from NORTH OF THE 17th PARALLEL
by Wilfred Burchett
A sun-helmet lay on the bamboo table of a thatch-roofed hut deep in the jungle of Northern Vietnam. It was late afternoon in mid-March 1954, and somewhere overhead an aeroplane was buzzing about. It had no chance of sighting the dozen or so bamboo and thatch huts that made up the little village. Much of the jungle had been cleared away – but the smooth pillars of giant iron-woods and other jungle denizens supported a thick canopy of inter-woven broad-leaved creepers, nature's most perfect camouflage net flung over the village. A helicopter could hover a few metres over the top of that green canopy for an hour and see nothing that it covered. It was not the jungle however but the image of the sun-helmet that was to remain in my mind for many weeks that followed.My road to this jungle village had led almost directly from Panmunjom in Korea with a day or two's halt in Peking to change clothes for the difference in temperature between snow-bound Panmunjom and the tropical jungles of the Viet-Bac, or North Vietnam. What a contrast between the bare hills and treeless roads of Korea and the generous, luxuriant verdure of the Vietnamese jungle. But in both countries nature had been turned to good account by those who defended their country's soil. In Korea the resistance was based underground – in the most literal meaning of the term – in the thousands of kilometres of underground tunnels, bored into the bare hills. In Vietnam, it was based in the deep, green jungle. The underground tunnels and jungle robbed the enemy of much of the advantages of superior technique, unlimited air and naval power.
During my voyage to the Viet-Bac, the radio had been full of news about a place called Dien-Bien-Phu. According to the stern radio reports, the French had built up a big base there and had started offensive operations to "clean up the Viet-Minh" from the whole of Northwest Vietnam and encircle them in a giant pincers movement which would extend from Dien-Bien-Phu to the Red River Delta. And this is where the sun-helmet comes into the story. For it belonged to President Ho-Chi-Minh and alongside the helmet was the President himself.
With the minute attention to detail that I found I later was so characteristic of this great leader of the Vietnamese people, he had called shortly after my arrival with another journalist, to assure himself that we had survived the rigours of the journey and were in good health. It was difficult to believe that within a few hours of arrival we should be sitting opposite this legendary revolutionary leader. But there he was, the unmistakably kindly face, the twinkling depthless black eyes, the thin straggling beard, the face we had known from photographs and portraits for years past. He had appeared out of the jungle shadows unannounced, a windbreaker jacket thrown cape-like across his shoulders, walking briskly with a long bamboo stick, sun-helmet worn high over his broad brow. After he had put us completely at our ease in his fluent French and English – and had addressed a few words in Italian to my Italian colleague – we asked President Ho why the radio was making such a noise about Dien-Bien-Phu. What in fact was going on there?
"This is Dien-Bien-Phu," he said and tipped his sun-helmet upside down on the table. "Here are mountains," and his slim, strong fingers traced the outside rim of the helmet, "and that's where we are too. Down here, "and his fist plunged to the bottom of the helmet," is the valley of Dien-Bien-Phu. There – are the French. They can't get out. It may take a long time, but they can't get out", he repeated. That was the battle of Dien-Bien-Phu in a sun-helmet. It was the picture which remained before my eyes for the weeks that followed, listening to the radio on the long train ride back to Peking, all the way across the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow and during that first week at the Geneva Conference when the ebb and flow of battle was dramatised by western news agencies with their highly coloured and distorted accounts of French victories and break-outs.
In the bowl of President Ho's sun-helmet were the best troops the French High Command could muster in lndo-China, gradually to be built up to over 16,000, two-thirds of all the specially trained mobile forces in North Vietnam and by the end of the battle all their trained – and many untrained – parachute troops.
A few minutes after President Ho had so succinctly pre so noted the Dien-Bien-Phu picture, the sun-helmet was brought into play again when in a few words and with a few brief gestures, he related how guerilla fighters in coordination with the Dien-Bien-Phu action had penetrated into the French air base of Gia-Lam at Hanoi and Cat-Bi at Haiphong to destroy a total of 78 planes on the ground – 60 of them at Cat-Bi.
"Cat-Bi is a heavily guarded peninsula", explained President Ho and again the sun-helmet was upside down, its oval rim the 20 kilometers long perimeter of Cat-Bi with the sensitive brown fingers tracing the series of barbed wire fences which surrounded the field, pausing to stab into place artillery and anti-aircraft positions, machine-gun nests, searchlights and all the other obstacles the guerilla fighters had to overcome to carry out their extraordinary exploit. One had the feeling from his intimate knowledge of the defences of the aerodrome that the President himself had something to do with mapping out the attack.
But he had not come to discuss military affairs with us. After assuring himself that we were comfortably installed and had really survived the journey in good shape, he threw his wind-breaker over his shoulders again, put on his sun-helmet and with his bamboo stick and a single soldier for protection, moved off into the deepening jungle shadows. As he left, he turned and said, "You can tell the comrades over there," waving in the general direction of Europe with his stick, "that I am in good health. I can still walk 40 kilometers a day as long as there's not too much of this..." and he waved his stick up and down to indicate the high mountains which surrounded us. With a final wave, he was swallowed up by the jungle.
The first impression of this meeting with the leader of the Vietnam people was the complete informality, the warmth and simplicity of it all. President Ho – or Uncle Ho as he is to millions of people throughout lndo-China – had the ability to make one feel at ease from the first moment and to present the most complex questions in a few clear words and gestures. In subsequent meetings with this great personality it is just those qualities of warmth, simplicity and the clarity of expression which only comes with exceptional intelligence and complete grasp of the subject – which made the deepest impression. Everyone who is received by President Ho comments on these characteristics, and above all their feeling of being immediately "at home" with him.
Even a small dip into the extraordinary life of this peasant-worker-intellectual-
Nguyen-van-Thanh was the name he was given when he was born in 1890 in the village of Kim-Lien in Nghe-An province, Central Vietnam. His people were of peasant stock but his father had taken the Mandarin examinations and for a certain time held an official post. He later returned to continue his life as a peasant. From the earliest days of his youth, Nguyen-van-Thanh hated French Colonialism. He pledged himself to fight against it. When he was in his early twenties and under the name of "Ba", he found a job as cook's help aboard the Latouche-Tréville a French wind-jammer. After many adventures he ended up in London, working for the fabulous Escoffier, the greatest French chef of his generation. Vietnam writers engaged in collecting details of the President's early life have tracked down some of the people with whom
"Ba" sailed and worked in those early years after he left home.
