"Send for Colonel de la Roque," ordered Premier Gaston Doumergue last week as his Cabinet seemed about to fall. The Colonel is France's No. 1 Fascist, grim-jawed leader of the Cross of Fire league of some 200,000 war veterans. Last winter they were in the vanguard of the riots against "rotten Parliamentarianism" in the Place de la Concorde when 28 Frenchmen were shot down (TIME, Feb. 19). Last week Paris tingled with electric rumors that the "Cross of Fire" was ready to rise and attempt a coup d'état, should Premier Doumergue be overthrown.
Marshal...
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