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Jeanne d'Arc, I, Axis, 10. These amenities concluded, Admiral Muselier ordered part of his "fleet" to the even more sparsely populated Miquelon Islands, announced a plebiscite for the following day —Christmas. Islanders poured into the village, many in long wooden sledges drawn by black Newfoundland dogs. They celebrated the mass of the Nativity in hushed excitement, cheered parading sailors, but voted quietly and secretly on plebiscite ballots with only two lines:
"Ralliement á la France Libre
Collaboration avec les Puissances de I'Axe."
One man plaintively wrote on his ballot: "I want the France of Jeanne d'Arc." Only ten men voted for collaboration with the Axis, 650 for Free France. The vote was taken by some as an indication of how the Motherland would vote, if it could. Free French in London used the vote to fortify their claims that Muselier acted only to allow a democratic expression of opinion, noted that there was only one De Gaulle electioneering poster.
Dash of Garlic. Though delighting all Allied nations by its Gallic dash, Muselier's abrupt action nevertheless dropped St. Pierre & Miquelon, like overripe garlic cloves, smack into a delicately flavored international potage being cooked up in Washington.
With only 93 square miles of rock and its population of 4,321 gripped by poverty, the islands themselves are not important. They never were except as a great codfishing center in the 1880s and as a lush rumrunners' rendezvous in Prohibition days. But lying close to convoy lines from Halifax to Britain and with an uncensored wireless station able to send weather reports and other information straight to Europe, they have a nuisance value, may possibly have been an espionage center.
Aware of this, Washington was negotiating a wireless-observer agreement, but was acting as warily as it had in establishing the recent status quo agreement with Martinique. Besides having to worry about the Monroe Doctrine and swallow its embarrassment while Allied leaders were mapping out integrated grand strategy, Washington had a more pressing reason to be anxious. At the last tally the French Navy, not counting ships being built, consisted of four battleships, 14 aircraft carriers, 53 destroyers and 59 submarines which, so far as is known, have not yet been turned over to Germany. With the U.S. Pacific Fleet damaged, this was no time to risk giving Pétain an excuse to go completely over to Hitler's camp. Accordingly Washington tartly described the coup as "arbitrary," tacitly approved when Vichy Ambassador Henry-Haye announced he had "no doubt that the French [Vichy] sovereignty would be reestablished and maintained."
But Muselier, only male member of his family to escape death in World War I, is no appeaser, no matter what the pawn. At week's end from St. Pierre he decreed that no warship would be allowed near the islands "except under special permission previously asked for and granted," similarly forbade air travel overhead, threatened to blackout all lighthouses, organized a home guard, in effect told Washington as well as Vichy to go to hell.