Enfants de la Patrie . . .

The police of Tananarive on Vichy's Madagascar were at first puzzled, then alarmed. All over town Fighting French signs were appearing, scrawled by invisible hands at night. Day after day the police would erase DEATH TO THE TRAITORS OF VICHY, ANNET FOR THE GALLOWS and many another slogan. One morning they found that nearly all the red lights of the traffic signals had been decorated with the Cross of Lorraine. They tried to trace the origin of a stenciled angel with the caption ANGEL OVER MADAGASCAR. They collected by the thousands leaflets with the emblem and the added injunction: AUX ARMES, CITOYENS!

One day the townspeople awoke to see a huge Cross of Lorraine painted in kaolin* on the broad lawns on the Jardin d' Ambohijatovo on Poincare Square, where nearly the whole town could see it. Native gardeners were ordered to wash away the Cross with water; it hardened. They dug up the kaolined turf; the Cross remained boldly outlined in the red soil. They filled it in with new grass; for seven days it showed starkly until the grass grew green. Thereafter the new turf grew more green than the old, and the Cross still showed.

The enraged police finally nabbed four boys in the act of hauling down the flag of Vichy's Legion Franc,aise des Anciens Combattants. One escaped, but rejoined his comrades when he learned that they had been caught. The four were grilled for a week for the names of their supposedly adult leaders. But the children kept mum. In the end they were turned over to military authorities after a gendarme refused to handcuff them. ("I cannot do that to loyal Frenchmen.")

Five days before British troops arrived in Tananarive the children were freed. Last week their tale was told. Fifty of them between 15 and 17--ten were girls--had banded together under a 19-year-old leader to form their own unit of the Fighting French. They had certificates of membership and secret meeting places. Theirs were the slogans scrawled at night, the stenciled angel, the Cross outlined in green on Poincare Square. Of them their leader said: "They're good comrades--no one has ever given away a fellow member."

* White clay derived from the decomposition of aluminous minerals.

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