasted 
 a long time, and his many letters are a model of 
 what should be avoided. They are merely examples 
 of systematized evasion. After failing to learn 
 from him any reason for the attitude of the Army 
 Council I suggested that, as his predecessor in office, 
 Sir William Franklyn, had told me in 1912 (see p. 
 109), the real reason might be the mistaken version 
 of the incident with Sir William Nicholson in Japan 
 (see Note C at end of Chapter vi), when he impugned 
 my veracity, and I was compelled to report his 
 conduct to superior authority. After my suggestion 
 had been ignored several times by the Military Secre- 
 rary, I put the question to him direct, and after 
 first refusing to reply, he wrote denying my sugges- 
 tion.* As Sir Frederick Robb had at his disposal 
 the same information which had been at the disposal 
 of Sir William Franklyn in 1912 it appeared to me 
 almost useless to continue to correspond with an 
 official who was evidently evasive. 
 
 Accordingly I next sought and obtained an inter- 
 view with Mr Tennant, the Under Secretary of 
 State for War, who kindly promised me his assistance 
 
 *" I cannot find that your veracity has been impugned, nor does 
 the incident which you mention have any bearing whatever upon the 
 present situation." (Extract from a letter of the Military Secretary 
 of 22nd February, 1915O J protested strongly against the statement in 
 the first clause of this extract, which Sir Frederick Robb withdrew in a 
 letter of the 22nd April, 1915, in which he admitted that I was justified 
 in considering that Sir William Nicholson had impugned my veracity.
 
 152 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 to obtain suitable employment, if possible in France. 
 Some weeks afterwards he wrote to me regretting 
 that his endeavours had been of no avail. 
 
 About this time Sir Archibald Murray resigned 
 his appointment as Chief of the Staff to Sir John 
 French, and returned to England, where a new 
 appointment, that of Deputy Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff, was created for him, his principal 
 duties being apparently those performed in times of 
 peace by the Inspector General of the Forces. I had 
 not written to him since the previous August, and 
 early in March I resumed my correspondence with 
 him, asking for his assistance to obtain for me 
 suitable employment. During the many years I 
 have known Sir Archibald Murray as a soldier and 
 as a friend, he has always proved ideal in either 
 capacity. Sans peur et sans reproche, he will always 
 stand out in glowing contrast to some of the men, 
 whose deeds it is my duty to chronicle in this history. 
 
 It was not long before his duties brought Sir 
 Archibald Murray to inspect the Division to which 
 I was attached. After the official Inspection was 
 over, he asked to see me privately, when he expressed 
 great surprise at my unsuitable employment, and 
 promised his assistance in finding me a Staff appoint- 
 ment, and in clearing up the mystery of my strange 
 treatment by the military authorities. He did as 
 he promised, but without success. 
 
 About this time I submitted through the official 
 channel four separate applications each containing 
 one simple question. 
 
 (i) The first, dated the 23rd March, asked my 
 position as regards pension. The pursuant corres- 
 pondence contained thirty-one minutes, and went
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 153 
 
 on till the 8th June, when no answer was given.* 
 
 (2) The second, dated the 25th March, arose 
 out of the unsatisfactory answers of the Military 
 Secretary to my letters, and asked whether Lord 
 Nicholson had recorded any personal opinion about 
 me, but no answer was returned, f 
 
 (3) Before sending in the third, dated the 7th 
 April, I had put the question, asking for elucidation 
 of my enforced position, in a private letter to Sir 
 Frederick Robb, and he had replied advising me to 
 put it in an official letter. I did so, and the pursuant 
 correspondence, containing seventeen minutes, went 
 on till the 8th June, when a letter, signed by Sir 
 Frederick Robb himself, arrived refusing to give any 
 answer. 
 
 (4) The fourth, dated the 19th April, asked 
 the reason why suitable employment was withheld 
 from me. The pursuant correspondence went on 
 till the 10th May, when no answer was returned. J 
 
 *My original application contained the words : " I ask that this letter 
 may be regarded as an inquiry, and not as an application to retire from 
 the Service." Upon which I,t.-General W. Pitcairn Campbell, Command- 
 ing-in-Chief, Southern Command, wrote : " I won't send this on as nobody 
 is allowed to voluntarily retire from the army during the period of the 
 War." The application went to the War Office. 
 
 fUpon this application Lt. -General W. Pitcairn Campbell, Com- 
 manding-in-Chief, Southern Command, wrote : "I am of opinion that 
 it is not open to Major Adam to ask by whom a letter written by direc- 
 tion of the Army Council was drafted." Upon which I wrote: "I 
 entirely agree with the opinion of the General Officer, Commanding-in- 
 Chief, Southern Command, which is, however, irrelevant to my applica- 
 tion. The information to which he refers is public property " (this 
 alludes to the sworn evidence of Sir Edward Ward that the now famous 
 libel was drafted in the hand-writing of Lord Nicholson). The application 
 went to the War Office. 
 
 I Upon this application General Sir Arthur Paget, Commanding 
 Salisbury Training Centre, wrote : "I am not prepared to recommerd 
 Major Adam for employment on the General Staff." Upon which I
 
 154 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 These four applications form a good example 
 of the ordinary course of official communication, 
 show how uselessly officials, who are highly salaried 
 by the tax-payer, occupy their time, and constitute 
 a fitting comment upon the general standard of 
 military intelligence. 
 
 It was not until the 8th June, 1915, that I received 
 an official intimation that my Appeal to the King 
 had been rejected,* and on the same day I applied 
 for the transfer to my own arm of the Service, the 
 cavalry, which I had been officially offered the 
 previous January and which I had officially accepted. 
 I was looking forward to more suitable and congenial 
 employment when I received a reply from Sir Henry 
 Sclater, the Adjutant General, to say that no trans- 
 fers to the cavalry were at this time being carried 
 out, and that my application could not be granted. 
 The statement that no transfers were being carried 
 
 wrote: " No application for employment on the General Staff is made, 
 therefore recommendation is not sought. " Sir Arthur Paget refused to 
 forward my application. It went to the War Office. 
 
 N.B.— It was Sir Arthur Paget who had been sent with a costly suite 
 at the expense of the British tax-payer on a special mission to the Balkans, 
 and on the 17th March, 19 15, he telegraphed to Lord Kitchener: " All 
 possibilities of Bulgaria attacking any Balkan State that might side 
 with the Entente is now over, and there is some reason to think that shortly 
 the Bulgarian army will move against Turkey." (Extract from Report 
 of Dardanelles Commission). Very shortly afterwards Bulgaria joined 
 Turkey and overran Serbia. 
 
 ♦The official formula on these occasions is : " The Secretary of State 
 .regrets that he has found himself unable to advise His Majesty to issue 
 any special instructions." The Appeals never go to the King, but are 
 decided by the Secretary of State for War, or in other words, as was 
 pointed out by Mr Justice Darling in Adam v. Ward {Off. Rep., p.p 44, 141, 
 et al), against a decision of the Army Council there is no Appeal except 
 to the Army Council. Considering the manner in which the Army Council 
 arrives at its so-called decisions, this constitutional danger cannot be 
 overrated.
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 155 
 
 out was not true,* nor would such a rule have applied 
 to my case, in which I had been officially promised 
 a re-posting to my own branch of the Service. Sir 
 Henry Sclater had been Adjutant General in the 
 previous January, so was personally responsible for 
 the obligation and its repudiation. 
 
 Thereupon I wrote to Sir Neville Lyttelton, 
 Governor of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, who, 
 as Chief of the General Staff in 1907, was originally 
 responsible for the scandal of placing five senior 
 officers of the 5th Lancers upon half-pay, without 
 due consideration and without showing them the 
 false reports which served as a basis for his action. 
 At his invitation I had two pleasant interviews! 
 with Sir Neville Lyttelton, who admitted he was 
 partly to blame in the matter, and consented to take 
 the case personally to Sir James Wolfe-Murray, 
 the then Chief of the Imperial General Staff. He 
 did so, but in the end his intervention was barren of 
 result. 
 
 Sir Archibald Murray, as Deputy Chief of the 
 Imperial General Staff, had a room at the W T ar Office, 
 and there towards the end of July, with a view to 
 get sent out to the Front, I had a talk with him, 
 when he again expressed great sympathy with me 
 for the unjust treatment I was receiving. He 
 
 •During June and July, 1915, fifty-two transfers to Regular Cavalry 
 were gazetted. 
 
 f During one of these interviews Sir Neville confided to me that it 
 would make no difference to the Army Council whether I had seen General 
 Scobell's report when it was rendered or not. The whole history of the 
 case seems to corroborate this statement. Therefore, according to Sir 
 Neville Lyttelton, himself once First Military Member of the Council, 
 the Army Council invariably sets the King's Regulations at defiance. No 
 army administered on this system can ever reach that standard which 
 the Public has the right to demand.
 
 156 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 strongly advised me to ask some General at the front 
 to apply for my services, and accordingly I wrote 
 with this object to General Allenby (Corps Com- 
 mander), to Sir Hubert Gough (Divisional Com- 
 mander) and to General Macdonogh (Chief of the 
 Intelligence). My endeavours were unsuccessful, 
 all expressing their willingness, but inability, to 
 help me. 
 
