Roosevelt Papers
Draft of Joint Statement1
Statement by the President and the Prime Minister
The President and the Prime Minister have felt that the time has come to announce that Great Britain and the United States accept relations with the French Committee of National Liberation in the continuation of the mutual war effort against the Axis powers.
From the outset military equipment and assistance has been given to the French armed forces wherever they might be engaged in resistance to the Axis. This assistance has been constantly growing since the landing of British and American forces in North Africa. In recent weeks, arrangements have been concluded which will insure that French forces have adequate modern military equipment effectively to participate in the liberation of France.
[Page 1104]It is our firm hope that the French Committee of National Liberation will demonstrate a singleminded purpose to represent and further the broad interests of the overseas French. Our arrangements for dealing with the Committee are made with the full knowledge that over 90 percent of the French people as a whole are still under the domination of the enemy and are unable freely to express themselves. Only the people of France itself can determine the form of their future government and make the choice of their future leaders. In making this decision, they must be wholly untrammeled.
This limited relationship with the French Committee of National Liberation is based on both the hope and the assumption that the Committee will achieve unity in support of the cause of liberating France from the German and Italian yokes. We trust that it will keep out of its activities any factional or personal political considerations.
In an earnest effort to go to the utmost practicable extent, at this time, in promoting this great cause we are agreeing to the conditional acceptance of the Committee, as already stated, for trial in any efforts to further unity itself, and to free itself completely from any still existing factional and personal political problems.
- Authorship not indicated.↩