Working in the officers' saloon on the Latouche-Tréville was a certain Mai for example, who re members his shipmate "Ba" very well. He relates that though the work was terribly heavy for this rather fragile young man, "Ba" stuck to it very well and as soon as the heavy day's work was over and the others slept or played cards, "Ba" used to sit up and read or write till eleven o'clock or even midnight. "Although he was of inferior status to us because we were graded and he only a cook's help, he was very cultured and it was he who helped my illiterate friends to write letter s home. He worked very hard hauling heavy sacks of vegetables, meat and ice up the narrow, slippery gangways from the hold to the kitchen, but he never complained" Mai recalled, "and he never used any vulgar words. We all liked him".
After the ship dropped anchor at Marseille, Mai relates that "Ba" got immense pleasure sitting in the cafés, talking in very bad French with the ordinary people. "He used to come back on board," Mai said, "saying that the French in France are better and more polite than those in Indo-China".
"Ba" did not immediately quit the Latouche-Tréville on arrival in Europe and Mai related an incident at Dakar where during a heavy storm, mountainous seas prevented the ship getting into port or lowering a boat to take a line in. French ashore sent Africans to swim a line out to the ship.
"One, two, three, four of them, one after another jumped into the sea" recounted Mai, "and one after another they were drowned. It was quite a common sight but "Ba" was deeply moved and wept. I was surprised to see him so affected and asked him why he was so sad. He replied "In France the French are good. But the French colonialists are cruel and inhuman. It's the same everywhere. I've seen such things happening in Phan-Rang (southeast coast of Vietnam) with the French bursting with laughter while our compatriots were drowning for their sake. To them the life of an Asian or African is not worth one cent". "Ba" left the boat shortly afterwards.
In London in the winter of 1913 where he had gone to try and study – the future president at first worked sweeping snow at a school, at firing a boiler in a pitch-dark basement and then washing dishes at the Carlton Hotel where the great Escoffier reigned as Europe's uncrowned king of chefs. "Ba's" presence was brought to the notice of the great chef when it was found that instead of throwing away the leftovers from Escoffier's creations, "Ba" used to clean them up, trim off the half-eaten bits and send them back to the kitchen. Escoffier sent for him and asked why he did not scrape them off into the rubbish bins as did other dishwashers. "Good food shouldn't be thrown away," replied "Ba", "it should be given to the hungry poor." Escoffier laughed and told him to abandon his "revolutionary" ideas. But he took a liking to the earnest young man and said, "I'll teach you to cook instead. Then you'll become rich and famous." And in fact, he promoted "Ba" to the cake baking department, where he earned much more money.
Early in the morning before work and late at night after he had finished, "Ba" was to be seen sitting in Hyde Park, books, notebook and pencil always by his side. Apart from learning the English language, he was also studying the history of colonial peoples, acquiring precious knowledge that was to be turned to good account later on.
After the end of World War I, "Ba" under the name of Nguyen-Ai-Quoc went to Paris, where he found a job as a photographer's retoucher – his studies at home, which his father had insisted on, included learning to write Chinese characters with a brush and this served him well in quickly picking up the art of retouching photographs. In the tourist season he made extra money by painting and selling oriental "antiquities". It was in post-war Paris that he found an outlet for his fervent anti-colonialist sentiments. It was the eve of the Versailles Conference and the air was ringing with the high-sounding Wilsonian phrases of independence, democracy and freedom for all. Nguyen got in touch with other compatriots in Paris and the provinces and organized an association of Vietnam patriots. He contacted other delegations of colonial peoples, Indians, Arabs, Koreans and others – all attracted by the golden promises of Wilson's principles. He learned they were putting in claims for their countries' independence and on behalf of the association of Vietnam patriots, he drew up an 8-point claim for Vietnam independence which was drafted into French by a lawyer member of the Association, Phan-Van-Truong, and circulated to Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the others at Versailles. The 8 points among other things called for Vietnam autonomy, equality between Vietnamese and French, an amnesty for political prisoners, for freedom of association, freedom of religious beliefs, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, abolition of forced labour and abolition of the tax on salt and the forced consumption of alcohol and opium.
Naturally, as far as the Versailles Conference was concerned, nothing came of all this. But the memorandum served as a basis for attracting attention to the question of Vietnam independence. The 8 points served as a starting point for a wide campaign conducted by Nguyen to publicize conditions in Vietnam, the justice of Vietnamese claims for a greater share of independence. Everything he earned, everything he could save or collect from sympathisers went for the publication of tracts setting out the 8 points and their distribution to Vietnamese living in France, to Vietnamese soldiers in the French army – and to the French press. The first French paper – and almost the only one at that time – to publish the claims was "Le PopuIaire" edited then by Charles Longuet, the socialist son-in-law Kari Marx. Nguyen called on him and for the first time in his life was addressed by a Frenchman as "dear comrade". This visit marked his entry into the French political world. Longuet asked him to write articles bringing to the attention of the French people the horrors of colonial oppression in Vietnam. But Nguyen's lack of knowledge both of journalism and the French language hampered him. At first, the lawyer Pham-van-Truong rewrote the articles and after correcting them Nguyen signed – but they did not always contain the ideas he wanted to express. He started to study journalism and to improve his French at the same time. It was then that he met another sympathetic editor, Monmousseau, editor of "La Vie Ouvrière" (Workers' Life) the organ of the progressive trade-unions (and still today the organ of the French CGT under the same editor Monmousseau).
As Nguyen's French and journalism were both weak, Monmousseau suggested that he start by writing articles of 5 or 6 lines only, which the editor himself would correct. This Nguyen did and when his first 6 line article appeared, Nguyen noted the editorial changes that had been made and gradually improved his work. Later he was told to increase to 7 or 8 lines. It was little space for all the burning ideas Nguyen had to express, but perhaps that hard apprenticeship as a journalist forced to compress the story of his people's sufferings into a daily 5 or 6 lines accounts for the extraordinary economy of language of President Ho-Chi-Minh today, that precious ability to express the most complex and vivid images in a few words. Gradually he improved to the extent of writing a whole column. And when that moment arrived, the sage Monmousseau told him to practice reducing the number of words but packing in the same ideas and facts. In this way Nguyen received a first-class journalistic training from a master at the trade.
He began writing short stories and "L'Humanité" which continued the progressive traditions of its great socialist founder Jean Jaurès, was the first paper to publish – and pay a precious 100 francs – for a short story published in two parts. This was a great day in the life of the young writer. After that came a book, "Accusations Against French Colonialism" a well-documented study of French imperialism and then a play from the pen of the versatile writer who had so quickly found his literary feet. His play the "Bamboo Dragon", in poetic and allegoric form was a subtle, deadly attack against colonialism. It was banned by the French government but highly praised by literary critics who saw it at private performances in various progressive Paris clubs.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc gradually moved into the circle of the French Socialist Party, made the acquaintance of Marcel Cachin, Vaillant-Couturier, Blum and others. He lost no opportunity to push to the forefront the Vietnamese question. He became an expert in turning any discussion in the direction of Vietnamese independence. Intimates of Nguyen at that period relate an incident in which a group of intellectuals were addressed by Dr. Coué on hypnotism as a means of treating illness. In the discussion that followed opinions were sharply divided and Nguyen strongly opposed hypnotism on the grounds that "the French had hypnotized our people in order to suppress and exploit us", thus turning the discussion to his favourite subject.