 During the first week in August I visited the War 
 Office and had an interview with Sir James Wolfe- 
 Murray, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. I put 
 the case before him as briefly as I could. He ex- 
 pressed his inability to understand why I had been, 
 and was being, treated by the Military Authorities 
 in the manner revealed by the facts I told him, 
 and he advised me, as a preliminary measure, to 
 ask to see my confidential reports, to which he 
 agreed that I had an undoubted official right under 
 the King's Regulations. The following morning I 
 made out an official application to see the confiden- 
 tial reports, and by Sir James's advice, in order to 
 save time, handed my application to his private 
 Secretary who promised to submit it to the proper 
 Department. 
 
 It was during my visit to Sir James on the pre- 
 vious day that another responsible official at the 
 War Office informed me unofficially that the reason 
 for the Army Council's refusal to re-employ me on 
 the General Staff was that in 1910 Lord Nicholson 
 had, without my knowledge, cancelled the " wholly 
 excellent ' ' report made upon me that year by my 
 General, Sir Spencer Ewart. This was the first 
 intimation I had ever had of such an event, and if 
 it is true, which can hardly be doubted, displays 
 Lord Nicholson in an instructive light, for not only
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 157 
 
 had he no opportunity of judging my work, but his 
 action is a violation of His Majesty's Regulations 
 which lays down that an adverse report, no matter 
 by whom it is written, shall be shown to the officer 
 concerned.* 
 
 A few days later I received orders to report for 
 duty in Scotland. I called again at the War Office, 
 and had friendly interviews with Sir Archibald 
 Murray, and the Duke of Teck, who was then 
 Assistant Military Secretary, and who told me that 
 Sir Frederick Robb had decided to take no notice 
 of the application to see my confidential reports, 
 because I had applied direct, instead of through the 
 official channel. Accordingly I sent in a duplicate 
 application through the official channel, and applied 
 for ten days' leave, in the hope that I should be 
 able to see the reports before I left London. 
 
 On the same day I wrote to Sir Spencer Ewart, 
 who was then commanding in Scotland, to say 
 that I was about to come under his command. 
 
 When my leave expired I went to Scotland and 
 waited there for a reply to my application for copies 
 of my confidential reports. On the 14th September 
 I received an official letter dated the 8th September, 
 from the Adjutant-General informing the G.O.C. -in- 
 Chief, Scotland, that I had applied direct to his 
 Department, and that I was to be instructed to 
 communicate in future through the official channel. 
 Accordingly on the following day, I wrote again 
 asking for copies of the reports, with a covering 
 letter of same date, asking for an interview in London 
 with the Director of Personal Services. 
 
 When I called on Sir Spencer Ewart in Edinburgh, 
 
 *King's Regulations (1904) para. I32(v), as amended by Army Order 
 107 of 1908.
 
 158 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 the G.O.C.-in-Chief was absent upon inspection duty, 
 but I received a letter from his Assistant Military 
 Secretary, saying that Sir Spencer Ewart had for- 
 warded my request for copies of the reports and also 
 for a personal interview, but that his endeavours 
 to arrange for the latter direct by telephone with 
 the War Office, had not been successful. 
 
 A week later I received from the Army Council 
 an official letter dated the 2nd October, which 
 refused my application for a personal interview, 
 and refused to send me copies of the reports on the 
 plea that they had already been shown to me in 
 accordance with the Regulations.* That they had 
 been shown to me was a repetition of the untrue 
 statement contained in the Army Council's letter 
 of the 21st March, 1911 (see p. 94 et seq.) — a state- 
 ment made in defiance of the documentary evidence 
 which the Army Council had before them on both 
 occasions. 
 
 I thereupon drafted a reply renewing my applica- 
 tion, pointing out the incorrectness of the statements 
 made in the War Office letter of the 2nd inst., and 
 sent it privately to Sir Spencer Ewart for his approval 
 before submitting it officially. 
 
 The following morning I saw an announcement 
 in the Times of the preceding day that my friend, 
 Sir Archibald Murray, had been appointed Chief 
 of the Imperial General Staff, in the room of Sir 
 James Wolfe-Murray. 
 
 Since my arrival in Scotland, I had had several 
 pleasant meetings with my old chief, Sir Spencer 
 Ewart, and, on the 14th October, I saw him again 
 in Edinburgh. He was genuinely distressed at the 
 
 *I£ they really had been shown to me, why should I not be allowed 
 t<> see them ?
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 159 
 
 refusal I had received from the War Office, and 
 kindly gave me all the assistance in his power, re- 
 vising my proposed official application and making 
 suggestions thereon, until it assumed the final form 
 in which it was despatched to him officially on the 
 following day. 
 
 At our interview Sir Spencer Ewart expressed 
 great hope that the appointment of Sir Archibald 
 Murray as Chief of the Imperial General Staff must 
 mean the early settlement of my case, and that the 
 justice for which I had so long asked would at last 
 be done. As well as officially recommending my 
 application, Sir Spencer promised to write on try 
 behalf privately to Sir Archibald Murray. Two 
 days later I said good-bye to Sir Spencer Ewart, 
 as the Brigade to which I was temporarily attached 
 for duty was being transferred to England. 
 
 I went to London, and on arrival had an interview 
 with Sir Archibald Murray at the War Office. I 
 told him of the course which recent events had taken. 
 He had been acquainted with the case at its 
 inception, as he was Chief Staff Officer to Sir John 
 French at Aldershot in 1906, and had been present 
 at the inspection when the latter had warmly com- 
 plimented me on the high standard of efficiency to 
 which I had brought my Squadron. (See p. 132.) 
 Sir Archibald Murray and I had been warm friends 
 ever since we had spent some months together, in 
 1902, in hospital at Capetown, he wounded, and I 
 recovering from enteric fever, towards the close of 
 the South African War. Since 1907 we had been 
 together on the General Staff at the War Office, 
 so that Sir Archibald Murray was not unacquainted 
 with the case of the 5th Lancers. At our interview 
 he expressed his warm sympathy and his readiness
 
 i6o THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 to help me to the full extent of his power. He said 
 that he recognized that there were two parts of my 
 case awaiting settlement : 
 
 (i) An examination of the reports of 1906 ; 
 
 (2) Suitable employment. 
 
 With regard to the first, he asked me what I 
 would consider a just settlement, and I told him 
 that I wished to be re-instated in that position in 
 which I might reasonably expect to have been, 
 had the military authorities complied with the 
 Regulations for the Army. He said that he con- 
 sidered that my demand was reasonable, and the 
 minimum which bare justice could expect. At the 
 same time he said that he had no official right to 
 interfere in this matter, which was one for the 
 Adjutant General to settle, with the approval of 
 the Secretary of State for War. He said he thought 
 that there was nothing to do but await the result 
 of my official application which had been forwarded 
 by Sir Spencer Ewart on the 15th October. 
 
 With regard to the second, Sir Archibald Murray 
 said he could, and would, help, and he kindly advised 
 me to write to three Generals at the Front, whom 
 we both knew, and ask them to apply for my services 
 upon the General Staff. Sir Archibald authorized 
 me to say that, if they did this, he would have me 
 appointed without delay. After our interview I 
 felt that at last justice was going to be done. I had 
 not felt so hopeful of a final settlement being on the 
 point of completion since April, 1912. 
 
 I returned to duty in Yorkshire, and on the 12th 
 November I received from the Army Council an 
 official letter, dated the 5th November, written 
 and signed by Major-General Sir Frederick Robb, 
 omitting any reference to my requests for copies
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 161 
 
 of the reports and a personal interview, and inform- 
 ing me that the time had arrived when I must 
 consider the matter finally closed. 
 
 I immediately wrote two official letters direct 
 to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, enclosing 
 copies of correspondence since the 6th August, 
 briefly reviewing the case, asking for immediate 
 consideration of it, and, if that were still refused, 
 to be placed upon half-pay. This letter was handed 
 by Sir Archibald Murray to Sir Frederick Robb with 
 the request that an answer should be sent to me. 
 This request to the Military Secretary coming from 
 the First Military Member of the Army Council, 
 was in effect an order, which, however, Sir Frederick 
 Robb did not obey. Nor receiving any reply, I came 
 up to London and wrote to Sir Frederick Robb, 
 asking for an interview, sending my letter to the 
 Duke of Teck for transmission to the Military Secre- 
 tary. The Duke wrote to me, informing me that 
 Sir Frederick Robb refused to see me. 
 
 Having waited some days, I sought another 
 interview with Sir Archibald Murray. I told him 
 that I had received no reply to my official applica- 
 tion of the 12th November, at which he expressed 
 surprise. He said he could not understand why 
 it should be so difficult for any officer to obtain what 
 after all was mere justice, and he wrote on a slip of 
 paper to the Military Secretary : " Dear Robb, 
 Will you see Adam and finally dispose of his case ? 
 A. J. M." 
 
