GAULLE Charles de L.A.S., 21 February 1940, to Paul Reynaud; 2 pages in-4 with handwritten letterhead of the Tank Command of an Army Sect. 100. On the bad turn of the War and on what must be done to reverse the trend. "If it is true that we took up arms to prevent Germany from establishing its hegemony in Central, Balkan, Northern and Eastern Europe, we have not succeeded in doing so, nor have we attempted to do so. This hegemony has already been virtually achieved, in one form here, in another there! All that remains for the modern conquerors to do is to complete a few formalities: to use fear to obtain the necessary resignations, and to complete various political and economic agreements, We can therefore say that the war is lost. But there is still time to win another. This other war could undo what the enemy has just achieved in the first. The "sine qua non" condition would be, through an immense effort, to replace our means and our system of passivity with means and a system of activity as a matter of extreme urgency! If we failed to do this, the world, and above all our own country, would gradually become accustomed to the new order that Hitler is in the process of establishing in most of Europe. Every day it would become less conceivable that we would ever rise up to march against the enemy. Some day, the peace that Hitler is suggesting to us on the basis of what has already happened would seem to us to be the only solution. After that, we would be ripe for debasement, isolation and crushing. But if we were willing to see clearly and act accordingly, everything could be saved and repaired, for the flame is only waiting to be fed. Slight loss in the upper left corner without affecting the text, and a tiny crack. Bibliography: L. N. C., vol. 1, p. 923.