All Gaul in Three Parts --

When Pierre Laval took the reins of Vichyfrance, many U.S. citizens thought that U.S.-Vichy relations were all over but the shooting. Not so the State Department. U.S. diplomats thought up a new device to put Laval on the spot. One morning last week Rear Admiral John H. Hoover and State Department's Samuel Reber landed at Vichy's Caribbean island of Martinique, went straight to the offices of bearded Admiral Georges Robert, High Commissioner of Vichy's possessions in the area (Martinique, sister island Guadeloupe and French Guiana).

The Americans were there to get guarantees against use by the Axis of any French possessions in the Caribbean. Purpose: to lock up the French warships in the area--the aircraft carrier Bearn and the cruiser Emile Berlin at Martinique, the cruiser Jeanne D'Arc at Guadeloupe--and some 100-odd weather-damaged fighter planes.

The U.S. already had such an agreement with Admiral Robert--but it was pre-Laval. Now the U.S. asked Robert to sign on the dotted line all over again. It looked simple--behind Admiral Hoover and Sam Reber stood the massed strength of five nearby U.S. naval bases, strung between Trinidad and Puerto Rico. In Washington this week French Ambassador Gaston Henry-Haye said his Government (i.e., Laval) had not told him to protest.

If Admiral Robert agrees and signs, all New World Frenchmen become a brand-new third kind of Frenchmen. Completely isolated from Europe, they will not be Vichyfrench, nor will they be Free French. This means a division of the French Empire into three main parts, not two. Just as unhappy as Laval was General de Gaulle, who was left out in the cold.

One of the shrewdest aspects of the maneuver was its propagandistic effect. Once again, in plainest terms, the U.S. had informed the people of France that Pierre Laval could not be trusted; that he was an Axis tool; that Americans would help Frenchmen anywhere under any circumstances except when they willingly give outright aid to Hitler.

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