 This slip he sent round by his private Secretary 
 to the Military Secretary, who wrote back a refusal 
 to see me, giving, as his reason, the fact that Sir 
 Henry Sclater, the Adjutant General, had ordered 
 that no reply should be sent to my official application
 
 162 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 of the 12th November. Sir Archibald Murray 
 expressed himself in very strong terms as to this 
 refusal either to see me or reply to my letter, which 
 he said was not only in the highest degree dis- 
 courteous, but, etc., etc. He told me that the four 
 Military Members of the Army Council were to meet 
 in his room, where we were sitting, the following 
 morning, nth December, 1915, at 10.30 a.m., and 
 he promised that he would draw my application from 
 the Central Registry, whither Sir Henry Sclater 
 had ordered it to be sent, put it before the Council,, 
 and tell them what he thought of the whole matter. 
 He then rang the bell, and ordered his private 
 Secretary to obtain the document. I thanked him 
 gratefully for his kindness and withdrew. 
 
 The next day I returned to Yorkshire. 
 
 Having waited three days I wrote to Sir Archi- 
 bald Murray's private Secretary asking him what 
 was the result of the meeting of the Military 
 Members on the nth. The Secretary replied that 
 Sir Archibald Murray wished him to say that my 
 case " is being considered but that no decision 
 has yet been arrived at." 
 
 A few days later I saw in the evening paper that 
 Sir Archibald Murray had been appointed to the 
 command of the Eastern Mediterranean. I left for 
 London the following morning, but Sir Archibald 
 had already left the War Office. 
 
 A few days afterwards Sir Archibald Murray 
 sailed from England, and it appeared that my hopes 
 for a speedy settlement of my case were not to be 
 realized. I fear I began about this time to take a 
 somewhat gloomy view of the honesty of humanity, 
 especially that part of it which constituted the 
 official military hierarchy. It seemed to me that
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 163 
 
 in the struggle of the two great opposing forces of 
 right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, the ad- 
 herents to the standard of the latter were so much 
 more numerous than those who engaged under the 
 standard of the former, that good fought against 
 evil at a serious disadvantage, and that in most 
 encounters at any rate the victory of evil was assured. 
 I began to suffer terribly from insomnia. The 
 continued physical strain of the last five years during 
 which the persecution under which I suffered had 
 been carried on against me with a malignity which 
 was almost incredible, began to tell. For whole 
 nights at a time I never closed my eyes. I consulted 
 my medical adviser, but all he could do was to 
 recommend me on physical grounds to obtain a 
 settlement of my case. If I could only have got some 
 suitable military employment to occupy my thoughts, 
 I might have been able to defer the settlement of 
 the case with comparative indifference until the war 
 was over. The continuance of the war made matters 
 worse. When all my friends and near male relations 
 were doing so much for England, both in the Navy 
 and in the Army, I, who had made a life-study of 
 this European War, who spoke the languages and 
 was intimate with the Armies of all our chief Allies, 
 who had been for years a devoted student of that 
 very strategy which was being carried out on the 
 battle-fields of the world, was being kept by the 
 Army Council in comparative inactivity in a snow- 
 and-rain-sodden camp in Yorkshire, separated from 
 my regiment, under the most uncongenial condi- 
 tions, social, physical, and mental. For all this 
 I could assign no reason. I had asked the reason 
 and been misinformed. I had pointed out the
 
 164 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 misstatement, and been told that no further notice 
 would be taken of my representations. Is it any 
 wonder that my faith in truth and right and justice 
 should be weakened, if even temporarily ? 
 
 At the beginning of February, the period at 
 which I could give notice of Appeal to the House 
 of Lords in the case of Adam v. Ward was about to 
 expire, and I instructed my solicitor to take the 
 necessary action. About a week later I received a 
 wire from the War Office ordering me to join the 
 Expeditionary Force in France. It' will be remem- 
 bered that before war was actually declared I had 
 volunteered for service abroad, and had since 
 exhausted every effort to get out to France, either 
 to my own regiment or in some other capacity. 
 Since then, however, the continued determination 
 of the Army Council to deny me the ordinary rights 
 of an officer, and their repeated refusal to comply 
 with the King's Regulations or to give any considera- 
 tion to my case, had rendered it impossible for me to 
 submit complacently to be the victim of their design, 
 even if their persecution of me had not caused that 
 extreme state of mental worry and physical exhaus- 
 tion to which I have already referred. 
 
 Before, however, placing upon official record 
 the frequently expressed opinion of my medical 
 adviser, I determined to make one more effort to 
 obtain that impartial consideration of my case to 
 which I was in justice entitled, and which the Army 
 Council were determined to refuse. I decided to 
 appeal direct to the Secretary of State for War, 
 and on the following morning, with renewed hope, 
 I handed in my official Appeal to Lord Kitchener.
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 165 
 
 I received no reply to my letter, and my Doctor 
 took the matter into his own hands and forwarded 
 a Certificate as to my state of health. For nearly 
 two months I had never enjoyed a single night's 
 rest, and had it not been for the inward conscious- 
 ness of the justness of my claim, I should have 
 utterly broken down. That my physical exhaus- 
 tion had been deliberately brought about by the 
 unremitting persecution of the Army Council, and 
 that the remedy lay solely in their hands, is proved 
 by the series of medical certificates rendered 
 between February and November, 1916, to the 
 Army Council. These seven Certificates were ren- 
 dered by two eminent physicians, and the opinions 
 therein expressed were endorsed by the military 
 medical authorities and submitted by them to 
 the Army Council.* 
 
 * ist Certificate. 21s* February, 1916. 
 
 I hereby certify that I have this clay examined Major Adam, and 
 find him suffering from nervous overstrain and insomnia. These condi- 
 tions I, having attended Major Adam for several years, attribute to his 
 anxiety regarding his status as an officer, and which is rendering him 
 temporarily unfit for continued thought and unable for the concentrated 
 mental efforts requisite for military duties. Doubtless if these causes 
 of anxiety were removed, Major Adam would be rendered able to under- 
 take all necessary duties. (Signed) G. W. F. Macnaughton, m.d., m.r.c.p. 
 
 2nd Certificate. yd April, 1916. 
 
 To Major Adam, My medical opinion is that you are suffering 
 from severe mental overstrain, which is the cause of your continued 
 insomnia. 
 
 Having known you for some years, I attribute these conditions entirely 
 to your intense worry and continued anxiety regarding your position 
 with the military authorities. I am quite confident that if this cause 
 of anxiety were removed you would quickly be restored to health. (Signed) 
 G. W. F. Macnaughton, m.d., m.r.c.p. 
 
 3rd Certificate. 26th April, 1916. 
 
 I have this day examined Major Adam, and find that the insomnia 
 and mental overstrain to which I certified last February have entered 
 upon a more acute phase. This is caused by the continued inability of 
 Major Adam to obtain a heariug of his case.
 
 i66 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 I know nothing of the details of the case, but, having attended 
 Major Adam for more than two years, I strongly recommend that a hearing 
 should be granted him, for, speaking as a medical man, I am convinced 
 that whether the result of the hearing be favourable or unfavourable to 
 Major Adam, it could not fail to be beneficial to his health, by allowing 
 his mind to become settled. (Signed), G. W. P. Macnaughton, m.d., 
 
 M.R.C.P. 
 
 4TH Certificate. 24?* June, 1916. 
 
 Dear Major Adam, I am exceedingly sorry to see from your note 
 that you have not had a full and complete hearing of your case from a 
 military standpoint. This is so essential for your welfare from the medical 
 point of view, for unless this weight be taken off your mind, you cannot 
 possibly be able to concentrate your thoughts upon any subject except 
 this personal one, which will make you more subjectively conscious, and 
 lead to further depression and insomnia. I do hope to hear soon that 
 you have been granted this relief. Yours faithfully, (Signed) G. W. F. 
 
 MACNAUGHTON, M.D., M.R.C.P. 
 
 5TH Certificate. 6th September, 1916. 
 
 I have this day examined Major Adam, and find him still suffering 
 from that condition of mental overstrain and insomnia to which Dr. 
 Macnaughton has certified at intervals during the last six months. It 
 is evident that Major Adam is suffering from a form of neurasthenia which 
 is well recognized as being due to delay in the hearing of a case. I would 
 urge that this matter should be cleared up without delay, and I have 
 no doubt that when this has been done, there will be a rapid improvement. 
 (Signed) J. D. E. Mortimer, m.b. (ix>nd.), f.r.c.s. 
 
 6th Certificate. gth October, 1916. 
 
 I have this day examined Major Adam, and strongly endorse the 
 certificates upon his health which I have rendered at intervals during 
 the last eight months. Major Adam has suffered greatly for many years 
 from some misunderstanding with the military authorities, the reason 
 for which he has never been able to ascertain, and it is in my opinion 
 the only remedy applicable, that he be granted a hearing in order 
 to clear up his position, and if possible this hearing should not be any 
 longer delayed, as an utter breakdown is threatened. (Signed), G. W. F. 
 Macnaughton, m.d., m.r.c.p. 
 
 7TH Certificate. 22nd November, 1916. 
 
