Word: dormoy
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Even among the exuberant political beards of France, the beard of Socialist René Marx Dormoy was something special. Its grizzled fullness was a godsend to cartoonists in the days of the Popular Front, when Dormoy as Minister of the Interior was making things hot for the Croix de Feu and the Cagoulards (Hooded Ones), a reactionary Gallic Ku Klux Klan...
...Socialist father, Marx Dormoy remained as uncompromising as his namesake, made lasting enemies among Communists and pro-Nazis. He denounced Pétain in the Chamber of Deputies after the fall of France, agitated for a return of democracy. Interned last autumn, the 52-year-old ex-minister was released this spring to live under police surveillance at Montélimar in the Rhone Valley...
...night last week an explosion rattled the windows of the inn where Dormoy lived. Behind the broken door of his bedroom, Dormoy lay dying on the floor, his head a bloody mess. After he died, the police who were supposed to guard him found fragments of a clockwork bomb under his bed. His enemies had got revenge...
...days later election of one-third of the French Senate quietly took place with such minor gains and losses of the various parties that neutral observers figured the uncertain French parliamentary balance had simply been maintained. Outstanding was the personal triumph of Socialist Marx Dormoy, a protégé of Léon ("New Deal") Blum, who won his Senate seat in a smashing victory this week over Rightist Marcel Regnier, a protégé of Pierre ("Hoare-Laval Deal") Laval...
Laugh it off? Although Marx Dormoy had used a most discreet tone, his stated revelations were just about the most alarming which an official of the French Republic could make with any semblance of discretion. Significantly the French people last week gave no sign of having been alarmed. "The man in the street," correspondents soon cabled, "seems inclined to laugh the whole thing...