Word: background
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President Albert Lebrun quietly slipped into the background and 84-year-old Marshal Pétain in a decree beginning "We, Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France," designated himself as Chief of State, 57-year-old Pierre Laval as his successor. In his new twelve-man Cabinet, key posts went to the men who had surrounded him since France sued for peace: Ministry of Defense to General Maxime Weygand, Ministry of Interior to Neo-Socialist Adrien Marquet, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Businessman Paul Baudouin...
Lean, mild-mannered, 59-year-old August Henkel, backed by the United American Artists, CIO affiliate, threatened to sue Colonel Somervell for defamation of character. The press looked up Artist Henkel's background, found that in 1917 he had been convicted of burning the U.S. flag (in a peace demonstration, in which the flags of ten nations were burned together, symbolizing the unity of man) ; in 1934, of distributing Communist propaganda. Last month he had refused to sign an affidavit disavowing Communist or Nazi ties, lost his WPA job in consequence...
...Eisenstein persisted in the belief that Critic Wilson was right. Their laments made the movie Eisenstein had originally projected as Viva Mexico the most celebrated incomplete work of art since Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. The news that it was to be cut up into travelogs and Latin American background shots was widely condemned as a typical Hollywood desecration...
...maintain the only armies in the world of 1940 whose ranks are filled by volunteers. But last week conscription loomed as an imminent reality for the U. S. Never yet has the U. S. had conscription in peacetime, only twice in time of war.* Yet, bulking big in the background for millions of John Does and Richard Roes, peacetime conscription last week cast its unfamiliar shadow over an active week on the U. S. defense front. It was the first big, tough, concrete reality to emerge on the path down which U. S. public opinion has plunged...
Explanations even good explanations are easy for Gertrude Stein who never explains everything at once, so it is that she explains why everybody went to Paris about 1900. They needed the background of tradition she says of profound conviction that men and women and children do not change, that science is interesting but does not change anything, that democracy is real but that governments unless they tax you too much or get you defeated by the enemy are of no importance, that she says is the background that everybody needed...