Editorial Note
On February 26, 1948 the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and France issued jointly and simultaneously in their respective capitals the following Declaration:
“The Governments of the United States, France and Great Britain have attentively followed the course of the events which have just taken place in Czechoslovakia and which place in jeopardy the very existence of the principles of liberty to which all democratic nations are attached.
“They note that by means of a crisis artificially and deliberately instigated the use of certain methods already tested in other places has permitted the suspension of the free exercise of parliamentary institutions and the establishment of a disguised dictatorship of a single party under the cloak of a Government of national union.
“They can but condemn a development of the consequences of which can only be disastrous for the Czechoslovak people, who had proved once more in the midst of the sufferings of the second World War their attachment to the cause of liberty.”
The text of this declaration, which was based on a French draft (telegram 1027, February 25, from Paris, not printed), was issued following trans-Atlantic telephone consultations between the Department of State and the Embassies in London and Paris.