ts turn awakened the yet more influential journals of
the provinces, who exert an intenser as well as a narrower influence,
and in a very little time there came a reverberating boom in answer
from the other side of the Atlantic. Before the lecture was delivered I
received many threatening letters from truculent Frenchmen, who regarded
any foreign criticism of the evidence on which Dreyfus had been found
guilty as an insolent assault upon the honour of the French army. Two of
my correspondents threatened me with assassination if I should dare to
carry out my project, and scores of them expressed themselves in terms
of indignation and contempt. The most popular idea appeared to be that
I was a hireling in the employ of the Jews, and that I was being very
handsomely subsidized to take up the cudgels in a base and disgraceful
cause. I confess that I rather wished that this idea of a subsidy were
true, for in time and money I had spent considerably more than I could
legitimately afford, but the truth remains that Mr Maskelyne and I stood
the whole racket and that, so far as we were concerned, there might as
well have been no Israel in Great Britain or outside it.

It was this incident in my career which brought me acquainted with Emile
Zola, for whose work I had until that time felt a profound aversion. I
do not profess to be in sympathy with that work even now, but I got
to know the man and to recognise his purpose. When he published in the
pages of _L'Aurore_, his famous article entitled "J'accuse," and was
brought to trial on account of it, I went over to Paris, eager to meet
him and to assure him that the intelligence of the world outside the
boundaries of France was entirely with him. I reached Paris a day before
the trial was appointed to begin, and I made my way at once to the
office of the _Steele_, where I applied to my old friend, Monsieur Yves
Guyot, for an introduction. He refused it flatly: "The man," he said,
"is up to his eyes in responsibilities and labour. Every moment he can
spare is given to consultation with Maitre Labori, who is engaged
to defend him, and I must refuse in his own interest to trouble him
further." It was impossible not to recognise the justice of Monsieur
Guyot's plea, but when all was said and done I felt that I was there as
one of the rank and file in a losing cause, and that I had something of
a right to be near my leader. "I assure you," said M. Guyot, in parting
from me, "that nothing