“Si vous continuez, je vous mets tous à la porte,” (If you continue, I’m throwing you all out)

“Si vous continuez, je vous mets tous à la porte,” (If you continue, I’m throwing you all out)

Le Petit Journal, Supplément illustré, 10 July 1898

This satire depicts the allegorical embodiment of France as a school teacher, whip in hand, admonishing her unruly class. Her mischievous students, who launch their inkpots and paper up in the air, threaten to clobber each other with books, and throw each other to the ground, represent those involved in the heated polemics that followed Dreyfus’ 1894 sentence. In the foreground, for example, Edouard Drumont throws himself into the fray, followed by Paul Déroulède, leader of the pro-military Ligue des Patriotes (pictured in the Musée des patriotes).

Though, between 1896 and 1898, Dreyfus was exiled to Devil’s Island, many other trials took place during his absence, including those of Esterhazy, Picquart, and Zola. Le Petit Journal, whose rich imagery rarely lapses into satire, here takes up its caricatural pen to criticize divisions in French public life exacerbated by the Dreyfus Affair.