"Tell the American People ..."

General Charles de Gaulle smiled, erasing for a moment the settled gloom of his somewhat puffy face. He rammed a cigar in one corner of his mouth. Then, out of the other corner, he said to New York Timesman Drew Middleton: "Some Frenchmen who have seen too many movies think that all Americans talk that way. They are learning better now, just as you are learning that we are far from a giddy nation. ..."

General de Gaulle continued earnestly: "Tell the American people that the French people, whose will is decisive, reject any form of totalitarian government." He saw three main objectives of the French: 1) "return of democracy"; 2) treatment as a sovereign nation; 3) "extensive social and political reforms."

"Tell De Gaulle. . . ." Three days after his message to the U.S. people, General de Gaulle listened to a message from the U.S. government. The bearer was his co-chairman in the French Committee of Liberation, General Henri Giraud, back in Algiers from visits to Washington and London. The burden seemed to be this: the amount of U.S. arms and the degree of U.S. recognition consigned to the regime at Algiers depended on the amount and degree of French unity. And by unity Washington did not mean a unity dominated by Gaullists.

Britain and Russia, as well as many a smaller United Nation (TIME, July 26), appeared satisfied with the Committee of Liberation, ready to grant it de facto recognition as the French Provisional Government. But Washington clung hard to the course charted by expediency. Said Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle Jr.: The Administration could not recognize "any group of Frenchmen as the government of France until the French people are liberated and . . . in a position to exercise their free will in the choice of their leaders." Diplomat Berle did not recall that Washington had long maintained relations with Vichy.

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