STILL AT WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 117, 20 May 1941, Page 7

STILL AT WAR

POSITION OF FRANCE

DE GAULLE MESSAGE

VICHY DENOUNCED

LONDON, May 19. Today, General de Gaulle and the Free French Council of Defence issued an important statement denouncing the recent agreement between Vichy and Germany. The statement declared that France was still a belligerent nation, and that she would not recognise any infringement of, her territorial rights. The statement challenged the right of Vichy to act in the name of France and to make agreements without the sanction of the French people. The Vichy power of making agreements could not be considered as binding by

the French people, the statement said,

The statement went on to say that the Vichy Government had seized power and completely changed French institutions without in any way consulting the French people and without any check by the nation, which had no means of making itself heard in protest. A so-called Constitution had been substituted for the French Constitution and the* authority of the Vichy Government now lay in the personality of an old man of eighty-five, enfeebled by age. The Vichy Government had taken over" the prerogative of French sovereignty without any right to do so. The statement went on to declare that wherever French citizens had a possibility of making their real feelings known the vast majority of them wanted France to continue the war. This was seen in territories of the Empire which had been freed from Vichy and also in other parts in spite of punishment inflicted by Vichy. The vast majority of individual Frenchmen held this view. France, the statement said, could not and must not be held responsible for the acts committed in her name by rulers who had subjected themselves to the enemy, thanks to her military defeat. The French nation was continuing the war by means of all her military forces and territory outside the control of the enemy, and she should still be considered as a belligerent nation by all States and an ally by those who fought the common enemy.