Adolphe Marie Messimy was a French politician and general. He served as Minister of War in 1911–12 and then again for a few months during the outbreak of and first three weeks of the First World War. Having begun his career as an army officer, he returned to the Army and successfully commanded a brigade at the Battle of the Somme, and later a division. Defeated for re-election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919, he served as an influential senator from 1923 until his death in 1935.

Le Rappel was a French daily newspaper founded in 1869 by Victor Hugo's sons Charles and François-Victor and three others. It was published from the end of the French Second Empire until 1933. At the start of the Third Republic, it embodied a radical-republican tendency and as such was highly contested by the French government.