Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1899 — MERCIER A FORGER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MERCIER A FORGER.

Austrian Military Attache Will Prosecute the Frenchman. Chief among the topics of conversation in Paris is the reported action of Col. Schneider, Austrian military attache, who is to prosecute General Mercier for forgery. The case will come before the Paris Court of Assizes. This is the hardest blow yet delivered the military cabal. The anti-Dreyfus journals have been boasting that Schneider falsified. They said he was a tool of the triple alliance. This boast is now an empty one, and their own reputation for veracity is among missing quantities. Mercier’s offense consists in having adduced a document in the Rennes court purporting to be a report on Dreyfus from Schneider

to his government. Throughout France the conservative press severely condemns the action of Mercier in trying to drag foreign powers into the Dreyfus affair. It is regarded as particularly unfortunate that he should do this right after Empeoror William’s eulogies of French soldiers at the inauguration of the St. Privat monument. There is nothing at all new or unex-

pected in the Dreyfus trial, says a correspondent. A thousand witnesses like Mercier, Roget, Cuiquet and Fabre would not convince those who believe Dreyfus the victim of a conspiracy that he is guilty. The anti-Semitic element is too blindly prejudiced against the prisoner to care anything about the evidence.

COLONEL PICQUART. Dreyfus' Stanch Friend at Trial of the French Officer.