The period of the early post-war years in France was one of intense intellectual activity – especially in left-wing circles. Nguyen threw himself eagerly into these activities, clutched at every chance offered to improve his general knowledge. He jointed associations and clubs which organized visits to factories and museums, theatres and scientific institutes and even workers travel associations, which arranged cheap tours inside and outside France. Although always desperately poor he managed to squeeze into groups visiting Italy, Germany and Switzerland – and to travel widely in France, always interesting himself in the life of the people, the forms of workers organizations and methods of governments. In Paris he was in close touch with revolutionary leaders from other French colonies and together with them, he organized the "League of Colonial Countries" which brought together nationals of the colonies who were living in France and French sympathisers. The League published a paper, the "Paria" which was managed and edited by Nguyen himself. It was banned in the colonies – but with Nguyen's sailor contacts from his sea-faring days, distribution was arranged under the very noses of the colonial gendarmes. Vietnamese living in France generously supported the paper financially – but usually secretly because of fear of French reprisals.
Nguyen joined the French Socialist Party – the first Vietnamese to become a member of a French political party. It was on the eve of the fateful 1920 Tours Congress, a period of burning discussions among the members. Should the French Socialist Party remain in the Second International which had failed in its pledges to oppose World War I? Should it join the Third International formed by the parties or elements from parties, former members of the Second International who had remained true to the pledges made at the 1912 and 1913 Congresses to oppose by every means the approaching war and if war broke out to transform it into an anti-imperialist, struggle? Should it form another "Second and a Half International"? Nguyen-Ai-Quoc attended the fervent discussions but many of the terms used were incomprehensible. Till now he had been a revolutionary patriot – not a student of political economy. His political vocabulary was still weak. Over and over again he heard the words reformism, utopianism, communism, objectivism, subjectivism, saint-simonism and many other terms completely strange to him. But he attended the discussions with a burning interest.
Marcel Cachin and Vaillant-Couturier were supporting adherence to the Third International in I'Humanité, Blum and Paul Faure were the foremost champions of the Second International in Le Populaire. But the arguments were often too difficult for Nguyen to follow.
In one of the heated discussions, he intervened: "Look here, my dear friends. You are all for socialism. That is very good. You all want to emancipate the working class, don't you? That is also very good. In that case, the question of Second, Second and a Half or Third International makes no difference. Aren't they all fighting for Socialism? Decide for one or the other but unite and have done with it. Why do you argue so much? While you are discussing here, our compatriots in Vietnam are suffering..."
A young Paris dress-maker, Rose whispered to him: "You will understand later why we are arguing so much. It is very important for the future of the working class."
During the Tours Congress Nguyen attended as a delegate and spoke up for the colonial peoples.
As he was the only delegate from the French colonies, he attracted much attention – not all of it welcome. The day after be made his first speech, his photo was published in a Paris newspaper and the police came to arrest him. But his fellow delegates refused to allow the police to enter the Congress room. Nguyen continued to take part in the debates, speaking at every occasion offered on the colonial question – and especially the question of Vietnam
When the vote came for Second or Third International – the Second and a Half having been decisively rejected – Nguyen voted with the majority and Cachin for the Third International. A minority headed by Blum voted to remain in the Second International. The dress-maker Rose who was secretary of the Congress was pleasantly surprised and went over to Nguyen to say that at least now he seemed to understand why they had discussed the question so thoroughly in Paris.
"I didn't understand the strategy, tactics and lots of the terms and techniques you discussed," Nguyen replied, "but I did grasp one thing – that the Third International pays much attention to the colonial question. Their delegates promised to help the oppressed colonial peoples regain their freedom and independence. The Second International speakers never mentioned a word about the fate of the colonies. "Rose smiled and said, "Comrade, you've really made some progress."
The French Socialist Party was split. The majority, headed by Marcel Cachin, that voted for the Third International became the French Communist Party for which l'Humanité later became the official organ. The minority remained the Socialist Party headed by Blum affiliated to the Second International with Le Populaire as their official organ.
Nguyen continued at his trade of photographer's retoucher, at editing "the Paria" and at studying in Paris libraries. But the police were constantly on his track seeking some pretext to imprison or deport him. He was also chafing at his exile and wanted to get back to the struggle in Vietnam itself. But he was a marked man and had to watch his every step.
One Saturday afternoon, his Senegalese, Moroccan, Algerian and other friends from the colonies come as was their habit to "the Paria" office to discuss the following week's work and editorials. The office was closed and locked. They visited Nguyen's closest friend, a lawyer from the Antilles and found him and his wife very upset, the children in tears. An opened letter lay on the table and was quickly snatched up by a Moroccan doctor who recognised Nguyen's handwriting. He read the contents out aloud:
"Dear Friends,
"We have been working together for a long time. Though we are people of different races, different countries, different religions, we are attached to each other as brothers of the same family. Together we endure the same misfortunes – the atrocious rule of colonialism. We fight for a common ideal – the liberation of our people and the regaining of independence of our fatherlands. We are not alone in our struggle because we have the support of our entire peoples and also of French democrats, the true sons of France who stand with us...
"As for me, the answer is clear. Go back home, work with the masses, enlighten them, unite them, train them, set them on the road to struggle for their independence. Perhaps some of you could do the same. Others should carry on our present work, consolidate the League of Colonial Countries and develop our 'Paria'..." It was typical of Nguyen's punctilious attention to details that the letter included such passages as "My compatriot Dai will hand to B. (his lawyer friend from the Antilles) the key of the newspaper office, various papers and documents of our League and the paper as well as its funds. I have paid the rent of the office up to the end of the year. The printing costs are also paid for. We owe money to no-one. The library hook is in the drawer on the right. All books are in, except those lent to members on holiday..."
Another passage too was typical for the great love and care for children which throughout his life were to supplant other sentimental ties which were virtually impossible for a revolutionary in his situation, living a life of extreme asceticism, never knowing at what moment he must disappear underground or move across a border with the police on his trail.
