Word: pascaud
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Until a few weeks ago the 11,000 citizens of the sober little town of Saint-Junien in central France got along all right with their Communist mayor. Then M. le Maire Martial Pascaud decided to make a gesture of obeisance to his masters in the Kremlin. Tottering old Communist Leader Marcel Cachin paid a visit to Saint-Junien. To mark the occasion, Mayor Pascaud marched a party of 100 local Communists down Saint-Junien's main street, the Boulevard Leon Gambetta, to hang new signs on each corner rechristening the street Boulevard Joseph Staline. When the street...
Next day in Paris the Interior Ministry instructed Saint-Junien's postmaster to deliver no mail addressed to the Boulevard Staline. Mayor Pascaud countered by adding the old Boulevard Gambetta signs to the new Boulevard Staline signs, thus giving the street two names. Then, just before the start of the first game of the rugby season, six members of the local team went on strike, refusing to play ball in the stadium. "We didn't come here to play politics," explained Center Forward Jean Colombier. "Le sport est mort a Saint-Junien," sobbed a heartbroken referee...
That night 60 members of the local sports club assembled in a café to protest the new name on Saint-Junien's stadium and sent a deputation out to pull down the wooden sign. The following day Mayor Pascaud ordered a new sign put up. During the night that one too was pulled down. For five days and nights this maneuver was repeated. Last week the Communist mayor of Saint-Junien issued an order. Henceforth, he said, a municipal employee would hang a sign reading "Stade Maurice Thorez" on the stadium each morning and take it down each...
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