Pierre Comert

Pierre Comert (1880–1964) was a French journalist and diplomat. Director of the Information section of the League of Nations from 1919 to 1932, he was then the head of the Information and Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1933 to 1938. In August 1940, in London, he founded the FRANCE daily newspaper.

The Journalist

Born October 11, 1880 in Montpellier, son of a general of the Engineer Regiment, Pierre Comert was received in the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1900. After having left the ENS, he was nominated as an associate professor of German in the Bourges high school. The following year, he went around the world for one year, thanks to a scholarship financed by the philanthropist Albert Kahn. He resided, in particular, in the USA, in Japan and in China, and, during his travels, discovered himself a passion for political problems and international relationships. On the 18th of April, 1906, he was an accidental witness of the San Francisco earthquake; he related it in the French daily newspaper Le Temps, without realizing he was starting his journalist career.

After returning from his travels, he moved to Germany as a lecturer in the Göttingen University. After that he was employed by Le Temps as a correspondent in Vienna, at the time capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was deemed in 1911 a particular correspondent of that newspaper in Berlin. His telegrams described and analyzed the progress of the militaristic ambitions of the German government and the feverish, but also worried, ambiance that slowly gained Berlin. Comert only left the German capital on the 1st of August, 1914, two days before the declaration of war. In his last article as a correspondent of Le Temps, he related his return trip, particularly eventful.[1]

As the war was declared, affected by “excessive myopia” (9.5 diopters), he was appointed to the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then became in February 1916 a press officer for the French embassy in London.

The interwar period

In 1919, he actively participated to the reflexions preparing the creation of the League of Nations, in London, next to especially Jean Monnet and Sir Eric Drummond. He became one of the five directors of the League.

While the support of the public is, even more than the one of the governments, of utmost importance for the future of the new international organisation, Comert creates the Information Section of the League of Nations, in charge of managing the relationships with the press.[2] With his team, which will total up to 19 members in 1930, he established completely new relationships between the diplomats and the press, making public official documents even before they were sent to the general Assembly or to the Council of the League of Nations.[3]

Called the 'Cherished child of the League of Nations',[4] he had a real influence on the occurring events[5] until the end of 1932, which marked his leave, as demanded by the ultra-nationalist German government in place at the time (in exchange that the latter accepted to nominate the Frenchman Joseph Avenol to the position of General Secretary).

In January 1933, he was nominated in Paris as the chief of the new press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as a spokesperson.[6] A leftist democrat (even though he never joined a political party), he was notably a fervent defender of the German anti-Nazis refugees in France.[7]

His wild opposition to the Munich Agreement had him fired from this position by the then minister, Georges Bonnet. Nominated as head of the American Sub-Division of the Quai d’Orsay, with the rank of plenipotentiary minister, it’s as such that he was the witness of the disastrous events of 1940 and fled, along with Paul Reynaud’s government, to Tours then to Bordeaux.

The FRANCE daily newspaper

The first page of France of 7th June, 1944

After Pétain was appointed head of the country, Comert leaves Bordeaux to go to London on the 17th of June, on board of the Madura.

With a few colleagues and friends (for example, Charles and Georges Gombault, Marcel Hoden, Louis Lévy), he founded the FRANCE daily newspaper, of which he was to be the director until its last issue (after the Liberation, the newspaper kept being published under a weekly format until the month of June, 1948).[8]

Mainly aimed to the French people residing in Great-Britain, among which were 20,000 French soldiers and sailors, this daily newspaper sold about 35,000 copies every day, and knew an increasing success. Financed by the English government, with an independent tone, strongly supporting the war efforts of the France Libre without, however, joining the political creed of De Gaulle, knowing a lot of practical difficulties, FRANCE became a precious information and analysis tool about the progress of the war, and particularly on the ups and downs of the resistance against the Nazis in France.

In 1949, Pierre Comert entered the Foreign Service of Paris Match. He retired in 1960 and split his life between Sommières (in the French Gard), where he owned a house, and his flat in the Place des Pyramides in Paris, where he died on the 16th of March, 1964.

References

  1. ↑ Le Temps, 5th of August 1914, page 2, third column (French)
  2. ↑ Official photos of the Section and Comert
  3. ↑ Anique H. M. van Ginneken, Historical Dictionary of the League of Nations, Scarecrow Press, 2006, page105
  4. ↑ La Gazette de Lausanne 4th of January, 1933 (French)
  5. ↑ See in particular Mr Pierre Comert, a Pillar of the League, The Times, 17th of March, 1964
  6. ↑ Journal officiel of the 25th of March, 1933 (French)
  7. ↑ Of which are, in particular, Rudolf Breitscheid, Rudolf Hilferding, Theodor Wolff, Walter Mehring, see Le Monde, 27th of March, 1964
  8. ↑ See La presse de la France Libre (French)
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