National Affairs: No Martinique Yet

Vichyfrance got an unexpected reprieve last week — just when Washington was sure that U.S. Marines were about to take over Martinique.

Perhaps the President changed signals after his conference with Churchill. Perhaps something persuaded the State Department that Marshal Pétain’s radio plea for closer Franco-Nazi cooperation (TIME, Aug. 25) might be just another effort to appease Hitler with promises instead of warships and bases. There was a bigger, simpler reason: the French seemed to be turning ever more violently against Darlan’s Nazi-philes. Such a time was no time for the U.S. to seize a French island.

Balding, brooding little Gaston Henry-Haye, Vichyfrench Ambassador to Washington, dropped in at the State Department last week—ostensibly to register a complaint with Secretary Cordell Hull about the way the free press of the U.S. treats his country’s leaders; actually to stress again that Pétain’s collaboration was not quite material cooperation.

He took with him a portfolio of cartoons making fun of Pétain and Darlan as Nazi satellites (see cut). It was a shame, said Henry-Haye, “that a man with the Marshal’s record should be subjected to this ridicule.” Vichy’s Ambassador does not send such cartoons home to France. He knows that most Frenchmen look on the U.S. as the savior of democracy, says he is afraid it would break their spirit if they learned how the U.S. feels about Vichy.

Raw Deal? In the last few months, as Marshal Pétain has edged steadily closer to the Axis, Gaston Henry-Haye has taken the place once occupied by Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky among the diplomatic outcasts of Washington. Oumansky, though diplomatically shunned for two years, was nevertheless personally popular, bore up well. Henry-Haye, natu rally affable, is desolately lonely—next to Germany’s handsome Chargé d’Affaires, Dr. Hans Thomsen, is probably the loneliest man in boom-packed Washington.

Like his Chief of State, Henry-Haye reiterates that France has been given a raw deal by Britain and the U.S., that France was deserted by her Allies, stripped of all but the last shreds of her independence after a crushing defeat. Real tears slide down the little Ambassador’s cheeks when he speaks of Marshal Pétain.

Henry-Haye condemns the Free French who follow General Charles de Gaulle as a band of deserters and adventurers; but most of all, like Marshal Pétain, he believes France was betrayed by the British. Against George VI and on behalf of France he quotes passionately the charges in the U.S. Declaration of Independence hurled against George III: “He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. . . . He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us. . . .”

Unkindest Cut. At the State Department last week Judge Hull reportedly gave Vichy’s man a stern lecture, warned him that France must send no aid to Germany if she wants sympathy from the U.S. Specifically, Vichy was told not to let the Nazis move into Dakar. But if the U.S. decides it must take over Martinique, the French will be expected to surrender the island without resistance. (If they should resist, the U.S. will probably just ring the island with cruisers, wait for the French to surrender, without wasting either American or Vichyfrench lives in an attack.)

As Henry-Haye saw it, this meant the French were to take no orders from their German conqueror. But from the U.S., which had abused the French from the day of their defeat, they were asked to obey orders with blind faith. To the Vichyman it made no sense.