René Cassin Reaches London — 29 June

René Cassin, 52, is professor of international law at the Sorbonne, former French delegate to the League of Nations and a figure in the veterans' movement — he is himself disabled from the Great War. Jewish and deeply republican, he refuses the armistice. In late June 1940, he is in the South-West, near the border.

After hearing de Gaulle on the radio, he decides to reach London. He embarks for England and arrives on 29 June. De Gaulle receives him at once and offers him the legal responsibility of Free France: to give a legal basis to a movement that, at this stage, is only an isolated general and a few volunteers.

For Cassin, the stakes are immense. To accept is to break completely with Vichy, which will consider him a traitor, and to commit his name and competence to an uncertain adventure. Free France needs a solid legal framework to exist in the face of states; he alone, or almost, can provide it.