 I have this day examined Major Adam and find the mental state 
 uncertain through continued anxiety. The bodily health and strength 
 are good, while if Major Adam were given a hearing, the uncertainty and 
 despondency would be removed, and he would again be fit for active 
 employment. This, I believe, to be the only remedy. (Signed) G. W. F. 
 Macnaughton, m.d., m.r.c.p.
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 167 
 
 Just about this time it was announced that 
 Sir Henry Sclater had been succeeded by Sir Nevil 
 Macready as Adjutant General, and upon the day 
 on which I saw the announcement, I wrote to Sir 
 Spencer Ewart in Scotland, and to Sir Archibald 
 Murray in Egypt, asking each to write to the new 
 Adjutant General on my behalf. Sir Spencer Ewart 
 kindly did what I asked him, but without success. 
 
 Early in April I received a charmingly sympa- 
 thetic reply from Sir Archibald Murray, giving me 
 permission to use it as a letter of introduction to 
 the Adjutant General. This I did, and some corres- 
 pondence ensued between Sir Nevil Macready and 
 myself, but without the desired result.* 
 
 On the same day as I received Sir Archibald 
 Murray's letter I decided to act upon the informa- 
 tion given to me in 19 12 by Sir William Frankly n 
 and repeated to me in more detail in August, 1915, 
 and to call upon Lord Nicholson, to ask him whether 
 what I had heard was true, that he had made some 
 record about me which was preventing my getting 
 any suitable military employment. Lord Nicholson, 
 as I expected, declined to see me, but invited me to 
 write to him on any matter I wished. I did so the 
 same day, asking him to help me to employment, 
 and suggesting that I was aware of what 
 he had done. His reply (a refusal to help me) 
 contains no allusion to the fact of his being the 
 fons el origo mali t \ so in a letter of the following 
 day I directly charged him with it. As I fully 
 expected, Lord Nicholson in his reply did not deny 
 the charge. 
 
 *He wrote to me saying that the matter could only be dealt with 
 by the Army Council " in their corporate capacity." 
 tSir William Franklyn's words. {See p. 109.)
 
 168 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 After the lapse of about three weeks I wrote to 
 Sir Frederick Robb asking him kindly to send me 
 a copy of the Army Council's letter addressed to 
 me, which had been lost in the post in Spain. (See 
 p. 106). I received no reply. 
 
 On the same day as I wrote to Sir Frederick Robb, 
 I also wrote to Lord French, asking him to obtain a 
 hearing for me. Lord French had recently relin- 
 quished the command of the Expeditionary Force 
 in Belgium and France and been entrusted with 
 the command of the Home Army. In reply to my 
 letter, Lord French wrote inviting me to call at the 
 Horse Guards, and saying that he would be very 
 glad to see me. I accepted the invitation, and had 
 an interview with Lord French, who received me 
 very kindly, and promised to see the Adjutant 
 General personally, and ask that I should be given 
 early employment on the Staff, as to my capacity 
 for which employment Lord French spoke to me in 
 most flattering terms. It seemed to me that, even 
 if the settlement of my case had to be postponed 
 till after the conclusion of the war, I was certain 
 now to get that suitable employment for which 
 I had waited so long. Lord French did what he 
 had promised to do for me, but much to my surprise 
 and disappointment, his good offices were of no 
 avail. 
 
 At my interview with Lord French I told him 
 that if I could not get a hearing, I should ask Lord 
 Kitchener for one, to whom I had already applied, 
 and whose answer I was still awaiting ; so having 
 received no reply to my official Appeal to the Secre- 
 tary of State for War (see p. 164) I drafted a reminder 
 in May, and was only waiting for the result of Lord 
 French's intervention to submit it, when the world
 
 THE WORLD-WAR. 169 
 
 was startled by the news that on the 5th June, Lord 
 Kitchener had gone down in H.M.S. Hampshire 
 off the Orkneys. My letter was, therefore, never 
 sent. 
 
 With the death of Lord Kitchener it became 
 necessary to seek for justice in some other direction. 
 Accordingly I wrote to Sir Arthur Lee, private 
 Secretary to the War Minister, and later in the same 
 month to Sir Francis Davies, Military Secretary. 
 
 About this time I opened up a correspondence 
 with Lord Derby, when he was Under-Secretary 
 of State for War, which correspondence was con- 
 tinued after he became War Minister. 
 
 I next applied officially to the Secretary of State 
 for War, asking for revision of the case by the Army 
 Council " in their corporate capacity,"* and, 
 receiving no answer, I repeated my request for a 
 hearing upon medical grounds in a further applica- 
 tion to the Secretary of the War Office. To the 
 latter application I received a reply which Sir Nevil 
 Macready perhaps thought, and no doubt hoped, 
 would close the case. To this letter I replied. 
 
 Ten days later I wrote to Sir William Robertson, 
 Chief of the Imperial General Staff. I then sub- 
 mitted to the Army Council the last of the seven 
 urgent medical certificates asking for a hearing {see 
 Note on p. 166), and after some delay I received a 
 curt letter from the Military Secretary informing 
 me that I was to retire from the army, and that a 
 notification of this would appear in the London 
 Gazette. I at once replied with a letter of strong 
 official protest, addressed to the Secretary of the 
 War Office : "I desire," I wrote, " to record my 
 official protest against the arbitrariness of the 
 
 ♦According to Sir Nevil Macready's suggestion. (See Note on p. 167.) 
 
 M
 
 170 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 compulsion of being forced to retire, and I beg to 
 renew my application for that consideration of my 
 case which I rightly claim under the Regulations. 
 Retirement does not invalidate this claim for con- 
 sideration, which is a permanent one, till satisfied." 
 
 In January, 1917, I was gazetted out of the 
 army. 
 
 I informed Sir Edmund Allenby and Sir Archibald 
 Murray of my treatment, and from both received 
 sympathetic letters in reply.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 (1917-1919) 
 RESURGAM 
 
 Man is unjust, but God is just ; and finally justice 
 Triumphs. — Longfellow. 
 
 That my health was not irrevocably affected by the 
 action of the Army Council was no fault either of 
 that body or of Lord Derby. It was a terrible blow 
 after thirty years' service in the army, to take up 
 the paper one morning and to find that one was no 
 longer a soldier of the King. The doctors tell me 
 that it was the terrific force of the blow that saved 
 me. Had I cared less, nothing could have prevented 
 the progress of the lethargy which was stealing over 
 me. The shock awoke me. The physical pain ot 
 the awakening was terrible. I went out for a walk 
 alone upon an open heath. The wind was singing 
 clear and cold across the land, bringing me its cooling 
 message straight from the unknown. When I 
 returned home late that evening, my mind was made 
 up. I promised myself that I would find some 
 work to do that would exercise the brain to its full 
 extent. In three weeks' time I had kept my 
 promise.
 
 172 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Gradually as the days grew longer, hope began 
 to return. Very weak it was at first, but daily it 
 strengthened. I took the greatest interest in the 
 altruistic nature of my new work. I had looked so 
 long on the sordid, selfish, hypocritical, false side 
 of life that it was a relief to find oneself once more 
 among those who knew the meaning of honour and 
 of truth. 
 
 With returning hope, came plans for its realiza- 
 tion. In my latest letter to the Army Council I had 
 written : " My claim for consideration is a permanent 
 one till satisfied," and all I had to decide upon was 
 the best method in which to advance that claim. 
 My position was clear : — The case had originated 
 in a violation of the King's Regulations by the Army 
 Council. Since then the Army Council had refused 
 me any consideration of the case by anyone of 
 sufficient responsibility to decide it. By the official 
 production in 1914 at the trial of Adam v. Ward of 
 my application, dated the nth November, 1906, 
 to see General Scobell's report, it was admitted that 
 the Army Council's official statement that I had 
 seen that report on the 7th of the previous month 
 was incorrect, and that they knew it to be so when 
 they made that statement on the 21st March, 191 1. 
 Furthermore, they admitted that injustice had 
 been done to me by asking me to submit new evidence 
 in the case, but when I had done so, and their reply 
 had been lost in the foreign post, they refused to 
 supply me with a copy of the lost letter. The 
 Adjutant General had written to me saying that the 
 matter could only be considered by the Army 
 Council in their corporate capacity, but when I had 
 applied officially for such consideration, my applica- 
 tion had been refused.
 
 RESURGAM. 173 
 
 It is unnecessary to burden my narrative with a 
 detailed account of my correspondence with the 
 various authorities. On the military side I continued 
 to carry on a correspondence with Sir Nevil 
 Macready, the Adjutant General, and Sir William 
 Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who 
 informed me, as had Sir Nevil Macready, that the 
 matter was one for the Army Council, and asked 
 me to address my application to the Secretary, 
 War Office. When I did so, I got no reply. With 
 Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War, I carried 
 on a long correspondence both private and official, 
 receiving many letters from him, but no satisfac- 
 tion, and apparently no consideration of the facts 
 of the case. 
 
 I made separate applications to the Members of 
 the Cabinet, Mr Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Lord 
 Milner, Mr Bonar Law, Sir Edward Carson, Mr 
 Arthur Henderson, Mr George Barnes, with nearly 
 all of whom I had considerable correspondence, 
 especially with the Prime Minister. 
 