"Now for a few words to my niece and nephew" continued the letter. "You love me very much and I also love you very much. It is true, isn't it my children? I will tell our young friends in Vietnam how good you are. I will shake their hands for you. Perhaps for a long time you will not see Uncle Nguyen, to climb on his back or knees, as you used to. It will also be a long time before I see my Alice and Paul again. When we meet next probably I shall be old and you'll be as big as your Mummy and Daddy. That is not important. I'll always remember you. You'll always be my dear little Alice and my dear little Paul. Be good! Learn well your lessons! Be obedient to your Mummy and Daddy! Don't beat the little dog, Marius! When you grow up, you'll fight for your country like your parents, like Uncle Nguyen and other uncles.
"My little niece and nephew, I kiss you both most affectionately. Kiss your mother for me. Uncle Nguyen."
For all Vietnam children today Uncle Nguyen of the mid 1920's has now become Uncle Ho. One sees in this passage from a letter written over thirty years ago how deep, how genuine is his love for children, how genuine the love and interest with which he guides and aids their developments in Vietnam today.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc's journey back to Vietnam was not as speedy or direct as he had expected. With the French police hot on his trail, normal travel routes were closed to him. He arrived at Leningrad in the winter of 1924 aboard a Soviet steamer, shivering in fur-lined clothes given him by friendly Soviet sailors. He had hoped to see Lenin – but was greeted on arrival with the sad news that Lenin had died two days previously. Nguyen had left France without any papers of any sort. He knew no-one in the Soviet Union and had arrived unannounced and unexpected. But Marcel Cachin and Vaillant-Couturier were in Moscow for Lenin's funeral and they were only too pleased to introduce him to those who could help most. Nguyen was immediately made to feel at home in Moscow and took the opportunity of his visit to the Soviet Union to continue his studies of revolutionary movements and organizational methods.
From the Soviet Union, he moved on the next year to China where he at first eked out a meagre living selling cigarettes and newspapers in South China gradually making contacts with the Vietnamese nationals there. Nguyen later answered an advertisement in the Kwangchow daily for a Chinese-English translator. He spoke, read and wrote Chinese fluently. He answered the advertisement, got the job and found himself working for Borodin, the Soviet political adviser to Sun Yat-sen, founder of the first Chinese Republic. It was a period of intense revolutionary upsurge in China. The Kuomintang-Communist coalition had been forged to overthrow the remnants of feudalism, to wipe out the warlord regimes, unify the country and to deal a death blow to the colonialists installed in China's main cities. It was the period of mass actions and strikes by Chinese workers in Shanghai and other big cities brutally repressed by the British and Japanese police. It was the golden period of the Sun Yat-sen revolution. A revolutionary government supported by the Chinese Communist Party was installed at Canton, a revolutionary military academy had been opened at Whampoa in Kwantung province to form cadres for a new army which was first to consolidate the position in Kwantung province and then sweep northwards to unify the whole country south of the Yangtze, sweeping the warlords aside and preparing to deal the final blow to feudalism and imperialism in China. Heading the Whampoa Academy were Chiang Kai-shek and Chou En-lai.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc threw all his energies and talents into this movement. He saw immediately that the success as of the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist movement in China could open the way for victory in Vietnam. But while making his own contribution to the struggle there, he did not neglect his main aim – the liberation of Vietnam. He started organizing the Vietnamese living in China and formed the "League of Revolutionary Vietnamese Youth". He set up a training centre for the future cadres of the revolution. Young patriots, especially students secretly came to this training centre from Vietnam and later as secretly returned to carry on the work of organizing the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam on a new, scientific basis. With the help of other compatriots and revolutionaries living in South China, Nguyen founded the "League of Oppressed Peoples in Asia" in which there were Vietnamese, Koreans, Indonesians and other Asiatics. He began the publication of pamphlets and newspapers which were secretly sent into Vietnam and soon attracted the attention of the French police. But the more the literature was seized and its distributors punished, the more this literature began to attract the attention of Vietnamese intellectuals and patriots, and the more patriots began to contact the organizations established under Nguyen's guidance.
The betrayal by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 of the Chinese national revolution when he massacred the Communists and workers in Shanghai and other cities and subverted Sun-Yat-sen's Republic into his personal dictatorship was a setback to Nguyen's work also. Borodin and the other Comintern advisers, after many adventures and narrow escapes from assassination by Chiang Kai-shek's thugs returned to the Soviet Union. Nguyen moved his base into Siam where there was a large Vietnam minority. Always closely pursued by the agents of the French police, be moved from place to place in different disguises, organizing, awakening the consciousness of his compatriots, training them, always maintaining contact with the independence movement and revolutionary groups inside the homeland. He earned his living in these difficult days in diverse ways. His varied professions became his best disguises. At times he was an agricultural labourer – thanks to his peasant background he could plough and do general agricultural work – sometimes a Buddhist monk with a shaven head and begging bowl or a street corner merchant selling cigarettes. But wherever he was and however he was gaining his living, he organized and taught. In Siam he founded the "Vietnam Association for Mutual Assistance" and put out a weekly paper, "I'Humanité" which infiltrated into Vietnam.
In late 1929, Nguyen went back to China for a conference at Kweilin – then capital of Kwangsi province which bordered northern Vietnam – with delegates from the three main revolutionary parties in Indo-China. Until this conference, they had not been able to agree on a common programme, but each wanted to be recognised as the sole Communist Party. When Nguyen arrived his words were few – but as usual to the point.
"In the Soviet Union, England, France and China", he said, "and in colonial countries such as India, Indonesia etc... there is only one Communist Party. Likewise Vietnam cannot afford to have three communist parties.
"We must unite the entire people to fight for national independence and to achieve this aim there must be unity of organization. This organisation could keep its old name 'Revolutionary Youth' or adopt the name 'Communist Party' but its political programme must be National Independence, Freedom to the People, Forward to Socialism".
After a short discussion agreement was reached to unify the three groups under the name of Communist Party of Indo-China. A programme of action was agreed and delegates returned to carry on the fight. Thus on January 6, 1930 was born the Communist Party of lndo-China. The new Party soon made its presence felt with a series of big strikes the same year and the setting up of People's Soviets in three central districts in September 1930. The discussion to establish the Communist Party (which later was dissolved and replaced by the Lao-Dong or Workers' Party of Vietnam) were much shorter than those in which Nguyen had taken part almost ten years previously at Tours, but the results were unanimity and the forging of the party which was to lead the Vietnam masses in heroic and successful struggles in their bitter fight for independence.
Nguyen continued to move around the perimeter of Vietnam, directing the movement from without, continually dodging the French and Kuomintang police and their agents. Sometimes in China, sometimes in Siam and even further afield, adopting scores of different names and disguises, he was always on the move, always organizing and directing, knitting together ever more closely all the anti-imperialist forces inside the country. In Hong-Kong in 1933, he was arrested on trumped up charges that he was a Soviet agent and that he was plotting the destruction of the British Crown Colony. He was flung into a darkened, bug-ridden, flea-infested cell with 15 minutes exercise daily. The only moments he enjoyed were those when he was taken out for questioning. He had become an ardent smoker – and the British security officers who questioned him freely plied him with cigarettes. But most of all he was glad to have a chance of studying the methods of the British security police, of finding out their line of questioning, how much they knew, how much they guessed, how much they fabricated.
