...On top of all this came the great French catastrophe.
The French Army collapsed, and the French nation was dashed into utter and, as it has proved so far, irretrievable confusion.
The French Government had at their own suggestion solemnly bound themselves with us not to make a separate peace.
It was their duty and it was also their interest to go to North Africa, where they would have been at the head of the French Empire.
In Africa, with our aid, they would have had overwhelming sea power.
They would have had the recognition of the United States, and the use of all the gold they had lodged beyond the seas.
If they had done this Italy might have been driven out of the war before the end of 1940,
and France would have held her place as a nation in the counsels of the Allies and at the conference table of the victors.
But their generals misled them.
When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did,
their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet,
"In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken."
Some chicken! some neck.