 I made an official Petition to the Cabinet, 
 claiming, as a British citizen's right, compliance with 
 the Regulations of His Majesty the King. The 
 receipt of my Petition was acknowledged separately 
 by Lord Curzon and the Secretary of the War 
 Cabinet, on behalf of its Members. 
 
 During the latter months of 1917 and throughout 
 1918, I made the most strenuous, but ineffectual, 
 efforts to obtain Government employment, apply- 
 ing to the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Informa- 
 tion, and always to the War Office. Military 
 Missions and Diplomatic Missions were being sent 
 all over the world to neutral countries : interpreters 
 were being asked for : trained and experienced
 
 i 7 4 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 officers were needed by the country. Useful to the 
 country I could have been in many capacities, in 
 many places, and especially in Russia, where there 
 was pressing need, and where my extended .know- 
 ledge of the country and the language would have 
 been useful. 
 
 In September, 1918, Major-General Sir George 
 Macdonogh was appointed Adjutant General. 
 He was a contemporary of my own, and an old 
 friend since we had been together so long in the 
 same Directorate of the General Staff at the War 
 Office. I called upon him at his invitation and we 
 had a most friendly interview about the case. 
 
 In the end, Sir George Macdonogh came under 
 the numbing influence of the bureaucratic system, 
 and, like his predecessors in office Sir Charles 
 Douglas, Sir Ian Hamilton, Sir Henry Sclater, and 
 Sir Nevil Macready, preferred to leave the matter 
 unsettled. He referred it, however, to Sir Henry 
 Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who, 
 like his predecessors, Sir Neville Lyttelton, Lord 
 Nicholson, Lord French, Sir Charles Douglas, Sir 
 James Wolfe-Murray, and Sir William Robertson, 
 also preferred to leave the matter unsettled. 
 
 I had previously entered into a long corres- 
 pondence, both officially and unoffically, with 
 Lord Milner, Secretary of State for War, asking 
 him to consider the case, but he too, like his pre- 
 decessors, Lord Haldane, General Seely, Mr Asquith, 
 Lord Kitchener, Mr Lloyd George, and Lord Derby, 
 preferred to leave the matter unsettled. After all, 
 officials are paid by the tax-payer to do their duty, 
 and those who leave that duty undone are as 
 responsible as those who originated the need of 
 its exercise.
 
 RESURGAM. 175 
 
 Early in the present year I called on General 
 Seely, who had recently been appointed Air Minister, 
 and put the whole case before him in an interview 
 which lasted for more than two hours. It will be 
 remembered that on two previous occasions in 
 1912 and 1914 (see p. 109 and p. 143) General Seely 
 had been the Minister officially responsible for 
 refusing me justice. I found him in 1919 quite 
 careless, and apparently unaware, of any responsi- 
 bility. He admitted that when the case had come 
 before him previously in his official position, he had 
 merely regarded what he called its legal aspect, 
 that is, as he said, he had asked the legal authorities 
 if it lay within the constitutional right of the 
 Secretary of State for War to deprive an officer of 
 the King's Commission without giving him any 
 reason. The answer to the question being in the 
 affirmative, there was naturally, said General Seefy, 
 no occasion for me to take any action. When, how- 
 ever, I asked if he considered that the course which 
 he adopted entitled him to say in official corres- 
 pondence, (see p. 109), that the Army Council 
 had given the case " careful consideration and 
 weighed all the circumstances," he became somewhat 
 perturbed and endeavoured to shift his ground to 
 generalities. After a time he appeared to begin 
 slowly to realize that an injustice had been done, 
 and that perhaps the case merited some further 
 consideration than the perfunctory attention he 
 admitted having bestowed upon it. In the end, he 
 dictated to me a letter that I was to write to him, 
 setting forth the salient points, which he promised 
 to send to Lord Milner, asking for his consideration. 
 This General Seely did, and when a few weeks later 
 Lord Milner was succeeded by Mr Churchill as
 
 176 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Secretary of State for War, General Seely wrote 
 to the latter " strongly representing " the case to 
 his consideration. More recently General Seely 
 has again written to me assuring me that the case 
 is now in the hands of the Secretary of State 
 for War. That is the position as this book goes to 
 the printers. The error which the Army Council 
 committed in 1906 in ordering me to resign my 
 commission — an act which they now no longer deny 
 was an error, — is still in 19 19 under consideration 
 by the Army Council. During that time it has 
 wandered through the various vicissitudes of official, 
 legal and parliamentary enquiry until the official 
 circumference of the circle — that emblem of infinity 
 — has closed again, and the error committed by a 
 Government Department is still under consideration 
 by that same Department. 
 
 For me it has been a long night of thirteen years, 
 and the day is not yet.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LOOKING FORWARD 
 
 " Ah, God, for a man with heart, head, hand, 
 Like some of the simple great ones gone, 
 For ever and ever by ; 
 One still strong man in a blatant land 
 
 One who can rule and dare not lie." — Tennyson. 
 
 Now my task is done. From the book of life I have 
 torn a tear-stained page, for if honour can alone be 
 vindicated by the disclosure of the truth, then the 
 truth must be disclosed. But let no one think 
 that this consideration was the only, or indeed the 
 principal, object I had in view when after the lapse 
 of twelve years I took in hand the task of writing 
 this book. 
 
 Queen Victoria was the greatest Queen who ever 
 sat upon the throne of England, and she was a great 
 queen because she was a good woman. " Tell me," 
 she used to say to her Ministers, " whether this be 
 right or wrong, but let me never hear the word 
 * expedient.' " The British Dreyfus Case is a story 
 of the long struggle of right against an assumed 
 expediency which began in error and gradually 
 hardened into guilt. By it I have lost all that the 
 world holds dear, much that I hold dear. There is 
 no doubt that I might have reached a high rank in 
 the army, and enjoyed the privilege of placing 
 various capital letters after my name, had I not 
 stood up for justice for one of the men of my own
 
 178 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Squadron. I might have retained my seat in Parlia- 
 ment, and continued to sun myself in the smiles of 
 my constituents, had I not stood up for justice for 
 my brother-officers and the officers of the army. 
 I might have done all this and more, but would it 
 have been worth while ? Would it have been worth 
 while to go through life with a conscience ever 
 telling me that I had failed to do my duty, that I 
 had sacrificed the future for the present, that I had 
 sold my soul, that I had saved myself but that 
 others I would not save. Would it have been 
 worth while ? No, a thousand times, No. Justice 
 and truth are the highest forms of happiness, and 
 even resolute striving after these will bring a degree 
 of inward happiness that no man can take away. 
 With a great and earnest love for my fellow-man, 
 I lay down my pen in the hopes that the story of 
 the British Dreyfus Case which I have had to tell 
 may teach us the supreme lesson that we, as a 
 nation must return to the primitive virtues of honour 
 and of truth, we must put away from us the arti- 
 ficiality of existence, we must look upon life as it 
 is with a straight eye, we must no longer fool our- 
 selves with the thought that without God we can be 
 a great nation of noble men and noble women, we 
 must cease to grope for the shadow, we must grasp 
 the substance, we must rally round Christ's standard 
 of honour and of truth, we must take these in our 
 right hand as living entities into our public life, as 
 well as into our private one, and then, and then 
 only, shall we obtain for ourselves and for our 
 children that regeneration of thought and feeling 
 which to-day is the great and crying need of the 
 British Empire. 
 
 "FINIS CORONAT OPUS."
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 ABOLITION OF TRIAL BY JURY 
 
 To none will we deny or delay right or justice. — Magna Charta. 
 
 Trial by Jury is an important safeguard for the 
 liberty of the subject. As a national institution it 
 is thought by some to have existed in England in 
 criminal cases before the Norman Conquest, and was 
 extended to civil cases by William I or one of his 
 immediate successors. It has been reserved for the 
 twentieth century and for a Government in which 
 Mr Asquith was Prime Minister, Lord Haldane Lord 
 Chancellor, and Sir John Simon Attorney General, to 
 supply an historical example of the abolition of this 
 right of the individual to a verdict of a jury, not by 
 statute but by procedure under the Common Law. 
 The Common Law is in a perennial state of fluidity, 
 and the right which is taken from one individual 
 may be restored under it to another. At present 
 I am only concerned with a bare recital of facts 
 showing how it can be, and is, taken from the 
 individual. It is an accepted maxim of civilized 
 morality that every wrong creates a right. 
 That a great wrong was done to the officers of the 
 5th Lancers by Lord Haldane and the Army Council 
 has never been denied by anyone except the Members 
 of that Council and those bureaucrats who are 
 interested in maintaining its authority for good or 
 evil. By the publication of the libel written by 
 Lord Nicholson and Sir Ian Hamilton, the Army 
 Council, as far as one of the officers of the 5th Lancers
 
 180 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 was concerned, turned that moral wrong into a 
 legal wrong, thereby investing the officer with a legal 
 right. What that legal right was, was legally 
 established by the verdict of the jury, and how the 
 officer was by the abuse of judicial procedure 
 deprived by the Government of that right, is here 
 set out in this Appendix to the account of the 
 British Dreyfus Case. 
 
