Francis de Pressensé

Francis de Pressensé (1853 - 1914) was a journalist, a Pacifiste and man Politique French.

Wire of protesting Pasteur, he was initially diplomat, then journalist. He held a long time the heading of foreign policy with the Temps of Adrien Hébrard, then, during the Affaire Dreyfus, he passed to the daily newspaper supporter of Dreyfus the Dawn . He then becomes vice-president of the any news Ligue of the Human rights, chaired by Ludovic Trarieux, then succeeds to him the presidency of 1903 to 1914. Burning dreyfusist, it takes part in many meetings, Paris and in province, often accompanied by Octave Mirbeau and Pierre Quillard and short the risk to be attacked by the bands anti-semites and nationalists, in particular with Toulouse on December 22nd, 1898.

Liberal in the beginning, it approached the Socialists little by little: he is elected appointed of the Rhone in May 1902 and re-elected in 1906; and, in 1905, it taken part in the unification of the Socialists and the foundation of Unified Socialist party. It was also one of the initiators, with his friend Jaurès, of the separation of the Church and the State. Pacifist and European before the letter, it proposed the establishment of the United States d' Europe in order to preserve peace in Europe, in the years preceding the war by 1914.

This engagement for the human rights and peace naturally was worth the hostility of the extreme nationalist right to him and clerical. Thus Henri Vaugeois, founder of the French Action, in a article published in the first number of the review (semi-monthly) French Action , the 1899, written in this connection: “ We want to quote one example, but typical: that of Francis de Pressensé. Seldom one could see as well as in this extreme case, the genesis of this fanaticism and this frenzy which have continuously the excessively pious people of the French revolution. They are very raised, and consequently become unable by it to suspect that one can have a sensitivity, a human justice, if one escapes their nun intoxication ”.

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