Churchill and Roosevelt cursed de Gaulle’s name, ruing the day they had let him take any position at all. They even talked about demoting him and forcing him out of the picture. But they always backed down, and in the end they gave him what he wanted. To do otherwise would mean a public scandal in delicate times and would disrupt their relations with the French underground. They would be demoting a man whom much of the public had come to revere.