Talk:Cornelius Herz

Article requires heavy pruning and rewriting

The entire article, but especially the section under the heading "Panama scandal" requires rewriting to eliminate weasel-words and other unencyclopedic language, as well as to provide proper sources. In my nearly 20 years as an editor on WP, I have never seen such an egregious example of writing, unfit for an encyclopedia. What follows is the section in question with some of the questionable parts bolded to give examples of language that is unacceptable (but the entire article needs much the same help):

"Dr. Herz was in England, where they had always passed the winter, with his family in 1892, when the Panama scandals broke upon France. Dr. Herz was appealed to by members of the Government then in power to return to France, which he did. Soon after, Baron Jacques de Reinach committed suicide and Dr. Herz returned to the Tankerville Hotel in Bournemouth. Some believe that a perfectly innocent man, Dr. Herz, was made a scapegoat for certain foreign intrigues which had grown very powerful. It was common knowledge in Paris that Baron Reinach and Dr. Herz had been associated together during a dozen years and more in vast commercial undertakings, involving financial transactions amounting to many millions. The pursuit of Dr. Herz was aided by the greed of some persons in the camp of the Reinachs, who sought to acquire fortune through the downfall of a man whom they now were only too willing to consider an adversary, by taking advantage of the tragic circumstances attending the Baron’s death, and of the confusion in which he had left his affairs. It was also believed that Dr. Herz held evidence against prominent politicians and financiers.

Georges Clemenceau's political judgement was called into question by his flirtation with the demagogic General Boulanger and by his friendship with the "crooked financier", Cornelius Herz, who was heavily implicated in the Panama Scandal. Clemenceau blamed Herz for having lost his seat in the 1893 parliamentary elections; he looked for a time to be finished politically.

The charge thus artificially fixed upon by the French Government was alleged extortion from the late Baron Reinach – a preposterous charge that was never adduced by the Baron himself in his lifetime, and had no visible foundation in law or in fact. But first, in order to evade the Legion of Honour difficulty, which prohibited an ordinary magistrate from acting, the French Government were compelled to resort to having Dr. Herz struck off the rolls of the Legion of Honour, which they did, contrary to the statutes of the Order of the Legion, without a prior hearing. In order to stop his counsel from producing his proofs of Baron de Reinach’s debt to Dr. Herz (consisting of documents on stamped paper duly dated and signed by the Baron, and held by the Rothschilds in their bank) the presiding Judge took advantage of the technicality that the documents were insufficiently stamped, a pure oversight doubtless on the part of men of business, and required that a fine amounting to about L 50,000 sterling should be paid before their introduction as evidence be admitted. This was prohibitory, and absolute conclusive evidence of a debt was, although examined by the Judges and tacitly admitted to be true, suppressed by the Court. Shortly afterwards another occasion presented itself to impoverish Dr. Herz by compelling his wife to transfer to him property which had always stood in her name. The pretext for this course seems to have been that the Judges of the Court alleged that the property was purchased with Dr. Herz's money, and therefore should have been in his name. Various properties of Dr. and Mrs. Herz in Paris and Aix-lesBains were practically confiscated and torn from him. His Paris property, which had been constantly increasing in importance, was sold for several million francs less than its true value. It is also a fact that during the very time the French were persecuting Dr. Herz, by processes in the Civil and Criminal Courts in Paris, by utilizing the Extradition Treaty with England, and by public vilification through the Parisian Press – who accused him of being a traitor, a spy in the pay of England, an incendiary, a murderer, and guilty of a whole host of minor crimes – prominent members of the various Governmental and Opposition groups were constantly giving assurances to Madame Herz, and friends of the Doctor, as well as to his legal representatives, that all would soon be "set right." After keeping Dr. Herz under wrongful arrest for three and a half years, the French Government withdrew their charges and said they had made a mistake. The shocking treatment for so many years inflicted upon Dr. Herz was pronounced an absolute prosecution. In 1906, eight years after his death, he was exonerated completely." Bricology (talk) 22:15, 15 August 2021 (UTC)