tude of left wing socialism. By 1924 a pacifist in keeping with his atti-"During the last war Laval was
he had secured a post in the left "coalition government of Briand and Caillaux as Minister of Public Works, but what was more important—to him—he had been introduced into the charmed tirely of high finance and was soon able to forsake the thread-"bate practice of a socialist barrister for the lucrative profession of a corporation lawyer, "In a dozen years Laval had made fortune and was able to marry his daughter to Count Rene de Cham:
had ^M the Chateau at lon, the where he was "arm several other country estates, and u racing stable. The socialist always to the Right. to emerge as the Mor. Leon never of France, "The damage was done and it was mot repaired. A man who has been described as.'without doctrine, without moral scruples and with no sense of the given historic situation' hed twisted the destiny of France.
"Laval's during the everts leading up to the outbreak of war and until the summer of 1940 were subterranean, Plenty of honest Frenchmen hoped and wished for some sort of compromise which would save peace right up to the end; but when war came they threw their weight into the struggle.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.