Normally the full hypocrisy of the British ruling class was brought to bear by the state machinery in such cases. The accused were usually revolutionaries from the Chinese mainland, whose skins or heads Chiang Kai-shek wanted. As they were innocent of any crime, they were sentenced to deportation to China, where they were arrested – as the British authorities knew full well they would be – at the point where British police pushed them over the frontier. A similar fate would have befallen Nguyen had it not been for the extraordinary diligence of a British lawyer named Loseby, who distinguished his profession and did credit to his people by his devoted defence of Nguyen. His activities and the fact that ultimately he probably saved Nguyen' life, have not been forgotten by president Ho. The Hong-Kong authorities tried to force Loseby to abandon the case and to persuade Nguyen that it would be better for him not to retain Loseby as his lawyer. But to no avail.
Loseby said to his client one day: "Sun Yat-sen was once saved by an Englishman. I will likewise endeavour to save you. Tell me no more than I need to know in order successfully to defend you. No need to say more for I know every revolutionary has his secrets."
Nguyen was eventually brought to trial in the Hong-Kong Supreme Court where Loseby directed a panel of lawyers in his defence. Neither Nguyen nor Loseby were permitted to address the Court. The case lasted over a month. Finally the judges decided there was no case for the prosecution, dismissed the charges – but resorted to the old trick and ordered Nguyen deported from Hong-Kong on a French ship which was just what the French police were waiting for Loseby protested the decision and appealed to the Privy Council in London where Sir Stafford Cripps (member of the Labour Party Executive and later Finance Minister) defended the case.
In the meantime Nguyen had fallen ill and was transferred to the prison hospital together with opium addicts, murderers and pirates. Two Kuomintang secret agents kept constant watch inside, and two British policemen outside the ward – which was especially enclosed in barbed wire. Sir Stafford Cripps followed up Loseby's good work and the Privy Council decided there was no evidence that Nguyen was a "Soviet agent".
It had not been proved that he was plotting the destruction of Hong-Kong, the fact that he was a Communist or Nationalist was not a violation of British law. Therefore Nguyen-Ai-Quoc should be immediately released.
It was all very well to be set free – but where to go? French and Kuomintang police were waiting for him to move outside Hong-Kong, or even to move around in Hong-Kong within range of their assassins. Loseby applied on Nguyen's behalf for a visa for England and as the agents were hot on his trail, Nguyen secretly boarded a ship to England. But he was taken off at Singapore, deported to Hong-Kong – and arrested on the grounds that he had entered the colony without a visa. This time again, Loseby came to the rescue. As there was little chance of winning a second trial, Loseby organized his escape – and evading French and Kuomintang agents who were swarming around the policy station and Loseby's own house – he managed to smuggle Nguyen out of Hong-Kong. And here began one of the most restful periods that the hunted revolutionary had ever known. Disguised as a wealthy Chinese businessman, he was spirited out of Hong-Kong to live in the home of one of Loseby's intimate friends on the Chinese mainland. Under the very noses of some of his worst enemies, he lived as a wealthy merchant on vacation, went for long walks in the forest, gradually recovered his health, visited pagodas and beauty spots and was soon contributing asides under various names in English and Chinese for local newspapers. This period greatly contributed to rehabilitating his health.
When things had quietened down again, Nguyen was on the move, re-establishing contact with secret committees abroad, advising and guiding the movement at home, nourishing the last awakening sentiment for national independence. During the period of the Popular Front government in France, Nguyen immediately saw the chance of gaining some terrain. He urged cooperation between the independence movement and the Popular Front government and the formulation of demands for immediate reforms. This was done with some success. Certain democratic rights were granted, better conditions were created for carrying on the struggle. Among other results was the release of Pham-van-Dong and a number of patriots from the Poulo-Condor penal settlement. But with the break-up of the Popular Front government, reaction set in again and when World War II broke out savage repressions robbed the movement of almost all the gains it had achieved. Political prisoners who had been released were rearrested – wherever the French could lay hands on them – newspapers that had started up were closed down, patriots were hounded into jail and the prisons and concentration camps were soon full again but in the meantime the independence movement had moved on to a new level. New links had been forged which even the most brutal repressions could not break.
When World War II moved out of the stage of the "phoney war" and began to be transformed into a genuine anti-fascist struggle, Nguyen called for the Vietnamese people to join in the fight and without abandoning the fight for national independence to stand on the side of the Allies and help defeat Fascism. Above all the Vietnam people must unite. On the initiative of Nguyen the League Against Imperialism funded in 1930 was now transformed into a much broader organizations the Vietnam Doc-Lap Dong-Minh, the Vietnam Independence League or Vietminh in its abbreviated form. The driving force of this organization was the Communist Party but it united other political parties, workers and peasants organizations as well as those of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals into the broadest national front organization ever known till that time pledged to work and fight for Vietnam independence. This was the rich fruit of twenty years of Nguyen's painful organizational work, first awakening the national consciousness, arousing the sentiments for national independence, training and inspiring fighters and devoted cadres in this cause, then gradually fusing all the patriotic elements and organizations into a single united front. So great was Nguyen's prestige that although he was not in Vietnam at the time of the formation, he was unanimously elected President of the Vietminh.
Nguyen had already returned by the time the Japanese entered the war and invaded Vietnam, and on behalf of the Vietminh, he offered to join hands with the French in a common struggle against the Japanese invaders. Instead, the French military joined hands with the Japanese in hunting down Vietminh supporters. The Vietminh started fighting the Japanese on their own. But allies were needed and it was decided to contact the Chinese – their nearest allies in the war against the Japanese – and that, as Nguyen best knew China and the Chinese, he should go to Chungking and establish contact with Chiang Kai-shek who had established his government there after the Japanese had driven him out of Hankow.
It was no easy task to go from North Vietnam to Chungking with communications virtually non-existent and certainly not available to marked revolutionaries. To put the French, Japanese and Kuomintang secret police off the scent, Nguyen changed his name again – this time to Ho-Chi-Minh, the name under which he was soon to become known throughout the world. He set out on foot and after walking for ten nights (to avoid the Japanese and French police) and five days in the safer areas, he reached the first Chinese town. On the evening of his arrival, before he even had a chance to rest, he was arrested by the Kuomintang police and flung into jail. No charges were levelled against him. Letters and telegrams he sent – or asked to be sent – to high ranking authorities remained unanswered. For the first two weeks his legs were fettered at night and a yoke was placed around his neck by day.