 Beaten in open Court upon the facts of the case, 
 exposed in their methods and discredited before the 
 public in the exercise of their judicial functions, 
 with the verdict of a High Court Judge and a Special 
 Jury against them, the Army Council, acting on the 
 advice of Sir John Simon, determined to appeal 
 upon the technically legal point of privilege to a 
 Court where they would not be hampered by the 
 opinion of a jury. 
 
 By the Act of Settlement of 1701 it was enacted 
 that judges could not be removed from office by the 
 Crown except by an address from both Houses of 
 Parliament. Let us at once disabuse ourselves of 
 any error which may arise from obscurity of nomen- 
 clature. The Crown, as an expression meaning the 
 King who wears the Crown, has nothing whatsoever 
 to do with the Government of the country. The 
 Crown is a conventional and euphemistic expression, 
 collectively signifying the Government of the day, 
 with its usual quota of permanent government officials. 
 
 In France, under the Code Napoleon, they are 
 in some matters more honest, more thorough than 
 ourselves. In addition to the ordinary civil law of 
 the land to regulate the relationship between citizens 
 of France, they have a separate branch of the law, 
 called administrative law, to regulate the relation- 
 ship between the citizens and the administrative
 
 ABOLITION OF TRIAL BY JURY. 181 
 
 authorities of the Government. Prima facie, we 
 make no such distinction. In theory we place the 
 Government official on the same footing before the 
 law as the ordinary citizen, and in theory we hold 
 him similarly amenable to the law for any wrong 
 done by him. In practice this amenability is often 
 evaded, and it is common knowledge that it is 
 difficult to obtain a judgment against the Govern- 
 ment. It was reliance upon a knowledge of this 
 fact that influenced the Army Council to place the 
 circumstances of their defeat before the Court of 
 Appeal. 
 
 Several adjournments took place at the request 
 of Sir John Simon, but at length in March, 1915, 
 the Army Council's Appeal "was heard before Sir 
 Eldon Banks, Sir William Pickford, and Sir Henry 
 Buckley, the Court sitting under the Presidency of 
 the last named. On the 13th March, 1915, the 
 Court delivered judgment reversing the verdict of 
 the Special Jury and entering judgment for Sir 
 Edward Ward, the late Secretary of the Army 
 Council, thereby depriving me of £2000 and costs. 
 
 The Army Council's Appeal was ostensibly and 
 solely on a technical point of the law of libel. The 
 law of libel has undergone many statutory modifi- 
 cations in the course of its growth, some of the 
 most notable being Fox's Libel Act of 1792, the 
 Newspaper Libel Act of 1881, and the Libel Amend- 
 ment Act of 1888. It has also, as part of the 
 Common Law, suffered certain diminutions and 
 accretions, but on the whole its position is as little 
 obscure as any other particular branch of the law. 
 Up to the time of the decision of the Court of Appeal 
 in Adam v. Ward the question of privilege was 
 particularly well defined. A libel is assessible in
 
 182 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 damages whether the person libelled has suffered 
 material damage or not, unless the defendant can 
 establish a plea of justification or privilege. Legal 
 privilege is of two sorts, absolute and qualified. 
 It is with the latter only we are here concerned. 
 Having had to acknowledge that Lord Nicholson's 
 letter was a libel, for which they could plead neither 
 justification nor absolute privilege, Sir John Simon 
 and the Army Council had to fall back upon the more 
 doubtful grounds of qualified privilege. Yet even 
 here, as the plaintiff in the action, I stood upon 
 firm legal ground. The law here is not obscure, 
 as certain recognized points have long been estab- 
 lished by prescriptive precedent. In order to 
 successfully maintain a plea of qualified privilege 
 the defendant in the action must be able to show 
 that his letter was written bond fide, that it con- 
 tained no defamatory statements on subjects 
 irrelevant to the original accusation, that it was 
 published through the same channel by which 
 the original accusation had been made, and that 
 its publication did not extend farther than the 
 publication of the original accusation. The absence 
 of any one of these conditions will rebut the defen- 
 dant's plea of qualified privilege, and give the 
 plaintiff the right to a verdict and damages. Curi- 
 ously enough, not merely one, but all the conditions 
 by which the Army Council could have substantiated 
 their defence were absent. A perusal of the analysis 
 of Lord Nicholson's letter, given in Chapter VII, 
 page 122, will convince even the most incredulous 
 that the Army Council's letter was not written 
 bona fide nor without malice. With the exception 
 of the very last sentence (which was unjustifiable) 
 the subject matter of the letter was personally
 
 ABOLITION OF TRIAL BY JURY. 183 
 
 defamatory and wholly irrevelant to the statement 
 which I had made to the House of Commons. We 
 know that with time and every opportunity at his 
 disposal Lord Haldane deliberately refused to make 
 use of the same channel for reply as that through 
 which the charge had come, and we know from actual 
 fact and from actual calculation that he gave it a 
 publication of very far wider extent than the original 
 charge had received. 
 
 The Court of Appeal decided the case in favour 
 of the Army Council on the narrow legal issue of 
 privilege, without taking into consideration the 
 facts of the case. Yet it was the facts of the case 
 that Sir Charles Darling had dwelt upon in his 
 summing up, and it was the facts of the case that 
 had secured a unanimous verdict in my favour 
 by a Special Jury, and an almost unanimous assess- 
 ment of damages at a figure approximating to 
 the material injury done. Yet the verdict in the 
 Court of Appeal discloses a surprising ignorance 
 of those facts. It is unnecessary to probe this 
 ignorance to its depth. A few instances taken at 
 random from Sir Henry Buckley's judgment will 
 suffice to prove the truth of the statement. He 
 said : "So far as I can see, no imputation ever has 
 been or is now made against the character of the 
 Major," the truth being that to call upon an officer 
 to resign upon a single report is under the King's 
 Regulations such an imputation, and then later 
 to publish a letter stating that he had been removed 
 from his regiment, given another chance, and called 
 upon to resign, without giving the public the 
 slightest hint as to any reason for this drastic 
 treatment is, to put it mildly, to suggest an imputa- 
 tion of a most serious nature. Of course at the
 
 184 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 trial the Army Council were unable before a jury 
 to substantiate any such imputation, but that fact 
 only became clear three-and-a-half years after the 
 publication of their letter, and only through my 
 action. It is clear from his statement that Sir 
 Henry Buckley* neither knew the facts nor had 
 read the evidence. Again he said : " The grievance 
 under which Major Adam has conceived himself to 
 lie has rested principally upon a misapprehension 
 on his part," the truth being that I was under no 
 misapprehension, and after I had entered Parlia- 
 ment had no grievance till the publication of Lord 
 Nicholson's letter gave me one. Then again Sir 
 Henry Buckley said : " The Army Council had 
 investigated the matter, and had found that the 
 attack upon Major-General Scobell was wholly 
 unjustifiable," the truth being that the Army 
 Council have never either at that time or before 
 or since investigated the matter. Had they done 
 so, they would have found at once, as they did later, 
 that my statement about General Scobell was 
 absolutely true. Again Sir Henry Buckley said : 
 " Major Adam's Counsel sought to find in the libel 
 itself some untrue statement .... I fail to 
 find any," the truth being that there was hardly 
 a single statement in the whole letter which was 
 not intended to deceive, and there were many 
 which were actually untrue. 
 
 I was compelled to take the case to the House 
 of Lords and in March, 1917, it was heard before 
 Lords Findlay, Loreburn, Atkinson, Dunedin, and 
 Shaw. Here again the verdict was given in favour 
 of the Army Council, in spite of the facts. Sir Hugh 
 
 ♦Sir Henry Buckley was later created Lord Wrenbury.
 
 ABOLITION OF TRIAL BY JURY. 185 
 
 Fraser, who conducted the case on my behalf, was 
 throughout the hearing flouted by the Judges, who 
 had evidently made up their minds before they came 
 into Court. They were lamentably ignorant of the 
 law of libel, as they showed by the questions which 
 they asked Sir Hugh Fraser. One example of this 
 will be sufficient. They asked him on the first da}r 
 of the trial whether damages could be claimed under 
 the common law unless material damage was proved 
 to have been inflicted. That proof of material 
 damage is immaterial, is one of the elementary 
 axioms of the law, of which the most inexperienced 
 law student is not ignorant. 
 
 It is unnecessary to differentiate between their 
 Lordships' judgments which were unanimous, and 
 which in effect abolished trial by jury and the whole 
 law of libel. Lord Loreburn alone acknowledged 
 that he doubted but did not dissent, which sug- 
 gests that Lord Loreburn had not the courage of 
 his convictions. Their Lordships went so far as 
 to designate the true statement which I had made 
 in the House of Parliament, in pursuance of my 
 duty as a Member of that House, as a " vile slander." 
 
 Nearly two thousand years ago doubting Pilate 
 asked " What is truth ? " and did not wait for an 
 answer. It was reserved for the twentieth century 
 and for the highest Appeal Court of the Empire to 
 give that answer. 
 
 The comment of Truth (28th March, 1917) upon 
 the trial was well justified. " So ends," wrote that 
 journal, " the historical case of the five officers of 
 the 5th Lancers, which readers of Truth heard so 
 
 N
 
 186 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 much about eight or ten years ago, and it ends, 
 as it began, in injustice." 
 
