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Reflections upon a letter that toppled a government, freed a man, and brought honor to a nation.

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: On January 13, 1898, a French newspaper published a letter from the French writer Emile Zola under the headline "J'Accuse"--I accuse. He was writing the president of France about a man convicted of treason, a man named Alfred Dreyfus. NewsHour regular Roger Rosenblatt is here to tell us more about that letter. Why did Emile Zola write that letter, Roger?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: He wrote it to cure an injustice, to scold a nation, and to try to shame it into doing the right thing. There was no question that Dreyfus was always innocent. It went back to the whole history of the case. But Zola, who was not a political man, rose to the occasion, and a hundred years ago today that letter was published in the papers, and it brought down a government, it eventually freed Dreyfus, and it did honor for France. It took a while.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about the case.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: It starts--and I'll stumble my way through the history--long before the case, itself, came to the fore in 1870 at the Treaty of Frankfurt, which ended the Franco-Prussian War in which war the German military humiliated the French military and German annexed Alsace. For the next 20 years, France was seeing spies in the trees. Everywhere there was somebody capable of treason. In 1894, it was discovered that a bordeleau, a schedule, a memorandum, had been given over to the German high command by some French traitor, giving French positions, defense positions. Who could have done it? They landed on this captain, a 35-year-old captain, who had two disabilities. One, he was Jewish, and, therefore, made himself available to the anti-Semitism, which was rife in France, particularly in the military at the time. The other, he was Alsatian.

The combination was perfect to make him a scapegoat. So in September 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested. A couple of months later there was a secret court martial led by a chief investigator named Du Pati Du Plame. The head of the war office was named Mercier at the time. And with witnesses lying and with so-called handwriting experts saying he wrote this bordeleau, this memorandum, on January 5th in 1895, there was a ceremony of degradation for those who remember the movie, Emile Zola, with Paul Muny, Dreyfus standing in the courtyard, the epaulets stripped from his shoulders, medals taken away, and he was made to stand in shame before the whole country. The press then joined in, said that, of course, a Jew would turn on the country and so forth, so the press has an interesting sideline history in this, which then became central. All the way along Zola's interest had been increasing in this, and I should say that Dreyfus was sentenced to a life term in Devil's Island--no fun. Then in 1898, the real culprit, a guy named Major Esterhazy, was discovered. He was court-martialed, but the military because they would stonewall, they would cover up, found him innocent. And at that point that was on January 11, 1898, two days later, Zola came out with "J'Accuse," this letter to Felix Fore, the president of France and to all of France to call it to shame. Afterwards, he was--he, Zola, was convicted of libel, and he--rather than serve time in jail, he went over to England. Eventually, he came back--he died in 1902, but in time both to see the government fall and to see Dreyfus exonerated. And in 1906, Dreyfus was entirely exonerated by the Supreme Court. But it took all that time. He died--he, Dreyfus, died in 1935.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why is this so important, Roger, not only in France, where there are huge celebrations today about this letter, but for many other people and many other countries too?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, Elizabeth, it's just a great document. It's a class document. It may be the best piece of journalism ever written, certainly, and one of the most powerful. First of all, it says a lot about the press. The press was as anti-Semitic and as inflaming of anti-Semitism as any other institution in France, including the military. Yet, it was the press too that allowed Zola to publish this letter, and the press, which then turned in favor of Dreyfus after the letter made its case. Second, it's just a wonderful statement of honor and justice on the face of it. It is also a statement of the power of the individual or the potential power of the individual who can go up against the state, as Zola did. And, finally--and this pleases you and me and all of us in this odd trade--it shows that the power of the word can do everything. When all this case is over, when people forget, Dreyfus, certainly nobody would remember that the president of France was Fore, or all the names of all the corrupt generals, when all of that is gone. What they will remember and do remember is this letter. They remember the words, so it is a powerful, wonderful document in behalf of civil liberties and freedom.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you very much, Roger.

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