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Author : Henriot Philippe
Title : End 1943 speech
Year : 1943

Link download : Henriot_Philippe_-_End_1943_speech.zip

At the end of 1943, Philippe Henriot, Propaganda and Information Secretary of State in Lilles, France had a public speech. Mr. Regional Governor, Mr. Mayor, Ladies, Gentlemen, My dear friends. I hope that is it not a Minister that you came to greet today, with so warm and moving sympathy, or at least I hope (...) I would have wanted with all my soul that today's meeting was a complete meeting of French unit. I regret certain absences. I regret that some have felt obliged to interpret this event as a political event. I do not represent here any party. Mandated by both the Chief of State and the Head of Government, I have the honor and pride to represent the official thought of France I regret that some, in other circumstances didn't have the same scrupulousness felt obliged to refrain coming here today, because they do not do politics. (...) (...) The day he sent his representative to Marshal Petain and no one else, he showed where was the legitimate government of the country. Always comparing the fate he would have done to whom he would like and always forgetting to compare it with that which would be theirs if this government wasn't there. We just greeted the Marshal, If you have had to defend yourselves, my French compatriots, in the aftermath of a defeat in which everyone had lost his mind, you who have secretly, or openly stood against the government policy and against the man who was for a long time, not only your friend, but your spokesman, and I am telling you, let's see, so, who today would detain the truth, since I am, as the member of the government, a kind of traitor and a sold out? To whom should we speak to think the way one must think? To whom do you turn to yourselves? But the men we fought together, the men that for so many years we have denounced as if preparing France to disaster, men who have indeed prepared it, and accomplished it. By what kind of incredible spell did they become today your teachers and masters? And you, you imagine, that treason would thus have changed camp. But, look over their names. Remember: Pierre Toth Vincent Auriol, Pierre Bloch, André Marty, Fernand Grenier. Here are the men who are now in Alger, these are the men who are now your patriotism teachers. These are the men to whom you hang up to, these are the men from whom you expect salvation, while you dare pretend, that those since three years desperately attempting to defend you, and to save you in spite of yourselves, and against you, became it seems, traitors to the French national cause. ...