 * 
 
 Can we not, as a nation, make use of this case 
 to point a moral for us in its application to our 
 whole system of legal institutions ? Without doubt, 
 we can. For decade after decade our legal pro- 
 fession has gone on ever mumbling its dusty 
 shibboleths between its toothless gums, grasping at 
 the shadow regardless of the substance, until Justice 
 has had to bow before the formulas and the worn 
 out precedents of Law, and the object of all law, 
 namely the administration of justice, has been 
 totally eclipsed by its formalities, and wholly for- 
 gotten by its votaries. The British Dreyfus Case 
 is an example of the fatuity of our legal procedure. 
 One of the questions disputed for hour after hour 
 in the Appeal Courts by so-called learned Counsel 
 on either side was whether a certain point should 
 have been decided by the judge or by the jury. 
 One Counsel argued one way, another argued the 
 other way. The result was that after days of 
 weary verbiage the matter remained at the end 
 just where it had started at the beginning. Yet 
 what did it all matter ? Not a whit. The only 
 thing that mattered was whether the decision was 
 true and in accordance with the facts. To this 
 point neither Counsel nor Judge gave any heed, 
 both lending their aid to locking and double locking 
 the closet in which poor Truth was so unwillingly 
 confined. When are we, as a nation, going to 
 disregard the transient and fix our eyes upon the 
 essential ?
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 THE POLITICAL RESULT OF THE CASE 
 
 Confound their Politics. — God Save the King. 
 
 Having in this book demonstrated what effect the 
 action of the Army Council had upon my military 
 career, it now remains to show what effect it had 
 upon my political career. 
 
 A public attack upon a public man, such as the 
 Army Council had made upon me, when Member 
 of Parliament for an important London Constituency, 
 could not fail to have far-reaching effects. A brief 
 recital of the facts will make clear what these effects 
 were. 
 
 In 1905, upon my return to England from the 
 Russo-Japanese War, I approached the Central 
 Organization of the Unionist Party with a view to 
 contesting a Parliamentary seat. Several seats 
 were discussed, but finally the Chief Agent asked 
 me to contest Woolwich, for whom no candidate 
 could be found. He acknowledged that it was 
 almost a hopeless seat, as there was a majority of 
 3229 against the Party at the recent bye-election. 
 I accepted the candidature and at the General 
 Election in January, 1906, substantially improved 
 the Party's position by some 1100 votes. For the 
 next four years I devoted much time and money to 
 the constituency, and at the General Election in 
 January, 1910, won the seat for the Party, as 
 already related.* In August came the Army 
 
 ♦Chapter iv, p. 64. Amongst the hundreds of congratulatory tele- 
 grams received was one which read : " My warmest congratulations on 
 your great Victory. — Arthur James Balfour."
 
 i88 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Council's attack upon me which resulted in the loss 
 of my seat in December.* The Party in Woolwich, 
 however, unanimously asked me to remain as the 
 prospective Candidate, which I promised to do. 
 The following year the Central Organization without 
 any intimation to me notified Woolwich that they 
 would no longer support me. I asked the reason, 
 and was refused an answer. I suggested a con- 
 ference, and was again refused. This led to a great 
 outcry in my Constituency and numerous letters of 
 indignation appeared in the local Press, so much 
 so that early in 1912, Mr. Hayes Fisher (now Lord 
 Downham) who had taken charge of the London 
 Party Organization, thought fit to publish much 
 to my surprise in the Woolwich papers a letter 
 stating that he had information which made him 
 think that I would not win the seat again, f The 
 letter was published without previous reference to 
 me, and was considered unfair and defamatory. 
 I at once wrote to Lord Downham pointing this 
 out, and asking him to give me the mysterious 
 information which he said he possessed. This he 
 refused to do. Whereupon I issued a writ for libel 
 against him. He was unable to justify his letter 
 and put in a defence of qualified privilege, and on 
 three occasions before the hearing, approached me 
 asking for settlement. I would have willingly 
 agreed for the sake of the Party, if Lord Downham 
 had made his position clear and placed the agree- 
 ment in writing. This he refused. The case was 
 heard in the High Court, Lord Downham putting 
 forward a clearly artificial defence. As soon as it 
 became evident that he had nothing to allege against 
 
 ♦Chapter v, p. 90. 
 
 fTliis letter appeared two years before the result of Adam v. Ward.
 
 POLITICAL RESULT OF THE CASE. 189 
 
 my honour, I consented to stop the case, on the 
 advice of my Counsel that Lord Downham would 
 endeavour to secure my full reinstatement with the 
 Party, which end my Counsel afterwards wrote me 
 Lord Downham's Counsel had been unable to secure. 
 
 None of these events could, however, invalidate 
 my promise to the electors to stand again at the 
 next Election. For years Woolwich remained with- 
 out any official Party Candidate, it being well known 
 that I would keep my promise and stand again. 
 Three months before the General Election in Decem- 
 ber, 1918, another candidate was suddenly put 
 forward with the official sanction of Lord Downham. 
 
 I kept my promise to Woolwich and came forward 
 in support of the Coalition as her Candidate for the 
 fourth time, standing for Principle above Party 
 and for Purity of Public Life. During the Election 
 the Official Organization of the Unionist Party 
 (the National Union) published in the Woolwich 
 Press a defamatory attack upon me. It was poor 
 gratitude for my thirteen years of faithful and loyal 
 active political service to the Party. The official 
 party in the Constituency was led by a local Chair- 
 man whose interests were served by obedience to 
 the Central Organization. My staun chest personal 
 and political friends in Woolwich were compelled 
 to vote against me, with the result that a solicitor 
 was returned to represent this great military 
 Constituency. This is a simple recital, the lesson 
 of which he who runs may read.
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 WHO'S WHO 
 
 IN 
 
 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE' 
 
 Adam, Major W. A., 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers (ret.) : 
 M.P. for Woolwich, 1910. 
 
 Allenby, Field Marshal, Viscount : 
 
 Commanded 5th Lancers, 1902-1905 ; Corps Commander 
 in 1915. 
 
 Arthur, Sir George, Bart. : 
 
 Private Secretary to Earl Kitchener, 1914. 
 
 Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert, m.p. : 
 
 Prime Minister, 1908-1916 ; Secretary of State for 
 War, 1914. 
 
 Atholl, Duke of (as Marquess of Tullibardine) : 
 M.P. for West Perthshire in 1910. 
 
 Atkinson, Lord : 
 
 Lord of Appeal in 1917. 
 
 Balcarres, Lord : (see Crawford). 
 
 Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur James : 
 
 Leader of the Opposition in 1910. 
 
 Banks, Sir J. Eldon : 
 
 Lord Justice of Appeal in 1915.
 
 WHO'S WHO. 19 r 
 
 Barnes, Rt. Hon. George, m.p. : 
 
 Cabinet Minister in 1917 and 1918. 
 
 Brade, Sir Reginald : 
 
 Secretary to the War Office in 1914. 
 
 Buckley, Sir Henry : (see Wrenbury). 
 
 Buckmaster, Lord (as Sir Stanley Buckmaster) : 
 Solicitor General in 1914-1915. 
 In receipt of Pension of £5000 a year. 
 
 Bucknill, Sir Thomas : 
 
 Late Judge of the High Court of King's Bench. 
 
 Byng, General, The Hon. Lord : 
 
 Commanded 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot in 1907. 
 
 Call well, Major-General Sir Charles : 
 
 Director of Military Operations in 1914. 
 
 Cambridge, Marquess op (as Duke of Teck) : 
 
 Assistant Military Secretary at War Office, 1915. 
 
 Campbell, Lieut.-General Sir Pitcairn: 
 
 G.O.C.-in-C. Southern Command in 1915. 
 
 Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, m.p. : 
 
 Cabinet Minister in 1917 and 1918. 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord : (see Londonderry). 
 
 Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord Hugh : 
 
 M.P. for Oxford University in 1910. 
 
 Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston: 
 
 Secretary of State for War in 191 9.
 
 192 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 CODRINGTON, LlEUT.-GENERAE SlR ALFRED : 
 
 Military Secretary in 1914. 
 
 CONNAUGHT, H.R.H. ThE DUKE OF I 
 
 Inspector General of the Forces in 1907. 
 
 Cooke, Major-General Thomas, 17th Lancers : 
 
 Colonel-in-Chief of 5th Lancers, 1905-08. Died 1912. 
 
 Crawford, Eare of (as Lord Balcarres) : 
 M.P. for Chorley Division in 1910. 
 
 Curzon, Eare : 
 
 Cabinet Minister in 1917 and 1918. 
 
 Dareing, Sir Charees : 
 
 Judge of the High Court of King's Bench in 1914. 
 
 Da vies, Lieut.-Generae Sir Francis : 
 
 Director of Staff Duties in 1914. Military Secretary 
 1916-1918. 
 
 Derby, Eare of : 
 
 Secretary of State for War in 1916 and 191 7. 
 
 Dougeas, Lieut.-Generae Sir Charees : 
 
 Adjutant General and Second Military Member of the 
 Army Council in 1906 ; Chief of the Imperial General 
 Staff and First Military Member of the Army Council 
 in 1 914. Died 26th October, 1914. 
 
