Nations divided against themselves

Have you read Robert Harris’s novel An Officer and a Spy?

Great book. From an idea suggested by Harris’s friend Roman Polanski, who’s about to release the film, to be called J’accuse, with a screenplay also written by Harris.

Imagine a young man, married with two children under three, from a wealthy background and pursuing a military career full of promise, thanks to his intelligence and devotion to duty. This is Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French Army.

J'accuse:
the novelist Emile Zola's ringing denunciation of the Dreyfus scandal
Now the title of Polanski's film from Harris’s novel

Without warning, he’s arrested for treason. The accusation is that he sold his country’s military secrets to its sworn enemy, Germany. The major piece of evidence against him is a handwritten note reconstituted from a waste paper stolen from the German embassy by a cleaner who is also a French agent. One handwriting expert says it wasn’t written by Dreyfus, another that it was. This is enough to condemn him in light of the most damning testimony of all: the captain is a Jew.

This is the story that Harris tells. He’s written a novel but sticks closely to the historical events. The protagonist of the book, and the hero of the story, is Colonel Georges Picquart. He wasn’t unduly fond of Jews, but he hated the idea of a traitor at large in the French Army, as he hated the idea of an innocent man suffering a terrible sentence in his stead.

Because that’s the cruel twist of this tale: Dreyfus had nothing to do with the treason. Picquart discovered the real spy and denounced him. But the establishment couldn’t bring itself to admit its error, far less when the innocent victim of its miscarriage of justice was Jewish. So they preferred to let Dreyfus rot on Devil’s Island. Why, they even ensured that the real culprit, a Major Esterhaze, was acquitted at his court martial.

Picquart, meanwhile, faced persecution nearly to the point of death: I don’t want to spoil the novel for anyone who hasn’t read it, but the French Army went so far as to try to send Picquart on a mission which would almost certainly have led to his death. But he fought on for a cause which must often have seemed hopeless.

Harris is an excellent writer of gripping novels, in particular of the spy or thriller variety, and And Officer and a Spy is in my view his best. So I’m enjoying rereading it. But it isn’t just a good read. It’s also a curious mirror to our own time.

France was torn apart by the Dreyfus Affair. The nation was divided into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The debate was long and often vicious, with anti-Semitic riots and even some deaths in (then-French) Algeria.

There have been no riots in Britain over Brexit, but the divisions are as heartfelt as in the Dreyfus Affair. The two sides are as diametrically opposed, the hopes of unity are as forlorn, the chances of compromise are as vanishingly feeble.

Compromise? What compromise could there have been over Dreyfus? Could he have been exonerated but left in gaol – perhaps under slightly less inhumane conditions – in order not to upset the anti-Dreyfusards? Surely he was either guilty and rightly condemned, or innocent and needing to be released (as he eventually was).

And how’s Brexit different? Britain either stays inside the EU or it leaves. There may have been endless debate over what kind of Brexit might be adopted, but any form means the country leaving the EU. Like Dreyfus being left in gaol: whether under softer or harder conditions, and for a longer or shorter time, it would still have left an innocent man being punished for someone else’s offence. Ironically, the argument for a softer kind of Brexit is often presented, often by no less a person than Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, as a way to avoid upsetting the Brexiter, or more exactly anti-Immigrant, vote – just like keeping Dreyfus in gaol would have been a way of appeasing anti-Semites.

The big difference between the two conflicts is that the Dreyfus case is over 120 years old. We know today that no compromise would ever have made sense between the two sides. One side had the issue broadly right – Dreyfus was innocent and needed to be released – and the other was deeply and perniciously wrong – it couldn’t bring itself to believe that the Jew wasn’t a traitor to France.

And a century from now? I suspect people will be looking back and wondering how Britain could have been so misled as to leave the EU for a generation before rejoining on less favourable terms. The Brexiters, like the anti-Dreyfusards, will be seen as bigoted and profoundly deluded.

But what a pity if it takes so long, and at the cost of so much damage, for that truth to be recognised.