851.01/2197: Telegram
The Consul General at Algiers (Wiley) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 4—1:06 a.m.]
1034. From Murphy. My 1032, June 3, noon. Massigli was delegated by the newly established French Committee of National Liberation to inform me officially of its constitution this afternoon. He handed me the text of the official communiqué, a copy in translation of which follows as section 2 of this telegram. Massigli explained that instructions were being sent to the two missions in Washington to inform the American Government officially that the Committee had been formed. In my opinion the framework of the new Committee as established contains valuable elements of French unity and agreement on it represents a real achievement in the reconstruction of France.
(Section 2)
- 1.
- Generals de Gaulle and Giraud as Presidents, General Catroux, General Georges, MM. René Massigli, Jean Monnet and André Philip as members, constitute the French Committee for National Liberation. This Committee will later be completed by the addition of other members.
- 2.
- The Committee thus constituted is the central French power.
- 3.
- The Committee directs the French war effort in all its forms and in all places. Consequently it exercises French sovereignty on all territories not subject to the power of the enemy; it undertakes the administration and the defense of all French interests in the world, it assumes authority over the territories and the land, sea and air forces which, up to the present, have been under the authority of the French National Committee and the Commander in Chief, civil and military.
- 4.
- All necessary steps to bring about the fusion of the administration dependent on these two bodies will be taken without delay by the Committee.
- 5.
- In accordance with the letters exchanged between Generals de Gaulle and Giraud, the Committee will relinquish its powers to the provisional government which will be constituted in conformity with the laws of the Republic as soon as the liberation of metropolitan territory permits, and at the latest upon the total liberation of France. The Committee, in close cooperation with all the Allies, will continue the common struggle, looking toward the complete liberation of French and allied territories, until victory is complete over all the enemy powers.
- 6.
- The Committee similarly undertakes to reestablish all French liberties, the laws of the Republic and the republican regime through the complete destruction of the regime of arbitrary authority and of personal power which is today imposed upon the country. The Committee is at the service of the French people, whose war effort, whose resistance and whose trials, as well as the necessary work of reconstruction, require the union of all the national forces.
- 7.
- The Committee calls upon all Frenchmen to follow it in order that, through struggle and victory, France may regain its liberty, its [Page 135] greatness, and its traditional place among the great Allied Powers, and that in the peace negotiations France may be able to make its contribution to the Council of the United Nations which will settle the state of Europe and of the world after the war.
Repeated to London. [Murphy.]