 Downham, Lord : 
 
 In charge of Unionist Organization for the County of 
 London since 1911. 
 
 Duke, Sir Edward, k.c, m.p. : 
 
 Leading Counsel for Plaintiff in Adam v. Ward, 1914-15. 
 
 Dunedin, Lord : 
 
 Lord of Appeal in 191 7.
 
 WHO'S WHO. 193 
 
 Ewart, Lieut.-General Sir Spencer : 
 
 Director of Military Operations, 1906-1910 ; Adjutant 
 General 1910-1914 ; C.-in-C. Scottish Command, 1914- 
 
 i9*5« 
 
 FevERSHAM, Earl of (as Viscount Helmsley) : 
 
 M.P. for Thirsk Division of Yorkshire in 1910. 
 
 Findlay, Lord : 
 
 Lord Chancellor of England in 191 7. 
 
 Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes : {see Downham). 
 
 Franklyn, Lieut. -General Sir William : 
 
 Military Secretary 1912-1914. Died in October, 1914. 
 
 Fraser, Sir Hugh : 
 
 Counsel for Plaintiff in Adam v. Ward, 1914, 1915, 1917. 
 
 French, Fieed-Marshae, Viscount : 
 
 Commanded at Aldershot, 1904- 1907 ; Chief of the 
 Imperial General Staff and First Military Member of 
 the Army Council in 191 4 ; commanded Home Army 
 in 1916. 
 
 George, Rt. Hon. David Leoyd, m.p. : 
 
 Prime Minister in 1917 and 1918 ; Secretary of State 
 for War in 191 6. 
 
 Gough, Lieut.-Generae Sir Hubert : 
 Army Commander in 1915. 
 
 Graham, Coeonee : 
 
 Commanded 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers, 1905-1908. 
 
 Haddon, Major-Generae Sir Charles : 
 
 Master General of the Ordnance and Fourth Military 
 Member of the Army Council in 1907 and 1910.
 
 i 9 4 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Haldane, Lieut.-General Sir J. A. L. : 
 
 Staff Officer to Sir William Nicholson in Japan in 1904. 
 
 Haldane, Viscount (as Mr Haldane) : 
 
 Secretary of State for War, 1906-1912. In receipt of 
 Pension of £5,000 a year. 
 
 Hamilton, General Sir Ian : 
 
 Adjutant General and Second Military Member of the 
 Army Council in 1910. 
 
 Helmsley, Viscount : {see Feversham). 
 
 Henderson, Rt. Hon. Arthur, m.p. : 
 Cabinet Minister in 191 7. 
 
 Hood, Sir Alexander Acland, Bart , m.p.": {see St. Audries) 
 
 Hume, Colonel Charles : 
 
 Military Attache in Japan in 1904- 1905. 
 
 Hunter, Lieut. -General Sir Archibald : 
 
 Commanded at Aldershot in 1914, 1915. 
 
 Kitchener, Earl : 
 
 Secretary of State for War in 1914-1916. 
 
 Lambton, Major-General Hon. William : 
 
 Military Secretary to British Expeditionary Force in 
 1914. 
 
 Law, Rt. Hon. Bonar, m.p. : 
 
 Cabinet Minister in 1917 and 1918. 
 
 LEE, Lord (as Colonel Sir Arthur Lee) : 
 
 Military Secretary to Secretary of State for War in 1916.. 
 
 Leetham, Sir Arthur : 
 
 At War Office in 1914.
 
 WHO'S WHO. 195 
 
 Londonderry, Marquess of (as Viscount Castlereagh) : 
 M.P. for Maidstone in 1910. 
 
 Long, Rt. Hon. Walter : 
 
 M.P. for the City of London in 1910. 
 
 Loreburn, Lord : 
 
 Lord of Appeal in 1917. 
 
 Lyttelton, General Hon. Sir Neville : 
 
 Chief of the General Staff and First Military Member 
 of the Army Council, 1904-1908 ; Governor of Chelsea 
 Hospital, 1 915. 
 
 M . . . . , Captain and Adjutant, 5th Lancers. 
 
 Macdonald, His Excellency Colonel Sir Claude : 
 
 H.B.M. Ambassador to Japan in 1904- 1905. Died 1915. 
 
 Macdonogh, Sir George : 
 
 Intelligence Staff at the War Office in 1914 ; Chief of 
 Intelligence, B.E.F., in 1915 ; Adjutant General and 
 Second Military Member of the Army Council in 191 8 
 and 1919. 
 
 Macnaughton, George W. F. : m.d., m.r.c.p. 
 
 Macready, Lieut.-General Sir Nevil : 
 
 Director of Personal Services at War Office in 191 1- 
 1912 : Adjutant General and Second Military Member 
 of the Army Council, 1916-1918. 
 
 Miles, Sir Herbert : 
 
 Quarter Master General and Third Military Member 
 of the Army Council in 1910. 
 
 Milner, Viscount : 
 
 Cabinet Minister in 1917 and 1918 ; Secretary of State 
 for War, 1918.
 
 196 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Mortimer, J. D. E. : m.b. (lond.)., f.r.c.s. 
 
 Murray, General Sir Archibald : 
 
 Chief Staff Officer at Aldershot in 1906 ; Deputy Chief 
 of the Imperial General Staff in 1915 ; Chief of the 
 Imperial General Staff and First Military Member of the 
 Army Council in 1915. 
 
 Murray, Lieut. -General Sir James Wolfe: 
 
 Fourth Military Member of the Army Council in 1906 ; 
 Chief of the Imperial General Staff and First Military 
 Member of the Army Council in 1915. 
 
 Nicholson, Field Marshal Lord (as Sir William Nicholson) : 
 Third Military Member of the Army Council, 18th 
 December, 1905 ; Chief of the General Staff and First 
 Military Member of the Army Council, 2nd April, 1908 ; 
 Chief of the Imperial General Staff and First Military 
 Member of the Army Council, 24th November, 1909. 
 Died, 1 91 9. 
 
 Paget, Lieut.-General Sir Arthur : 
 
 C.-in-C. Southern Training Centre in 1915. 
 
 Pickford, Sir William : 
 
 Lord Justice of Appeal in 1915. 
 
 Robb, Major General Sir Frederick : 
 Military Secretary in 1915. 
 
 Robertson, General Sir William, Bart. : 
 
 Chief of the Imperial General Staff and First Military 
 Member of the Army Council in 1916-1917. 
 
 St. Audries, Lord (as Sir Alexander Acland Hood) : 
 M.P. in 1910. 
 
 Sclater, Lieut. -General Sir Henry : 
 
 Adjutant General and Second Military Member of the 
 Army Council in 1914-1915.
 
 WHO'S WHO. 197 
 
 Scobell, Major-General Sir Henry : 
 
 Commanded 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot in 1905- 
 1907. Died in February, 1912. 
 
 Seely, Rt. Hon. Major-General John, m.p. : 
 
 Secretary of State for War, 1912-1914. Air Minister, 
 1919. 
 
 Shaw, Lord : 
 
 Lord of Appeal in 1917. 
 
 Sheppard, Captain Edgar, Grenadier Guards : 
 
 Private Secretary to Military Secretary in 19 14. 
 
 Simon, Sir John, m.p. : 
 
 Attorney General in 1914-1915. 
 
 Smith-Dorrien, General Sir Horace : 
 Army Commander in 1914. 
 
 Teck, Duke of : (see Cambridge). 
 
 Tennant, Rt. Hon. H. J. : 
 
 Under Secretary of State for War, in 1915. 
 
 Tullibardine : (see Atholl). 
 
 Ward, Colonel Sir Edward, Bart. : 
 
 Secretary to the Army Council, 1906-1914 ; Defendant 
 in Adam v. Ward. 
 
 Watt, Lieut. -Colonel : 
 
 Private Secretary to Viscount French in 1911, 1912 
 and 1916. 
 
 Willcox, Lieut. -Colonel, 3rd Hussars : 
 
 Captain and Adjutant, 5th Lancers, in 1905-1906.
 
 198 THE BRITISH DREYFUS CASE. 
 
 Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry, Bart : 
 
 Director of Military Operations in 1914 ; Chief of the 
 Imperial General Staff and First Military Member of 
 the Army Council in 191 8 and 191 9. 
 
 Wilson, Arthur Stanley : 
 
 M.P. for Holderness Division of Yorks in 1910. 
 
 WORTHINGTON-EVANS, SlR LAMING : 
 
 M.P. for Colchester in 1910. 
 
 WrEnbury, Lord (as Sir Henry Buckley) : 
 Lord Justice of Appeal in 1915. 
 
 Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George : 
 M.P. for Dover in 1910. 
 
 Wynne, Lieut. -General Sir Arthur : 
 
 Military Secretary in 1906-1907 ; Keeper of the Crown 
 Jewels in 1914. 
 
 W , Captain, 5th Lancers. 
 
 X , Captain, 5th Lancers. 
 
 Y , Major, 5th Lancers. 
 
 Z , Major, 5th Lancers.
 
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