Investigation and The Arrest of Alfred Dreyfus - Investigation

Investigation

Nevertheless, this "first falsehood," suggested perhaps by the previous warnings of Valcarlos, was generally accepted; right from the start, the investigations led down a false path. At first no result was obtained from an examination of handwritings in the bureaus of the department. But on October 6 Lieutenant-Colonel d'Aboville suggested to his chief, Colonel Fabre, the idea that the bordereau, dealing as it did with questions which were under the jurisdiction of different departments, must be the work of one of the officers going through their "stage" (i.e., staff-schooling), they being the only men who passed successively through the various branches to complete their military education; moreover as, out of the five documents mentioned, three had reference to artillery, the officer probably belonged to this branch of the army. It remained only to consult the list of officers in training with the General Staff who had also come from the artillery. While looking through it, the two colonels came to a halt before the name of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an officer professing the Jewish faith and with family roots in Mulhouse, Alsace a province which had become German in 1871. Captain Dreyfus, who was raised in Paris, was an alumnus of the elite Ecole Polytechnique and a promising young officer. In fact he had been placed in this much coveted temporary assignment on the General Staff as a step up the promotional ladder. However Dreyfus had been in the office of Colonel Fabre during the second quarter of 1893, and Fabre remembered having given him a bad record on the report of Lieutenant-Colonel Roget and Major Bertin-Mourot. Dreyfus had given these gentlemen the impression (upon the most superficial grounds) of presumption and overbearing, and of neglecting the routine of service to go into matters which were kept secret. Fabre and D'Aboville immediately began to search for papers bearing the writing of Dreyfus. By coincidence the writing of Dreyfus showed a likeness to the writing of the bordereau. These officers, inexperienced and prejudiced, mistook a vague resemblance for real identity.