Henri Poincare: A Biography Through The Daily Papers

A Biography Through the Daily Papers

Jean-Marc Ginoux, Christian Gerini

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9789814556637
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

On July 17, 2012, the centenary of Henri Poincaré's death was commemorated; his name being associated with so many fields of knowledge that he was considered as the Last Universalist. In Pure and Applied Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering and Philosophy, his works have had a great impact all over the world. Poincaré acquired in his lifetime such a reputation that, both nationally and internationally, his life and career were made the object of various articles in the daily papers not only in France, but also in the USA. Some of his philosophical concepts have even caused sharp controversies in the Press (as we will discover in this book).

This work presents an original portrait of Henri Poincaré based on various press cuttings from The New York Times, The San Francisco Sunday Call, The Times, The Sun, The Washington Post that chronicled unknown anecdotes of his life (for example, his first name was actually not Henri, but Henry; he obtained his high school diploma in sciences with a zero in mathematics, etc.). Such an approach enables the discovering of many forgotten or unknown aspects of his scientific and philosophical works as well as his important role in the public sphere.

Contents:

• The Early Years:
  • The Poincaré Family
  • Childhood and Studies
  • Inspector of Mines in Vesoul
• The Professor and the Savant:
  • From the University of Caen to the Sorbonne
  • From the Sorbonne to the Académie
  • The Prize of King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway
• The Universal Thinker and the Public Figure:
  • French Geodesy and the Fight Over the Meridian
  • The Controversy Over the Rotation of the Earth
  • The Philosophical Work and Its Impact
• The Committed Man:
  • The Dreyfus Affair
  • The Role Model — The Immortal
  • Last Commitments, Last Works

Readership: Scientists and historians of science.

PART 4

The Committed Man

Sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results.

— H. Poincaré —

Chapter 10

The Dreyfus Affair

The Dreyfus Affair, which unfolded from 1894 to 1906, has become the paradigmatic example of the commitment of intellectuals and scientists in a judicial, political, social and ideological debate. It has been recounted and studied so many times that we shall only do a quick review of the major episodes by illustrating them with examples taken from the multitude of newspaper articles (sometimes nauseating) that accompanied it. We will obviously focus on the role of scientists in the second and third part of the affair, that is to say from the famous “J’accuse” by Zola in 1898 and the trial that followed. And we will insist more specifically on the role of Poincaré in this scientific expertise, and how it was conveyed in the press. We deny here trying to plagiarize any serious studies that were produced on the issue before. So we take it upon ourselves to borrow from Laurent Rollet’s studies, and we officially and sincerely thank him here for his authorization and support of our undertaking.

We prefer then to name these borrowing right from this introduction. Most of them come from his very valuable contribution to the website; http://images.math.cnrs.fr/; entitled “Des mathématiciens dans l’affaire Dreyfus? Autoforgerie, bertillonnage et calcul des probabilités”: to avoid too many cross-references to footnotes, we will simply emphasize what we borrowed from this text with a *. But the borrowing also come from his chapter “L’université et la science” (University and science) from the book “Les évènements fondateurs. L’affaire Dreyfus” (The founding events. The Dreyfus Affair) directed by Vincent Duclert and Perrine Simon-Nahum and published in 2009 by Armand Colin.

10.1 The First Dreyfus Affair: A Brief Overview

This affair essentially unfolded in three stages, although it has been the subject of a significant number of articles and debates in the intervals between these episodes. It started in November 1894 and, among the countless newspaper articles that got hold of it, we chose to refer to the French newspaper Le Figaro in an article dated of November 3. Why this choice? The first reason is that it is not the purpose of this book to recount in detail the beginning of this affair, for Poincaré doesn’t appear in it until later; besides, we would not have enough space here to put most of the substantial and almost always partisan articles which sustained the debate from the very beginning of the affair. The second reason is that this article has two very instructive points. Firstly, he shows us that right from the beginning, the press condemned Dreyfus without further ado (and way before his trial). Secondly, because this article is very well documented on the functioning of the institutions – of the army in particular, and he tells us already a priori what sanction the alleged culprit might be subjected to (for that is precisely what is at stake at the very beginning of the affair). The case had just been divulged to the press and the Figaro started its long article as follows (see Fig. 10.1):

Fig. 10.1 Le Figaro of November 3, 1894.

THE CASE OF TREASON

“Several newspapers have written the name of the culprit, and after the note of the Agence Havas, there is no doubt as to the crime of which we recounted the sad details yesterday. So we no longer have to keep some reservation. It is Captain Dreyfus, of the 14^th Artillery Regiment, attached to the offices of the Ministry of War as an intern at the headquarters of the Army, who committed the infamous action that we still wanted to have doubts about, in spite of all the stories that we have heard.”

