Office of the Historian

740.0011 E.W. 1939/1–2842

Draft Communiqué by Prime Minister Churchill1

[Washington, January 14, 1942.]2

Draft Communiqué

1.
The islands are French and will remain French.
2.
The present Administrator shall be withdrawn; the Administration of the islands shall be exercised by the Consultative Council.
3.
The above-mentioned Council will agree to the appointment of Canadian and United States officials to assist them in the operation of the wireless stations on the islands in the common interests of the Allies.
4.
The Free French National Committee have informed His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom that they never intended that ships of the Free French Naval forces should remain in the islands, and that these ships will shortly resume their normal duties of attacking the enemy wherever they may find him.
5.
The Canadian and American Government agree and undertake to continue economic assistance to the inhabitants of the islands, and the respective Consuls of those countries will confer with the local authorities as to the nature of the assistance to be given. Arrangements are being made both to continue the supplies from the United States and Canada on which the islands are dependent, and to provide [Page 404] the seasonal supply of fish to the French inhabitants of Martinique.3

  1. Before departing from Washington on January 14, the Prime Minister gave the President this draft communiqué, and then on January 23 he sent a personal message informing him that “after a severe conversation” on the previous day de Gaulle had “agreed to the communiqué which I left with you being published by United States, British and Canadian Governments without any acceptance by us of his proposed secret conditions.” For this message, see Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. ii, pp. 667–668.

    The source text is the Department of State file copy of an enclosure to a memorandum of January 28 from Hull to Roosevelt pointing out differences between (a) the “formula which you showed Mr. Churchill as offering the possibility of acceptance all around and which I understood he had agreed to discuss with General de Gaulle” (i.e., the six numbered conditions stated in Churchill’s telegram of January 12 to Eden, ante, p. 399), and (b) “the Churchill formula which he refers to as the ‘draft communiqué left with you prior to his departure, and which apparently was the basis for his discussions in London” (i.e., the source text).

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  2. The source text, which is on stationery of the British Embassy at Washington, bears the penciled date “January 14, 1942” (presumably the date of the original proposal left by Churchill with Roosevelt) and the typewritten date “January 27th, 1942” (presumably the date of retyping at the Embassy).↩
  3. For subsequent developments in the problem of St. Pierre and Miquelon, see Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. ii, pp. 668 ff.↩