Rare World War II-dated original French-language printed booklet containing a “Speech delivered by General de Gaulle during the reception offered at Grosvenor House in London, May 4, by the French National Committee in honor of the French recently arrived to join Fighting France,” eight pages, 6.25 x 9, no date [circa 1943], signed neatly on the last page in fountain pen, “C. de Gaulle.” The speech, in full (translated):
‘If we wanted to celebrate today our comrades more recently arrived from France it is first of all because it is their turn to receive the homage due to their courage and their resolution. But it is also because, in their person, we salute the most recent witnesses of the unshakeable union, established once and for all, between the French Combatants and the mass of French captives. If we needed to prove to ourselves that the path chosen by us for almost three years, and followed without any detour and without any failure, is indeed the one that the national instinct has recognized as the path of salvation, the presence of these good Frenchmen, who have come to us by overcoming the worst obstacles, would suffice to give us the comforting certainty of this. And when we hear them, they who come from all parts of the territory, they who belong to all conditions, all opinions, from which our people are diversified, tell us with the same voice and the same enthusiasm as everywhere, in all circles, the immense mass of the French, in their misery and in their fight, are morally united around Fighting France, we feel animated by a marvelous confidence and more resolved than ever to pursue our path, whatever the cost and whatever happens. An ancient legend depicted a hero who, exhausted with fatigue, recovered his strength intact as soon as he slept on the land of the Fatherland. Well, we feel very strong and very sure of ourselves, despite all the difficulties of the world, because the brave people here bring us the encouragement and orders of France.
I have said all the difficulties in the world. For a long time we have measured what is meant by that, even outside the enemy force. It is because, in this world war, as in all human tragedies, events are never simple. Some sort of diabolical genius perpetually manages to make them disappointing and complicated. Indeed, this frightening and passionate drama brings to life men, men with their courage and their greatness, but also with their weaknesses and their mediocrities. That is to say, the politics and strategy of war are nothing but a perpetual competition between good sense and error. It is only too explicable that the democracies, morally and materially ill-prepared for war, which entered it one by one, in dispersed order, have been so long and are still sometimes engaged in situations where reason seems to lose some of the infirmity of its leaders, then the indignity of the usurpers led successively to military disaster, then to an odious servitude. It would also be unfair and absurd to blame others for the disappointments suffered in common. But at the same time we have to see things clearly and do what is necessary, each in their own sphere, so that, in the major problems facing democracies, it is a strong and straightforward solution that wins, in the interest of all.
That is why I feel compelled today to bring up clearly before you the great affair of the unity of the French Empire, which is currently at the center of the politics and the morality of this war. I will speak about it here all the more frankly since this affair primarily interests the French and that our people have the right to know how those who are responsible before them act in this matter.
I will not return here to the origins of the current situation. Everyone is starting to know them. We know that Fighting France, which has not ceased for a single day to be faithful to the effort, to the honor and to the alliances, which has returned in the war a large part of the Empire, which lavishes on all the battlefields the courage of its soldiers, its sailors, its airmen, which serves as an inspiration and guide to the national resistance, which maintains close relations with all the United Nations and which even, I dare say, contributes to animating the spirit of war in the whole camp of freedom, was officially removed from the enterprise of the Allies in French North Africa.
I say: officially, because, in fact, combatant France was nevertheless present to lavish on the Allies, during their landing, the direct assistance of its friends, to haunt the minds and awaken the conscience of these French troops to whom a policy enslaved to the enemy ordered to fight at all costs against the Anglo-Saxons, while waiting for the Germans to have had time to come up, finally to supply, in Fezzan, in northern Libya, in Tunisia and on the seas, an appreciable and, I believe, quite glorious contribution to the battle of Africa against the Axis. However, despite this removal, which I do not hesitate to recognize could be justified at the outset for reasons of expediency, we immediately and publicly prescribed to all those, military and civilians, who in North Africa are in sympathy with us, to help the Allies, regardless of names or formulas. We were certain, in fact, that the national will would not fail to emerge little by little in Algiers, Casablanca, Dakar and, despite our haste to see the Empire reunited, we resigned ourselves to waiting. We know how events turned out. An attempt was made first to impose a French authority which remained both outside Vichy and outside of Fighting France. This attempt could not succeed. We can say that we had expected it. It always seemed to us that, in today's drama, great actions can only succeed when supported by a great mysticism. Now there are currently only two mystics among the French: the Cross of Lorraine for almost all, the old Marshal for a few.
After this beginning, it was thought necessary to adopt a temporary expedient which certainly procured an immediate practical result, but caused some noise and ended tragically. At the same time a hard battle was engaged in Tunisia, where the enemy had landed and where Brave French troops, shaking at the sight of the Germans the torpor in which Vichy had kept them for a long time, engaged spontaneously, almost unarmed, to cover the deployment of the powerful American and British forces. I pay here an ardent tribute to these valiant soldiers, as well as to their leaders, Generals Juin, Koetz, Barre, who knew, in a situation morally and materially as confused as possible, to listen only to their duty as commander in chief civilian and military, by virtue of an election by four high officials who nevertheless remained loyal to Pétain.
