FRANCE UTTERLY REDUCED

Southland Times, Issue 24161, 25 June 1940, Page 5

FRANCE UTTERLY REDUCED

STRONG INDICTMENT OF GOVERNMENT GENERAL DE GAULLE’S CALL TO DUTY (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, June 23. “A French National Committee will be formed in agreement with the British, representing the interests of the country and resolved to maintain the independence of France, to honour the alliances to which she is committed and to contribute to the war efforts of the Allies until final victory. The composition of this National Committee will be made public immediately.”

This statement was made by General Charles de Gaulle, who was M. Paul Reynaud’s assistant at the French Ministry of War, in the course of a broadcast from London on Sunday evening.

“The armistice accepted by the Bordeaux Government is capitulation,” said General de Gaulle. “This capitulation was signed before all means of resistance had been exhausted. This capitulation delivers into the hands of the enemy, who will use them against our Allies, our arms, our aeroplanes, our warships and our gold. This capitulation utterly reduces France and places the Government at Bordeaux in immediate and direct dependence on the Germans and Italians. There is no longer on the soil of France herself an independent Government capable of upholding the interests of France and the French overseas. Moreover, our political institutions are no longer in a position to function freely and the people of France have at the moment no opportunity of expressing their true will.” COMMITTEE FORMED Consequently, said General de Gaulle, and because of force majeure, a French National Committee had been established which “will account for its acts either to the legal, established French Government as soon as such exists or to the representatives of the people as soon as circumstances allow them to assemble in conditions compatible with liberty, dignity and security. The French National Committee will get in touch with such bodies in order to call for their participation in its formation. The French National Committee will take under its jurisdiction all French citizens at present in other countries and will assume the direction of all military and administrative bodies who now or may in future be in this country. The war is not lost, the country is not dead, hope is not extinct. Vive la France.”

It is considered unlikely in Washington that the United States will recognize any French Government established under German domination. It is recalled that the President (Mr Franklin D. Roosevelt) a week ago, replying to M. Paul Reynaud, asserted: “In accordance with its policy not to recognize the conquest of territory acquired through military aggression, the United States will not consider as valid any attempts to infringe by force the independence and territorial integrity of France.”

M. Pierre Laval, the new Vice-Prime Minister in the Bordeaux Government, said: “From this great misfortune some good should come for France. We must and will rebuild. France will live again. France has not lost her rank as a major Power.”