One member of the Free French wrote to de Gaulle with unusual frankness in November 1942: Your way of treating people … arouses in us a painful preoccupation, I would even say a real anxiety. There are subjects where you tolerate no contradiction, not even any debate. Moreover these are issues where your position is especially emotional, that is to say precisely those where you have the greatest interest in testing the reactions of other people. In such cases your tone makes your interlocutors think that in your eyes their disagreement reveals infirmity in their mind or their patriotism.
