Emile FOULIARD [????-1956]

My grandfather Edward Wilfred Kirk practiced a lot of his medicine in Chinese.  Having put down roots in Quebec, I practice most of my medicine in French.  So, while at home nursing a stubborn winter cold with hot toddies, I have taken a crack at the letter David mentions above, starting with the preamble paragraph.  It's like Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca:

--------------------------------------------------

"The Nazi armistice was established in Indochina and the Reich Intelligence Services functioned at Canton and Macao, the Japanese services were organized in downtown Hong Kong.  Under these conditions, the dash and enthusiasm of brave patriots, founders of the first Free France committee, found neither in offices of the British civil service nor in French private residences, the echo they sought. Thus it was that the first  were reduced to their own personal initiative and the second depended for the most part on Saigon or Paris; but the good will of both was obvious and only waiting to be put into action. 

"It was necessary to make a more restricted and discreet committee, which replaced the first and which was composed as follows:

• Émile Fouliard, représentant du général de Gaulle ;
• Pierre Mathieu, secrétaire ;
• Armand Delcourt, conseiller ;
• Carlos Arnulphy, conseiller.

"Among other things, the committee's mission was:

- to intercept and turn  Vichy liner and  Messageries Maritimes freighter crews to the side of the Free French,  to recrute civilian and military personnel in Vichy and Japan occupied Indochina through intermediate liaison officers in that colony who would then take it upon themsevles to direct the Hong Kong recruits. 
- to locally recrute French volunteers
- to make contact with Frenchmen from the interior of South China for encouraging them to join the Free French;
- to prepare Free France radio programmes, for broadcast in Vichy Indochina
- to obtain subscriptions from sympathetic foreigners and Frenchmen to send parcels to Cairo for the Free French Army and to financially support expenses incurred for transport of volunteers

"Under the calm and gentlemanly influence of Émile Fouliard, all Frenchmen, with very rare exceptions, supported the Free France war effort.  Here is an excerpt of a letter that Fouliard received in 1956 just before his death: 

"The common sense and wisdom with which you led, at Hong Kong, in 1940 and 1941, the fragile presence of "Free France" perhaps made of this corner of the globe the only place where the French did not devour each other.

When, on the 14th of July*, 1941, all Frenchmen were together at the consulate, where the Consul General Reynaud delivered a Free France speech, despite the presence of the Vichy spy represented by a Shanghai churchman, you showed that even in the middle of the tragedy of a France torn apart, some Frenchmen kept some sense of good mesure.

We could think at that time that Shanghai was an unusual place for French warfare but, alas, we have since learned that this situation also took place elsewhere abroad.  Such thoughts make me think of you often, but there are others of a more personal character; of the hospitality that you offered to the family of some French volunteers, during the Japanese attack.  For them, persuaded to give their life in that combat, they found considerable solace knowing that their families were under your roof."  

*(Bastille Day)

http://francehongkong.blogspot.ca/2008_10_01_archive.html

This page describes intrigues surrounding the activities and correspondence of the Hong Kong Free French, including telegrams sent by Louis Reynaud, the Consul General that professed fervent loyalty to the cause of Free France, but came stamped with the Vichy "V".  Reynaud maintained that the "V" was rather a "Churchillian V" for Victory, but the colonial resistance hierarchy in Indochina would have none of it.

Further down the page, there is this mention of the appointment of Emile Fouilard as chairman of the Free French Committee in Hong Kong:

"After some power struggles and other difficulties related among other things to the controversial past of Lucien Biau, the Chair of the Free France Committee of Hong Kong was entrusted in March 1941 to Emile Fouliard, Chief Executive and Representative in China for Arms Manufacturers."