Six weeks later with his arms chained behind his back and an escort of soldiers, Ho-Chi -Minh was marched away – with no idea what was in store for him or where he was going. Day after day over the steep border mountains, across swamps and plains, in broiling sun and pounding rain, from sunrise to sunset, his arms always chained behind his back and sometimes his legs chained together as well, he marched with his escort, happy at first to be rid of the stinking cell and yokes. But while enjoying the changing landscape, the relative freedom and the fresh air after the filthy, cramped prison cell, his heart and soul was with the bitter struggle he knew was being waged at home. He tried to keep his mind active by composing and reciting poems as he marched. At nights he and his escort stayed in small villages. The chains binding his arms were released and he slept on rice-straw in the local lock-up. It was when they arrived at a district capital that he suffered most intensely. He was usually kept a week or two sharing crowded cells with murderers, opium smokers, criminals with terrible infectious diseases and loathsome habits. As he was usually the last-comer, he had to clean the toilet in the morning, sweep the floor of the cell and do all the "dirty work". Often enough his "bed" was a seat on the stinking bucket used as a W.C. to be awakened every-time an inmate felt the need.
One morning he awoke to find that the man who slept back to back with him had died during the night. He helped a fellow inmate to carry the corpse into the court-yard. The cells of course were vermin-ridden and it was from this that Ho suffered most physically. Clothes and the cell floor and all the cell inmates were crawling with lice, fleas and bugs and in addition to the vermin there were clouds of mosquitoes at night. His whole body itched and burned. There was no way of getting rid of the angry, red rashes which formed, no way even of washing either body or vermin-ridden clothes. And killing them was a method of passing time rather than with any serious thought of reducing their numbers.
It was the periods in these district jails which greatly affected Ho-Chi-Minh's health. His hair thinned out rapidly and what remained turned grey. His flesh fell away and he became a living skeleton, his eye-sight weakened. Most of all he suffered mentally. While he was languishing in the vermin, disease-ridden cells or being dragged sick and exhausted from prison to prison – who knows what was happening to the movement at home. Certainly this was just the moment when the comrades most needed his advice and guidance, the benefits of his rich revolutionary experience so painfully acquired over the past 20 years. He knew also that his comrades must be worried to distraction about him. And they urgently needed the support he had set out to get. Just when he felt at the end of his strength, the jail doors would be opened and he would be marched away again often enough leg chains linked with those that pinioned his elbows behind his back. But he always preferred the periods of marching to those spent in the terrible district jails. For 80 days he stumbled up and down the mountain roads, his strength for the march diminishing after each period in jail. He was flung into nearly 30 different jails from the time he was captured till the time he reached the Kwangsi capital of Kweilin where he endured another six weeks in prison and after that was marched again to Liuchow, also in Kwangsi province. Here he was thrown into a military prison, with the slightly more privileged status of a "political prisoner". Neck yokes and leg fetters were not imposed. He could leave his cell to perform his toilet needs. Now and again he even had access to a book or newspaper – and on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion he was given a hair-cut, allowed to have a hot bath and wash his clothes. That one bath did a lot towards curing what threatened to become a permanent rash and itch from his permanent companions – the vermin.
Gradually, Ho-Chi-Minh pieced together at le as part of the reason for his arrest and sufferings. No charges were ever made against him, but he learned that the Kuomintang feared he had come to China to destroy their own instrument for penetration into Vietnam – the Vietnam Cach-Mang Dong-Minh Hoi (Vietnam Kuomintang or Revolutionary League) which had a headquarters at Liuchow. It did not take long incidentally for Ho to establish contact with some of the more patriotic elements at this headquarters. He was kept in Liuchow prison for 14 months and then released but kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to leave the Liuchow area. He was so extremely weak that he could hardly stand up and his eyesight was almost gone. He tried using his legs, walking a little further each day, increasing his strength till he could even take short mountain climbing excursions. He also started exercises to strengthen his eye-sight, at first staring into a darkened room, then gradually increasing the intensity of the light and the range of vision. He used the period of forced residence in Liuchow – as the period of his disguise as a wealthy Chinese merchant on vacation – to prepare himself for the great tasks that lay ahead.
Finally he managed to leave Liuchow and after two years' absence arrived back in Vietnam. He returned to find that great developments had indeed taken place. The Vietminh, under the leadership of Pham-van-Dong and Vo-Nguyen-Giap had organized armed forces and had already carved out important resistance bases in the North. Whole liberated areas had been set up and the ground-work laid for the future nation- wide armed uprising. When Ho-Chi-Minh returned he threw all his talents and energies into directing guerilla activities against the Japanese, above all consolidating arming and training the forces for the armed insurrection, welding the Vietminh into a powerful, united organization with its own armed forces, its own trained cadres capable of seizing and maintaining power when the moment was ripe. And this moment came on August 1945, when the nation-wide uprising took place and State power was seized by the Vietminh.
Even his adversaries have been compelled to pay tribute to the great qualities of this selfless revolutionary patriot whose whole life has been devoted to one aim – freedom for his people. Jean Sainteny who negotiated the first agreement with Ho-Chi-Minh after the August 1945 Revolution has this to say about President Ho in his book "Histoire d'une Paix Manquée" (History of a Lost Peace).
"Like Alessandri and Pignon, I myself from my first contacts with Ho-Chi-Minh had the impression that this ascetic, whose face revealed intelligence, energy, shrewdness and acuteness, was a personality of the first rank who before long would be projected onto the forefront of the Asiatic scene. His vast culture, his intelligence, his incredible activity, his asceticism and his complete selflessness have gained him an incomparable popularity among the population. It is doubtless regrettable that France should have under-estimated this man and failed to understand his value and the forces he represented…" Sainteny concludes his character sketch by saying that according to everything he could learn from Ho-Chi-Minh in conversation, by studying his activities and attitudes – "a solution by force was repugnant to him".
But the French government of the day betrayed the agreements negotiated by Sainteny and sought a "solution by force". If the government at that time had had the same appreciation of the situation as Sainteny seems to have had – France would have been spared 8 years of costly war in which she lost 92,000 killed and missing, 114,000 wounded and three billion pounds sterling of her treasure. She would have been spared the final ignominy of Dien-Bien-Phu.
And this brings us back again to President Ho's sun-helmet and the quiet valley of Dien- Bien-Phu as it was in the autumn of 1953.
During my voyage to the Viet-Bac, the radio had been full of news about a place called Dien-Bien-Phu. According to the stern radio reports, the French had built up a big base there and had started offensive operations to "clean up the Viet-Minh" from the whole of Northwest Vietnam and encircle them in a giant pincers movement which would extend from Dien-Bien-Phu to the Red River Delta. And this is where the sun-helmet comes into the story. For it belonged to President Ho-Chi-Minh and alongside the helmet was the President himself.