We can see that Dreyfus was portrayed as guilty right from the start. Let’s not forget that he was accused of high treason:

“In late September 1894, the French Intelligence Service, through a maid working at the German Embassy, came into possession of a letter torn into six pieces, and which had no date or signature. Intended for a German military attaché, Colonel Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, this letter – which was later designated as the bordereau (detailed memorandum) – announced the sending of several confidential notes concerning the arming and organization of the French army. Because of the supposed similarity of his handwriting with the one on the bordereau, and because an internship at the Ministry of War had put him in touch with the secret documents mentioned on the bordereau, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an École Polytechnique student and a Jewish officer of Alsatian origin, was forced to write under dictation then imprisoned at Cherche-Midi in October 1894. Following a closed-door military trial, he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to transportation for life on Devil’s Island, a fortified compound in Guyana. The fundamental injustice was committed: denying the French law, Dreyfus was convicted on the basis of documents to which he could not have had access to (a secret file containing false documents had been submitted to the judges without the defense knowing about it)^*”

Le Figaro criticized the Ministry of War and the police headquarters which, in his opinion, were too slow to disclose the information, considering that, in the end, the case did not “affect the consideration of our army in any way.” But the article was about the “odious crime” committed by Captain Dreyfus, who was “waiting in the Cherche-Midi prison for the members of the court-martial to decide whether or not he committed the abominable crime of high treason”. However, for Le Figaro, there was absolutely no doubt that he committed it (as it was the case for most of the other newspapers at the time):

“The odious crime that caused the arrest of Captain Alfred Dreyfus is all the more monstrous that we cannot even explain it by some pressing needs of money. The French officer, who sold abroad some of the secrets of the national defense, owns indeed a fine fortune.”

This was followed by the long list of the respective fortunes of the Dreyfus family and of his wife, “the daughter of a very wealthy diamond merchant,” who lived “in a luxurious apartment in the Avenue du Trocadéro.” And the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew quickly appeared in an almost caricatural portrait: “Captain Dreyfus, who is thirty-five years old, is of size above the average, has a quite lively complexion, is short-sighted and of a fairly pronounced Jewish type.” Therefore, right from the beginning, Dreyfus being Jewish was associated with him being necessarily guilty. Let’s not forget the social and political context of that time: Antisemitism was omnipresent in all the press, and even elected officials or intellectuals claimed to follow it; it was well-established in journals (La Libre Parole by Édouard Drumont for instance) and best-selling books (La France juive, by the same Drumont, published in 1888) which were written to spread it. Drumont, boosted by the impressive success of his book and journal, campaigned against the Jewish officers of the French army and amplified the hatred of Jews in France and in the French army. For the authorities, led by the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier, it was of utmost importance to find a culprit – who had to be found among the officers who spent some time at the headquarters, giving them access to the documents intended for the German in the famous bordereau, in fact only document in a file where there was nothing but a presumption of treason, since this document only announced an upcoming delivery of confidential papers. Dreyfus soon turned out to be the ideal culprit: he was the only Jew who have had access to these documents, and he was then only an intern. More importantly, he came from a Republican family and began a career in an army still bruised from the fall of 1870, preparing its revenge on Germany, and whose officers were still essentially ultra-Catholics anti-republicans. In addition, the case was revealed to the general public by Drumont in La libre parole of October 24, 1894 and was thus directly placed under the perspective of the Jewish responsibility for the misfortunes of the French society: that article marked the beginning of the “Dreyfus Affair” in the public sphere. At the time, most of the press was conservative and antisemitic. Le Figaro was one of the more moderate and less biased newspapers on the subject: this is why we chose this newspaper article dated November 3, 1894 to illustrate the first part of the Dreyfus Affair “moderately”. Periodicals such as L’Eclair, La Croix, L’Intransigeant, etc.¹ were much more radical. We can see then that the newspapers designated the culprit from the very start and even wrote in advance about the rest of the trial and the coming conviction of Dreyfus, as well as the penalty that he would be subjected to after a rigged and rapid trial. In the same article, Le Figaro thus explained the legislation that governed such cases. Taking the example of the Adjutant Chatelain, who in 1883 was sentenced to life imprisonment in a “fortified compound”, and who, in 1894, was still in prison in Noumea “where it is very expensive for the State to keep him, being currently the only transported convict that exists in our fortified compounds, and watching him requires a large personnel”, the newspaper announced what awaited Dreyfus. The die was then cast and Dreyfus was to be subjected to the penalty announced, as mentioned above: he did not join Chatelain in Noumea, but was deported to Guyana, on an island with a ominous name: Devil’s Island.

