Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part V. B. 2. a.djvu/139



Tonkin in the course of the next month. He came to Hanoi on August 7, 1947. The Ramadier Government, at that time, faced the difficult questions of the Statute of Algeria and the Municipal Election law and was under attack from within its own party. Bollaert, instead of delivering his speech, when the government.……No less than four "conseils restrients des Ministres" ans one full "Conseil", plus a series of private interviews between Bollaert, the Generals de Pellet and Valluy, and Ramadier were needed to settle the final form of the speech, which I am informed, was much changed from the original version.

The speech, then, was word by word and sentence by sentence laboriously assembled by the Ramadier Government, and is the logical conclusion of France policy as pursued in Northern Indo China for the past two years. For as the French military position in Tonkin has improved militarily, so in almost exact ratio has declined their willingness to make concessions. M. Bollaert's speech represents a definite retreat from the French position taken in the March 6, 1946, Accords, and indeed its terms on their face are no more liberal than the 1884 Treaty of the Protectorate.

Stripped of its verbiage, the speech constituted an oblique offer to the Vietnamese people to bring forth a "representative government" which would accept the terms offered by M. Bollaert on which there was to be no "bargaining" as this "would be in truth unworthy of such a noble cause." This seems to be designed as an escape clause for the French government and is directed against Ho Chi Minh with whom the French apparently will deal only in a last extremity. At thepresentthe present [sic] time, the French have no intention of dealing with Ho and should he accept the terms as offered, the French would unquestionably demand the immediate surrender of his arms and armies for "the weapons must grow silent."

Bollaert first defined the goal toward which "the Vietnamese people aspire freedom within the French Union and unity of the three Kys". He said this freedom is in no way restricted other than "by the limits forced on it by the fact that these territories belong to the French Union". But France, he maintained "does not take any position with regard to the problem" of unity of the Kys save that "she requires that the Union should not be made under pressure and according to totalitarian formulas universally condemned". Then should the Union be derived from the popular wish duly expressed, local particularisms should be preserved, and the cohesion of the Annamite countries should "be founded not on the interest of only one but on the confidence and friendship of all", he stated.

As for the states, separated or unified as they wish, M. Bollaert said "we are ready to hand over to the fully qualified governments the management of public affairs" which means the organization without French interference of "its representative institutions, judicial proceedings, its own finance, education, social legislation, and hospitals".

The states of the peninsula, M. Bollaert then foresaw by the facts of geography have certain common interests which will require common policies. He pointed out that "all right minded people" will concede that among other

Rh