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Alfred Picard - Minister of the Marine 1908-1909

Born in Strasbourg in 1844, Alfred Picard entered to the Polytechnic school, in 1862, then at the School of the Highways Departments. The war of 1870 found him an engineer of the channel of the collieries of the Saar and the channel of the saltworks of Dieuze; he was initially attached to work of defense of Metz, then he went to take service in the army of the Loire. In 1872, he was called with the functions of the control of the exploitation of the Railroads of the East and the channel of the Marne in the Rhine, which he exerted until 1879, and during which he had to direct important work.

In 1880, he was named Directeur of the cabinet and the personnel of the public Ministry of Labor, then President of section to the Council of State in 1886. He was general reporter of the Exposition of 1889 and published in this occasion a report, a true scientific monument, which indicated him for the direction of the Exposition of 1900, of which he was the general Police chief. After the end of the latter, whose, success, though disputed, was however very real, Alfred Picard undertook the drafting of an extremely important report forming six enormous volumes and entitled assessment the one century, which is the result of a superhuman work, attesting a thorough knowledge of all the parts of science.

Alfred Picard chaired the Commission charged with studying the questions of organization of the network of the State, after the repurchase of the l'Ouest. Though he had never made policy and neither was appointed nor senator, his reputation of incomparable administrator made him called to the Ministry for the Navy, by Mr. Clemenceau. In 1902 Clemenceau became a senator and four years later, at the age of 61, was appointed minister of home affairs. Now a right-wing nationalist, Clemenceau ruthlessly suppressed popular strikes and demonstrations. Seven months later Clemenceau became France's prime minister. His period in office (1906-09) was marked by his hostility to socialists and trade unionists. Picard did not remain there long enough (October 21, 1908-July 29, 1909) to institute the reforms which were awaited from him.

As early as 1894 a Parliamentary Commission was appointed to make an inquiry into the condition of the Navy, and was followed by another Commission in 1904, but these investigations did not appear to have had any really practical results. The blowing up of the Jena called for a further Commission of Inquiry in 1907, when some very interesting evidence was taken, and from that moment dated the public agitations for reforms which culminated in the appointment of M. Alfred Picard [unrelated to Swiss balloonist August Picard] as Minister of the Marine.

The fact that in the course of two decades France had fallen from her position as second naval Power to the fourth or fifth place was sufficient to cause serious alarm, which was all the more justified in view of the fact that the country was spending enormous sums to keep the Navy in fighting trim. Obviously there was bad management and a criminal waste of public money. As a guarantee that the Navy funds were utilized in a proper manner, the accounts are audited annually by a financial Commission ; but as a matter of fact the reports of this Commission rarely erred on the side of severity.

All this was changed when M. Alfred Picard took the naval department in hand. The financial Commission picked the accounts to pieces with relentless logic. The prices paid for material were compared to show that enormous differences existed in the cost of shipbuilding material, stores, fuel, provisions and the like obtained from different firms on the same dates. The large sums paid for palms and cut flowers to adorn the office and apartments of the former Minister of the Marine were cited to show that an example of economy was not set by quarters where it might have been most expected.

The Navy, as a fighting combination, could hardly be said to exist. All that could be said was that there were the elements of a navy consisting of ships that only had one half of their guns, of arsenals entirely devoid of reserves of ammunition, and of ports that did not provide shelter for ships in time of war, and were not properly equipped for drydocking and repairing. As a first step in his program of reorganization M. Picard insisted that all these shortcomings should be made good. It would mean a further heavy sacrifice to the country, but it could not be avoided if the Navy were to be something more than a name.

The minimum that could be done was to complete the armament of warships and increase the reserves of explosives, improve the equipment of ports to allow of their sheltering, drydocking and repairing ships existing or under construction, and ensuring the prompt mobilization of the fleet ; to hasten the construction of ships on the stocks, as well as the carrying out of alterations to ships afloat, such as the partial suppression of heavy and conspicuous upper works and the installation of refrigerating machinery in the powder magazines, and to augment the quantity of material in stock for naval constructions. The existing fleet had to be put into as high a state of efficiency as possible before any further proposals could be entertained for spending money upon the building of new units.

The seriousness of the situation was emphasized not so much by what was revealed by M. Picard's report as by what it concealed. If the Navy had been allowed to deteriorate to such an alarming extent it was desirable to ascertain who were responsible for this state of things.

In order to put an end to the waste and delay due to superfluous clerical work M. Picard gave instructions that all books not strictly necessary to the proper working of the department were to be suppressed. This was not the least meritorious of his reforms. Until then the Navy had been strangled by red tape, and this simplifying of the clerical work will enable it to develop normally under the improved organization of the entire department. If red tapeism was responsible for much of the demoralization of the French marine, it was evident that the Commission of Inquiry had to look somewhere else for the shortcomings that were revealed during the visit to the Toulon arsenal.

The Government had undoubtedly done well to probe the source of the country's naval decline. A policy of concealment was not to be commended in a country like France, where the administrations were notoriously lacking in energy and initiative. Having revealed the shortcomings, painful though they may be to the patriotism of the French, the country knew what was to be done. M. Alfred Picard was aware that he had public opinion behind him.

In 1909 Clemenceau's old enemy, Delcasse, rose up suddenly and overthrew his Ministry on July 20th, 1909. A discussion over naval affairs sprang up almost over-night. There were scandals, investigations, controversies. In a verbal duel with Delcasse - in the early years of Clemenceau's activity his duels were frequently not verbal - the Premier, to quote a newspaper dispatch, "seemed, for the first time in his Parliamentary career, to lose his head. Certainly he lost his temper, declared that Delcasse had "humiliated France," and stalked out of the room. Delcassé replied with such effect that the Chamber, amid cheers from the Right and Extreme Left, voted against the government 212 to 176. M. Clemenceau, whose ministry had been the longest in the history of the Third Republic, resigned. Clémenceau was replaced by Aristide Briand, who chose VAdm. Auguste Emmanuel Hubert Gaston Boué de Lapeyrère as the new Minister of Marine.

On February 27, 1912, Alfred Picard was called to the vice-presidency of the Council of State, and it is in these functions that death surprised him, on 08 March 1913.

At Picard's funeral, speeches were made by Misters Appell, Vice-Président of the Academy of Science; Préaudeau, General inspector of the Highways Departments; Barthou, Minister for the Justice, which made of Alfred Picard the following portrait: "His capacity for work, his experiment, his competence, the precision of his extended marvelously memory, the clearness and the promptitude of his intelligence, his acute sense of the difficulties, of the objections and the solutions, clearness and the concision with which he directed the discussions or prepared the draftings held wonder. These qualities gave him, without counting, a kind of mysterious gift which escapes the analysis, an authority always growing.... "

Mr. Appell, by pronouncing the praise of the Academy of Science, of which he was member, said: "Alfred Picard was one of these privileged engineers who could rise above the speciality and, without giving up the occupation of engineer nor ceasing being inspired some, knew to apply the scientific processes that it returned to them familiar to problems, to functions of general order. Its life can be summarized as the application of the scientific methods to all the great questions which interest the nation: national defense, routes transportation, transport, industrial, commercial and administrative questions. In all its functions he worked with the general good of the country with the same penetrating method and continues, the same rise in character, the same horror of any advertisement."