COMMUNIST THREATS

Evening Star, Issue 25618, 19 October 1945, Page 6

COMMUNIST THREATS

DALADIER FLEES FOR LIFE ANGRY RECEPTION OF ELECTION SPEECH LONDON, October 18. M. Edouard Daladier fled for his life when a mob of armed .Communists chased him at Vaison la ißomaine, near Avignon. Daladier had just made an election speech in an old Roman theatre. He had been warned that he might be assassinated, so he installed loud speakers in the theatre ’and gave his address through a microphone from an armchair in a friend’s, house nearby. When his voice rang out in the theatre angered Communists ripped down the loud speakers and traced the cable to Daladier’s hiding place. He escaped through a back door as the ..Communists burst in at the front struck down

the householder, and fired shot after shot at Daladier.

Later gangs of Communists wearing red scarves and armed with revolvers and hand grenades barricaded the roads leading from the town. They stopped all cars with cries of “ Where is he? We want his blood.” During a stormy election campaign in Southern France Daladier met much hostility from Communists, many of whom he sent to concentration camps at the beginning of the war. Daladier received a telegram from the Mayor of Cavaillen saying: “Do not come here; they are ready for you.” The local committee of Daladier’s Radical Socialist Party has instructed its candidates not to hold further meetings in the district for safety reasons.