["The Sale of French Military Plans", The Argus (Melbourne), Monday 24 December 1894, page 5]
THE SALE OF FRENCH MILITARY PLANS.
THE TRIAL OF CAPTAIN DREYFUS.
REPORTED COMPLICATIONS.
London, Dec. 22.
A great sensation was caused in France last month by the arrest of Captain Albert Dreyfus, of the 14th regiment of Artillery, and attached to the general staff, on the charge of having sold secret War Office documents to Germany.
It now appears that the case against the accused man rests on a document which was stolen from the German Embassy.
A report is current that Count Munster, the German ambassador in Paris, has threatened to leave France if the stolen document is used in the proceedings against Captain Dreyfus, and it is further stated that for this reason the trial of the accused will be conducted in private.
A SEVERE SENTENCE.
IMPRISONMENT TOR LIFE.
London, Dec. 23.
Captain Dreyfus has been sentenced to deportation and internment for life in a fortified place, and also to pay the costs of the prosecution.
[A telegram published in The Times stated that at a Cabinet council held in Paris on November 1 General Mercier, the Minister of War, announced his intention of ordering the prosecution of Captain Albert Dreyfus, of the 14th regiment of Artillery, attached to the general staff, who was charged with selling secret War Office documents to Germany. Captain Dreyfus is of Jewish Alsatian extraction. He was born in 1859 at Mullhouse, where his brothers have a large cotton-spinning factory. He had been a clerk in the first bureau of the general staff. This office contains the only really secret documents of the War Office, such as the mobilisation arrangements and the details for the despatch and concentration of troops in the event of war. Five years ago Dreyfus married the daughter of M. Hadamard, a diamond merchant, and with his wife and two children has been occupying expensive rooms in the Avenue du Trocadero.]
