Anatole de Monzie was a French administrator, encyclopaedist, political figure and scholar. His father was a tax collector in Bazas, Gironde where Anatole – a name he disliked from an early age – was born in 1876. A nurse mishap resulted in an accident where the infant Anatole lost the proper use of his leg and he remained crippled for the rest of his life. He never married but had several relationships. A brilliant mind, he studied in Agen before attending the Collège Stanislas, a famous Roman Catholic school in Paris, where he became friend with writer to be Henry de Jouvenel and Roman Catholic activist Marc Sangnier.

Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1913 to 1920, and three times as Prime Minister of France.