It was then that this astonishing state of things established itself in French North Africa, where authority, deprived of one or the other of the two imaginable bases: Vichy or Fighting France, found itself condemned to contradictory measures, where generally good orders and decrees appeared, but which some spell prevented from being applied, where the best democratic and republican declarations were posted under the portrait of the Marshal, where one prescribed to release men prisoners for the crime of hope, 'without, however, leaving prison, where they were condemned solemnly the racist laws, while making more rigorous the mode applied to the Jews, where one repudiated the Laws of Pétain, while the official newspapers continued to promulgate them, where the general mobilization brought in the depots of men to where there were no uniforms, no equipment, no weapons, where it was claimed that everything was subordinated to war and combat, while a part of the senior military personnel deliberated tirelessly on the point of knowing whether one should go to the meeting the enemy, for what purpose and under what conditions.
Faced with this situation, the French National Committee took, from the first day, and has constantly maintained since then, the clearest and clearest attitude. We want the unity of the Empire and we want it unequivocally, in the spirit which drives us and which drives all of France, that is to say for war, in independence, for the end of a regime built on disaster and for a renewed homeland. Unity is only conceivable and can only be effective if there is a strong central authority, accountable to the Nation in due course, with broad support, first among the citizens, and speaking in the name of France. If the French National Committee has been able to accomplish its task, in spite of the difficulties it causes. Our first concern was to make and multiply all possible contacts with North Africa, firmly convinced that it would be enough to be seen there and to be heard there for the prejudices that the conquels it applies to disappear. directly, then, in the French people themselves, in order to be able to impose themselves naturally and at the same time, it is because they meet these imperious conditions; it is also because he has never consented and will not consent to any of these compromises which would disqualify him in the eyes of the French Nation, to which he is accountable for the conditions particular to this part of the Empire and the propaganda relentless Vichy had introduced there among some of our fellow citizens. The day after the disappearance of the first High Commissioner, I proposed to General Giraud that I meet with him on French territory and between French people, to carry out an initial examination of the situation. But it was only at Anfa that we talked, in the atmosphere of a major international conference and reduced to an extraordinarily limited French audience. However, the French National Committee sent a mission to Algiers, led with so much experience and moderation by General Catroux, and we very willingly welcomed among us that of General Bouscat. But the French National Committee has made it known on many occasions that it is in Algiers, capital of the Empire, that the agreements and consultations necessary for a common central power should be made. For my part, I modestly confess that I feel incapable of taking decisions at random from a tete-a-tete that will seriously affect the fate of the Empire and the destiny of France. While we endeavored to make as numerous as possible the contacts of our personnel and of the part of the Empire administered by Fighting France, with French North Africa, we insisted that Algiers, Rabat, Dakar, the legislation and symbols of Vichy. We believe indeed that the best basis of unity is the practice of true and just laws. Furthermore, these laws themselves include the functioning of institutions of a democratic nature: General Councils, Municipal Councils, Free Trade Unions, elected Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture, and also the use of freedoms: individual freedom, freedom of press, freedom of assembly and association, by which can be manifested, even in time of war, the feeling of the people, out of which nothing is built but fictions or figurations. In fact, it was enough for some of the barriers set up by Vichy against the expression of the French will to be partly lowered for the momentum of North Africa towards unity and towards Fighting France to appear every day growing.
For it is a fact, infinitely moving and comforting, that in North Africa the national will is now emerging. Despite relentless oppression for two and a half years, the thick flood of lies and chimeras that Vichy had spread and continuous obstruction on the part of certain authorities, our Algeria, our Morocco, our Tunisia, our West Africa , are awakening little by little to the call of the Nation. The explicit wishes of the General Councils of Algiers, Oran and Constantine, the messages from the municipalities, the combat camaraderie in the troops, the declarations of multiple associations, the testimonies of the trade unions, the patriotic processions which take place everywhere with order and fervor, the enthusiastic welcome given to General Leclerc's troops by each of the Tunisian towns liberated from the enemy, a thousand other obvious signs of North African opinion no longer leave any doubt. Everything is ready for the unity of the Empire to be an accomplished fact tomorrow. It remains to consecrate it, to make it fruitful, by bringing to light in Algiers the firm, homogeneous, popular power, which alone can be in a position to direct its efforts, with which only foreign Nations can temporarily discuss the great common interests to themselves and to our country and which, alone, captive but attentive France is disposed to approve, while waiting for it to appoint its own government proper.
Because it is indeed France that it is about. Her Empire belongs to no one but herself. Because this Nation was betrayed and because it is crucified, would this be a reason to dispose of its territories, its soldiers, by opportunistic arrangements or combinations of convenience, while it is raised by the wave of sacred ardors and vengeful fury? No! We only have to listen to his choice and his wishes. There can be no discrepancy between the fight carried out outside the national soil and that delivered by its sons on the secret and multiple fields of inner resistance. The French War is a whole. It must be directed in the spirit and under the sign which has kept the nation in line and which events have so terribly justified. We are ready to go to Algiers immediately and without delay, provided we are given the physical possibility.
We see no reason for this to be delayed further. On the contrary, we see them so that an outcome may be hastened which should maximize the French war effort, facilitate that of the Allies and exalt the confidence of the world in the principles for which so many men are suffering and dying today. This is how the grand inter-allied enterprise of North Africa, which President Roosevelt and Mr. Winston Churchill, with so much audacity and method, decided on and implemented, will take on its profound meaning and its efficiency. It is thus that the alliances and friendships of the French Nation will find new and decisive nourishment. It is in this way that France will be able to straighten out her arms and her hopes even more, while awaiting the day when, her liberation accomplished, and the victory won, she will emerge, once more, from her pains and her ruins, to resume his work and his rank in the team of the great nations.’ In fine condition.
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