10.2 Three Other Trials

In a predominantly anti-Dreyfusard France, it was difficult to question the judgment pronounced against the captain, and the establishment of a Dreyfusard trend, then a counter-attack by the people who embodied it, was spread over two years and a half, from 1895 to 1897. Among many other protagonists, two of them, one guilty and the other innocent, took part in the case, and were the subject of two other trials which proved the first one innocent and convicted the second one, in order to cover up for the people responsible for the 1894 trial and satisfy the still highly virulent anti-Dreyfusism. These two figures were Commandant Charles Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (1847-1923) and Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart (1854-1914). The latter, appointed head of the French intelligence service in July 1895, discovered in documents stolen from the German Embassy some elements showing that Esterhazy was giving information to the Germans. Picquart also discovered a similarity between Esterhazy’s handwriting and the handwriting on the bordereau which was used to make Dreyfus found guilty of treason. Without consulting his superiors, Picquart held an investigation which led him to be absolutely certain, with supporting evidence, of Esterhazy’s betrayal and guilt in the case for which Dreyfus was convicted. When Picquart reported his findings to the General Staff, they reacted the opposite of what he expected: he became the target of an investigation conducted to prove that, on the contrary, he was the guilty one, and he was taken away and finally posted to Tunisia.

The New York Times reported on November 29^th, 1898 this trial:

“PARIS. Nov. 28.– The Chamber of Deputies was crowded today, much interest being taken in the announced intention of some of the Deputies to interpellate the Government on the Picquart case. M, Paul Deschanel, Republican, announced that he had received a request to interpellate the Government regarding the Picquart proceedings, and the Premier, M. Dupuy, proposed an immediate discussion of the matter. But M. Fournière, Socialist, asked for an adjournment of an hour and a half, in order that the Republican Deputies might be able to consult with their colleagues in the Senate regarding the adoption of a common policy. The Chamber rejected the motion by a vote of 252 to 244. The Minister of War, M. de Freycinet, in the Chamber of Deputies refused to intervene in the Picquart affair, and the House approved the Government’s declaration regarding the separation of military and civil powers by a vote of 437 to 73. A Radical Deputy, M. Bos, opened the discussion. He said that while there had been some honesty in the Dreyfus prosecution, there had been nothing but dishonesty in the Picquart affair. These remarks caused uproar. Continuing M.Bos detailed the history of the Picquart “persecution,” recalling Col. Picquart’s exile to Tunis, and asked the Minister of War, M. de Freycinet, why he had permitted a court-martial to be summoned for Dec. 12. The Deputy also accused Gen. Zurlinden the Military Governor of Paris, who be said, bad promised a revision of the case, with having broken his word. This caused another uproar M. Bos concluded with insisting that the Government ought to postpone the trial of Picquart by court-martial, the charge against him being disclosing the contents of certain military documents to his counsel, for legal purposes growing out of the Dreyfus case, until the decision of the Court of Cassation in the revision of the Dreyfus trial is made known. This brought forth lively applause from the majority of the Deputies. M. Millerand. Radical Socialist, spoke in a similar strain. He said it was absolutely necessary to postpone the Picquart court-martial in order to avoid the scandalous contradictions which otherwise were likely to arise between the verdicts of the court-martial and of the Court of Cassation. The President of the Chamber at this stage of the proceedings was frequently obliged to intervene in order to quiet the uproar on all sides. M. Poincaré², Republican, then made an impassioned speech, during the course of which he said it was not necessary to confound the army with a few imprudent men. The members of the court-martial be continued, were above suspicion; but the prosecution of Picquart savored of reprisal. [Applause.] Col. Picquart’s secret imprisonment, M. Poincaré further remarked, was beyond all precedent, and there were guilty parties, he claimed, who were enjoying scandalous impunity. [Applause.] “There are other forgers besides Picquart who ought to be prosecuted!” exclaimed the Deputy. “These injustices will end by exasperating the nation.” M. Poincaré who was Minister of Public Instruction in 1893-5, created a sensation by adding: “We were attacked for the Dreyfus prosecution in 1894; but I learned of the Dreyfus affair through the newspapers!” Tremendous applause and uproar followed this assertion. M. Barthou, who was Minister of Public Works in 1894, here interjected: “I am ready to indorse the words of M.Poinc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Note from the translator
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• The early years
• The Professor and the Savant
• The Universal Thinker and The Public Figure
• The Committed Man
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index