Métin becomes under-secretary for the blockade

On 17 August 1917 Albert Métin, until then Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Finance, became Under-Secretary of State for the Blockade in the government of Alexandre Ribot. He replaced Denys Cochin, who since 1916 had directed French efforts to cut Germany and its allies off from supplies from abroad. The office was subordinate to the prime minister, who was at the same time foreign minister. The date of 17 August is given by the British chronology of the war and by French lists of members of the government.

Cochin’s departure

Cochin, one of the leaders of the Catholic right in the Chamber of Deputies, was the symbol in the government of the “Sacred Union”, the wartime truce between all parties. According to his biography in the database of deputies of the French National Assembly, he left office on 2 August 1917 after disputes with Ribot over religious matters. He declared that he no longer had any reason to remain in a government in which he was supposed to represent the “Sacred Union”, because in his view it had ceased to exist. The American historian of the French blockade Marjorie Farrar places the emphasis elsewhere: Cochin had resigned as early as 27 July, largely discouraged by the difficulty of tightening the blockade, and the government accepted his resignation on 10 August. The sources thus differ as to the dates and reasons, but all agree that Cochin left at the beginning of August.

The new under-secretary

Métin was 46. Born in 1871 in Besançon, he was a historian and geographer, a graduate of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He spent a year and a half travelling round the world, visiting among other places Australia and New Zealand, and wrote books about them. He lectured at schools training colonial officials and merchants. From 1909 he was deputy for the Doubs department for the Radical Party. He was twice minister of labour, in 1913–1914 and 1915–1916. In August 1914, as a second lieutenant, he went to the front with a territorial infantry regiment and served in it until the autumn of 1915, when he joined the government of Aristide Briand. In December 1916 he became Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Finance.

The change had political significance. The place of a Catholic who for two years had been the government’s face of concord with the right was taken by a Radical, a representative of a party long hostile to the Church. This happened at a time when Ribot’s cabinet was becoming increasingly shaky: at the end of August the interior minister, Louis Malvy, accused of leniency towards pacifists, resigned.

Métin directed the blockade for only three months, including in the government of Paul Painlevé, which replaced Ribot’s cabinet in September. In November 1917 Georges Clemenceau created a separate Ministry of Blockade headed by Charles Jonnart. In 1918 Métin led a French mission to Australia. He died suddenly in August 1918 in San Francisco, from overwork according to the press.