851.01/722⅓
Memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Atherton) to the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
Mr. Welles: If this letter78 had been written on the outset of the de Gaulle movement it would have been a great asset in our relations with them but it is two years too late and takes some ten pages of introduction to get down into the very little meat there is in it.
Unhappily General de Gaulle seems to have no conception of the reasons for our relations with Vichy or that the United Nations have acquiesced in and benefited from them or that our information from France thereby is possibly as good as his and we have been able to maintain our contacts with the French people both in unoccupied France and North Africa. This blindness of General de Gaulle is more tragic in view of the fact of our ever-increasing collaboration with him and that we have fully explained to his representatives here and even later obtained the agreement of many of them that our policy was based on the best hopes for preserving the French Empire.
France must be saved not only by the Frenchmen outside of France but by the Frenchmen within France as well. Britain’s experiences are proving this daily, but with the resignation of the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the French National Committee in London, M. Dejean, and the succession to this office of M. Pleven, I fear General de Gaulle will blindly attempt to force himself and his Committee on the French people, by foreign arms, which if acquiesced in could only lead to a postponement of the final reorganization of France.
- Supra.↩