With the minute attention to detail that I found I later was so characteristic of this great leader of the Vietnamese people, he had called shortly after my arrival with another journalist, to assure himself that we had survived the rigours of the journey and were in good health. It was difficult to believe that within a few hours of arrival we should be sitting opposite this legendary revolutionary leader. But there he was, the unmistakably kindly face, the twinkling depthless black eyes, the thin straggling beard, the face we had known from photographs and portraits for years past. He had appeared out of the jungle shadows unannounced, a windbreaker jacket thrown cape-like across his shoulders, walking briskly with a long bamboo stick, sun-helmet worn high over his broad brow. After he had put us completely at our ease in his fluent French and English – and had addressed a few words in Italian to my Italian colleague – we asked President Ho why the radio was making such a noise about Dien-Bien-Phu. What in fact was going on there?
"This is Dien-Bien-Phu," he said and tipped his sun-helmet upside down on the table. "Here are mountains," and his slim, strong fingers traced the outside rim of the helmet, "and that's where we are too. Down here, "and his fist plunged to the bottom of the helmet," is the valley of Dien-Bien-Phu. There – are the French. They can't get out. It may take a long time, but they can't get out", he repeated. That was the battle of Dien-Bien-Phu in a sun-helmet. It was the picture which remained before my eyes for the weeks that followed, listening to the radio on the long train ride back to Peking, all the way across the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow and during that first week at the Geneva Conference when the ebb and flow of battle was dramatised by western news agencies with their highly coloured and distorted accounts of French victories and break-outs.
In the bowl of President Ho's sun-helmet were the best troops the French High Command could muster in lndo-China, gradually to be built up to over 16,000, two-thirds of all the specially trained mobile forces in North Vietnam and by the end of the battle all their trained – and many untrained – parachute troops.
A few minutes after President Ho had so succinctly pre so noted the Dien-Bien-Phu picture, the sun-helmet was brought into play again when in a few words and with a few brief gestures, he related how guerilla fighters in coordination with the Dien-Bien-Phu action had penetrated into the French air base of Gia-Lam at Hanoi and Cat-Bi at Haiphong to destroy a total of 78 planes on the ground – 60 of them at Cat-Bi.
"Cat-Bi is a heavily guarded peninsula", explained President Ho and again the sun-helmet was upside down, its oval rim the 20 kilometers long perimeter of Cat-Bi with the sensitive brown fingers tracing the series of barbed wire fences which surrounded the field, pausing to stab into place artillery and anti-aircraft positions, machine-gun nests, searchlights and all the other obstacles the guerilla fighters had to overcome to carry out their extraordinary exploit. One had the feeling from his intimate knowledge of the defences of the aerodrome that the President himself had something to do with mapping out the attack.
But he had not come to discuss military affairs with us. After assuring himself that we were comfortably installed and had really survived the journey in good shape, he threw his wind-breaker over his shoulders again, put on his sun-helmet and with his bamboo stick and a single soldier for protection, moved off into the deepening jungle shadows. As he left, he turned and said, "You can tell the comrades over there," waving in the general direction of Europe with his stick, "that I am in good health. I can still walk 40 kilometers a day as long as there's not too much of this..." and he waved his stick up and down to indicate the high mountains which surrounded us. With a final wave, he was swallowed up by the jungle.
The first impression of this meeting with the leader of the Vietnam people was the complete informality, the warmth and simplicity of it all. President Ho – or Uncle Ho as he is to millions of people throughout lndo-China – had the ability to make one feel at ease from the first moment and to present the most complex questions in a few clear words and gestures. In subsequent meetings with this great personality it is just those qualities of warmth, simplicity and the clarity of expression which only comes with exceptional intelligence and complete grasp of the subject – which made the deepest impression. Everyone who is received by President Ho comments on these characteristics, and above all their feeling of being immediately "at home" with him.
Even a small dip into the extraordinary life of this peasant-worker-intellectual-
Nguyen-van-Thanh was the name he was given when he was born in 1890 in the village of Kim-Lien in Nghe-An province, Central Vietnam. His people were of peasant stock but his father had taken the Mandarin examinations and for a certain time held an official post. He later returned to continue his life as a peasant. From the earliest days of his youth, Nguyen-van-Thanh hated French Colonialism. He pledged himself to fight against it. When he was in his early twenties and under the name of "Ba", he found a job as cook's help aboard the Latouche-Tréville a French wind-jammer. After many adventures he ended up in London, working for the fabulous Escoffier, the greatest French chef of his generation. Vietnam writers engaged in collecting details of the President's early life have tracked down some of the people with whom
"Ba" sailed and worked in those early years after he left home.
Working in the officers' saloon on the Latouche-Tréville was a certain Mai for example, who re members his shipmate "Ba" very well. He relates that though the work was terribly heavy for this rather fragile young man, "Ba" stuck to it very well and as soon as the heavy day's work was over and the others slept or played cards, "Ba" used to sit up and read or write till eleven o'clock or even midnight. "Although he was of inferior status to us because we were graded and he only a cook's help, he was very cultured and it was he who helped my illiterate friends to write letter s home. He worked very hard hauling heavy sacks of vegetables, meat and ice up the narrow, slippery gangways from the hold to the kitchen, but he never complained" Mai recalled, "and he never used any vulgar words. We all liked him".
After the ship dropped anchor at Marseille, Mai relates that "Ba" got immense pleasure sitting in the cafés, talking in very bad French with the ordinary people. "He used to come back on board," Mai said, "saying that the French in France are better and more polite than those in Indo-China".
"Ba" did not immediately quit the Latouche-Tréville on arrival in Europe and Mai related an incident at Dakar where during a heavy storm, mountainous seas prevented the ship getting into port or lowering a boat to take a line in. French ashore sent Africans to swim a line out to the ship.
"One, two, three, four of them, one after another jumped into the sea" recounted Mai, "and one after another they were drowned. It was quite a common sight but "Ba" was deeply moved and wept. I was surprised to see him so affected and asked him why he was so sad. He replied "In France the French are good. But the French colonialists are cruel and inhuman. It's the same everywhere. I've seen such things happening in Phan-Rang (southeast coast of Vietnam) with the French bursting with laughter while our compatriots were drowning for their sake. To them the life of an Asian or African is not worth one cent". "Ba" left the boat shortly afterwards.
