ABSTRACT
There was a miscarriage of justice and eventually truth prevailed. Maurras, however, at least had the excuse that he had never claimed to speak for Truth and Justice. For some Catholics the devaluation appeared so obvious that they mentioned it almost incidentally, as self-evident. As the people have already noted, the word ‘justice’ could have a variety of meanings, dependent on their political stance. As the Affair wore on, many anti-Dreyfusards began obscurely to feel an uncertainty about how to use the word ‘justice’. While Catholics or anti-Dreyfusards could muse on the distortions that had taken place, an even more widespread uncertainty about the words ‘truth and justice’ was in evidence. Political history can be unfair to the people vocabulary; it is difficult nowadays, for example, to hear the words ‘collaboration’ or ‘appeasement’ in the way they were heard before 1939.
