Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part I.djvu/115

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive  : can no longer support any foreign domination or foreign administration.


 * "You could understand even better if you were able to see what is happening here, if you were able to sense this desire for independence which has been smoldering in the bottom of all hearts, and which no human force can any longer hold back. Even if you were to arrive to re-establish a French administration here, it would no longer be obeyed; each village would be a nest of resistance, every former friend an enemy, and your officials and colonists themselves would ask to depart from this unbreathable atmosphere.


 * "I beg you to understand that the only way to safeguard French interests and the spiritual influence of France in Indochina is to recognize frankly the independence of Vietnam and to renounce any idea of re-establishing French sovereignty or administration here in whatever form it may be.


 * "You would be able to listen to us so easily and become our friends if you would stop aspiring to become our masters again.


 * "Making this appeal to the well recognized idealism of the French people and the great wisdom of their leader, we hope that peace and the joy which has rung for all the people of the world will be guaranteed equally to all people who live in Indochina, native as well as foreign."

De Gaulle never replied; the message was in any event moot, because within a week Bao Dai formally ceded his powers to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and thereafter France was faced in North Vietnam not by the Francophile mandarin-king, but by Ho Chi Minh, the implacable professional revolutionary — dedicated nationalist-communist.


 * (6)

The overturning of Japanese power in Cochinchina followed a separate course. Bao Dai's government had waited until August 13, 1945 to proclaim the incorporation of Cochinchina into a united Vietnam, but this move came much too late to have any impact. The first effective steps toward consolidating the disunited Vietnamese political groups in the South was undertaken by the Trotskyist "Struggle" faction and formerly collaborationist parties, who merged on August 14, 1945, to form a "United National Front". Participants included the Cao Dai League, the Hoa Hao Sect, and the Buddhist League. The United National Front adopted the Trotskyist platform, and directed its energies principally against Bao Dai's representatives in Saigon. The Viet Minh seems to have delayed until 23 August to launch its program in Cochinchina, apparently moving at that time in response to the seizure of power by the Viet Minh in Annam and Tonkin. In the meantime, the ICP, led by Tran Van Giau, quietly seized Rh