Handwritten draft of a letter in French by Charles de Gaulle, unsigned but incorporating his name within the text, two pages both sides, 8.5 x 10.75, no date but circa 1943. Letter to "Monsieur le President," President Franklin D. Roosevelt, about the war situation and their misunderstanding. In part (translated): "Mr. President, it is from warlord to warlord that I address you on this day where the staging triumphed the well-founded human and political realities to give way to the theatralism of which the officer that I am totally stranger. I know from your various writings and remarks, that they were held in public or in private, that your faith indisputably brings you to the side of General Giraud…But this respect displayed, must in no case come, by Interference, sow trouble, and beyond, discord in this formidable war machine that is France Libre. Neither you nor I are fooled by either one's intentions. The Committee needs a chief, and not a myriad of sous-chefs, waiting for their orders for a telegram from the end of the seas. It is not a question, as I read under the infected pen of some Anglo-Saxon journalists, of the dangerous desire of General de Gaulle to cling, by usurping it, to a power that no man can. He has legitimately confided what men could have granted him since the enemy and those who betrayed the use of the Fatherland have deprived him of the right to decide for himself which figure he should follow. But what other man, from another country, from another continent, from another culture, could himself make the choice of one to the detriment of another, denying the historical reality to which they belong, rejecting the effort of the one who bore the honor of France in the first hours of his misfortune.
I have been, and am, this man that one seeks to crush. I was recognized and recognized by those who followed me in answering the call that was mine while France and her destiny seemed forever broken and whose history will tell, without waiting for the last witnesses to Silence forever, what will have been its significance in the conflict that the world is going through and from which it will perhaps never recover if we, allies of all times, are unable to see beyond the defeatist discourses and abject lies that from Berlin to London the pernicious do not fail to keep you, believing to serve France by freeing her from De Gaulle before even freeing her from the enemy. Our visions will probably one day oppose the new equilibrium of the world when peace will thrill our peoples in the joy and joy of Victory; they will probably also oppose the means with which France, free and sovereign, will hear her defense, far from the mechanical alliances that have already caused so much desolation on her soil while Washington was ignorant of bombs and ruin. But today, it is to war and to it alone that we must think, because without the war, no victory. Businessmen on all sides, the factious in the pay of the highest bidder will maintain the opposite, holding as only speech that there will be no victory with De Gaulle. General de Gaulle, meanwhile, does not care rumors and creases that slip between two morocco so much to dirty his name, his image that his work and that of his companions. General de Gaulle, he has only one goal, to defeat the enemy wherever he is and under any uniform whatsoever. With the help of his dear companions, present and future, he will be at your side to lead the fight against the enemies of peace and free peoples, without anyone being able to deprive him of this longing to serve the greatness and honor lost from his country." In fine condition.
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