in the issue, become indispensable.

On January 16, 1898, three days after M. Zola's famous 'J'accuse' letter
appeared in 'L'Aurore,' and two days before the French Government
instructed the Public Prosecutor to proceed against its author, I wrote
to the 'Westminster Gazette' a long letter dealing with M. Zola's
position. In this letter, which appeared in the issue of the 19th, I
began by establishing a comparison between Zola and Voltaire, whose
action with regard to the memory of Jean Calas I briefly epitomised.
Curiously enough at that moment M. Zola, as I afterwards learnt, was
telling the Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Chronicle' that the
opposition offered to his advocacy of the cause of Alfred Dreyfus was
identical with that encountered by Voltaire in his championship of Calas.
This was a curious little coincidence, for I wrote my letter without
having any communication with M. Zola respecting it. It contained some
passes which I here venture to quote. In a book dealing with the great
novelist these passages may not be out of place, as they serve to
illustrate his general attitude towards the Dreyfus case.

'Truth,' I wrote, 'has been the one passion of Emile Zola's life.* "May
all be revealed so that all may be cured" has been his sole motto in
dealing with social problems. "Light, more light!"--the last words gasped
by Goethe on his death-bed--has ever been his cry. Holding the views he
holds, he could not do otherwise than come forward at this crisis in
French history as the champion of truth and justice. Silence on his part
would have been a denial of all his principles, all his past life. . . .
Against him are marshalled all the Powers of Darkness, all the energy of
those who prefer concealment to light, all the enmity of the military
hierarchy which has never forgotten "La Debacle," all the hatred of the
Roman hierarchy which will never forgive "Lourdes" and "Rome." And the