After Three Years

On Bastille Day the little bastille in the Caribbean fell. All next day and into the night the Martiniquais, white & black, celebrated. They skipped and danced along the moonlit, mountain-girt water front of Fort-de-France. In shrill Martinique accents they sang the Marseillaise, cheered the new High Commissioner sent by the French Committee of Liberation, Henri-Etienne Hoppenot, and cursed the departing ruler, Vichyite Admiral Georges Robert. Offshore U.S. freighters, the first in eight months, waited to unload food for the hungry islanders, fuel for autos running on 8% gasoline, 92% rum.

A revolt of Martinique's tiny army garrison, capping the U.S. blockade, forced Admiral Robert to capitulate, swung the island into the United Nations camp. For three stubborn years goateed Georges Robert had ruled as a sybaritic despot. He had screamed at his underlings, plucked roses in his garden, aired his Anglophobia, played the island's strategic position, idle warships and hoarded gold against U.S. pressure. Now he refused utterly to deal with the Committee of Liberation. Said Henri Hoppenot: the Admiral was in a "tragic frame of mind . . . suffering from a Messianic complex and retaining a fanatic loyalty to Petain." From Martinique Georges Robert went into exile in U.S. Puerto Rico, under the protection of the U.S. Navy.

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