Word: laval
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French Coolidge. Twelve months ago Pierre Laval was as obscure?even in France?as Governor Calvin Coolidge before the Boston police strike...
...that he always wears a white wash tie (cheapest and unfading) nor cared to figure out that his name spells itself backward as well as forward. Addicted to scowling, didactic (he once taught school), possessed of a mellow but unexciting voice, identified with no conspicuous cause or movement, Senator Laval was also too young to be noticeable in France in January 1931. He was only 47 and France likes its Premiers to be over 60. The extreme youth of Pierre Laval was made glaring by the fact that France had just dispensed with a Premier whom many considered "much...
Aubervilliers was the irresolute young statesman's salvation. He was and he remains today Mayor of Aubervilliers. Unshakeably rooted in this Paris suburb he cultivated the friends he had made as a Deputy, notably that bald, enigmatic millionaire Joseph Caillaux, onetime Premier. In 1924 Mayor Laval again sought and won election as a Deputy, not as a Socialist this time but as a moderate Republican...
...year later the Auvergnat, diligent in his attendance upon both M. Caillaux and M. Briand, was rewarded by the minor portfolio of Public Works in a Painleve Cabinet which starred Foreign Minister Briand and Finance Minister Caillaux. When Patron Briand shortly came in as Premier he took Protege Laval under his wing, gave him a course in Chamber intrigue as secretary general of the Prime Minister's office, graduated him prematurely in 1926 as Minister of Justice...
Unfortunately Premier Briand had no head for finance. The collapse of the franc drove him back to his favorite post of Foreign Minister. In came great Premier Raymond Poincaré to save the franc, and incidentally to blight the careers of several Briand satellites. Ousted Pierre Laval contrived to get himself elected a Senator from the Department of the Seine (which he has since represented). He dropped back for several years into obscurity as a quiet Independent. Still close to Old Brer Briand, he also made himself close to Young André Tardieu...