In London in the winter of 1913 where he had gone to try and study – the future president at first worked sweeping snow at a school, at firing a boiler in a pitch-dark basement and then washing dishes at the Carlton Hotel where the great Escoffier reigned as Europe's uncrowned king of chefs. "Ba's" presence was brought to the notice of the great chef when it was found that instead of throwing away the leftovers from Escoffier's creations, "Ba" used to clean them up, trim off the half-eaten bits and send them back to the kitchen. Escoffier sent for him and asked why he did not scrape them off into the rubbish bins as did other dishwashers. "Good food shouldn't be thrown away," replied "Ba", "it should be given to the hungry poor." Escoffier laughed and told him to abandon his "revolutionary" ideas. But he took a liking to the earnest young man and said, "I'll teach you to cook instead. Then you'll become rich and famous." And in fact, he promoted "Ba" to the cake baking department, where he earned much more money.
Early in the morning before work and late at night after he had finished, "Ba" was to be seen sitting in Hyde Park, books, notebook and pencil always by his side. Apart from learning the English language, he was also studying the history of colonial peoples, acquiring precious knowledge that was to be turned to good account later on.
After the end of World War I, "Ba" under the name of Nguyen-Ai-Quoc went to Paris, where he found a job as a photographer's retoucher – his studies at home, which his father had insisted on, included learning to write Chinese characters with a brush and this served him well in quickly picking up the art of retouching photographs. In the tourist season he made extra money by painting and selling oriental "antiquities". It was in post-war Paris that he found an outlet for his fervent anti-colonialist sentiments. It was the eve of the Versailles Conference and the air was ringing with the high-sounding Wilsonian phrases of independence, democracy and freedom for all. Nguyen got in touch with other compatriots in Paris and the provinces and organized an association of Vietnam patriots. He contacted other delegations of colonial peoples, Indians, Arabs, Koreans and others – all attracted by the golden promises of Wilson's principles. He learned they were putting in claims for their countries' independence and on behalf of the association of Vietnam patriots, he drew up an 8-point claim for Vietnam independence which was drafted into French by a lawyer member of the Association, Phan-Van-Truong, and circulated to Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the others at Versailles. The 8 points among other things called for Vietnam autonomy, equality between Vietnamese and French, an amnesty for political prisoners, for freedom of association, freedom of religious beliefs, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, abolition of forced labour and abolition of the tax on salt and the forced consumption of alcohol and opium.
Naturally, as far as the Versailles Conference was concerned, nothing came of all this. But the memorandum served as a basis for attracting attention to the question of Vietnam independence. The 8 points served as a starting point for a wide campaign conducted by Nguyen to publicize conditions in Vietnam, the justice of Vietnamese claims for a greater share of independence. Everything he earned, everything he could save or collect from sympathisers went for the publication of tracts setting out the 8 points and their distribution to Vietnamese living in France, to Vietnamese soldiers in the French army – and to the French press. The first French paper – and almost the only one at that time – to publish the claims was "Le PopuIaire" edited then by Charles Longuet, the socialist son-in-law Kari Marx. Nguyen called on him and for the first time in his life was addressed by a Frenchman as "dear comrade". This visit marked his entry into the French political world. Longuet asked him to write articles bringing to the attention of the French people the horrors of colonial oppression in Vietnam. But Nguyen's lack of knowledge both of journalism and the French language hampered him. At first, the lawyer Pham-van-Truong rewrote the articles and after correcting them Nguyen signed – but they did not always contain the ideas he wanted to express. He started to study journalism and to improve his French at the same time. It was then that he met another sympathetic editor, Monmousseau, editor of "La Vie Ouvrière" (Workers' Life) the organ of the progressive trade-unions (and still today the organ of the French CGT under the same editor Monmousseau).
As Nguyen's French and journalism were both weak, Monmousseau suggested that he start by writing articles of 5 or 6 lines only, which the editor himself would correct. This Nguyen did and when his first 6 line article appeared, Nguyen noted the editorial changes that had been made and gradually improved his work. Later he was told to increase to 7 or 8 lines. It was little space for all the burning ideas Nguyen had to express, but perhaps that hard apprenticeship as a journalist forced to compress the story of his people's sufferings into a daily 5 or 6 lines accounts for the extraordinary economy of language of President Ho-Chi-Minh today, that precious ability to express the most complex and vivid images in a few words. Gradually he improved to the extent of writing a whole column. And when that moment arrived, the sage Monmousseau told him to practice reducing the number of words but packing in the same ideas and facts. In this way Nguyen received a first-class journalistic training from a master at the trade.
He began writing short stories and "L'Humanité" which continued the progressive traditions of its great socialist founder Jean Jaurès, was the first paper to publish – and pay a precious 100 francs – for a short story published in two parts. This was a great day in the life of the young writer. After that came a book, "Accusations Against French Colonialism" a well-documented study of French imperialism and then a play from the pen of the versatile writer who had so quickly found his literary feet. His play the "Bamboo Dragon", in poetic and allegoric form was a subtle, deadly attack against colonialism. It was banned by the French government but highly praised by literary critics who saw it at private performances in various progressive Paris clubs.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc gradually moved into the circle of the French Socialist Party, made the acquaintance of Marcel Cachin, Vaillant-Couturier, Blum and others. He lost no opportunity to push to the forefront the Vietnamese question. He became an expert in turning any discussion in the direction of Vietnamese independence. Intimates of Nguyen at that period relate an incident in which a group of intellectuals were addressed by Dr. Coué on hypnotism as a means of treating illness. In the discussion that followed opinions were sharply divided and Nguyen strongly opposed hypnotism on the grounds that "the French had hypnotized our people in order to suppress and exploit us", thus turning the discussion to his favourite subject.
The period of the early post-war years in France was one of intense intellectual activity – especially in left-wing circles. Nguyen threw himself eagerly into these activities, clutched at every chance offered to improve his general knowledge. He jointed associations and clubs which organized visits to factories and museums, theatres and scientific institutes and even workers travel associations, which arranged cheap tours inside and outside France. Although always desperately poor he managed to squeeze into groups visiting Italy, Germany and Switzerland – and to travel widely in France, always interesting himself in the life of the people, the forms of workers organizations and methods of governments. In Paris he was in close touch with revolutionary leaders from other French colonies and together with them, he organized the "League of Colonial Countries" which brought together nationals of the colonies who were living in France and French sympathisers. The League published a paper, the "Paria" which was managed and edited by Nguyen himself. It was banned in the colonies – but with Nguyen's sailor contacts from his sea-faring days, distribution was arranged under the very noses of the colonial gendarmes. Vietnamese living in France generously supported the paper financially – but usually secretly because of fear of French reprisals.
Nguyen joined the French Socialist Party – the first Vietnamese to become a member of a French political party. It was on the eve of the fateful 1920 Tours Congress, a period of burning discussions among the members. Should the French Socialist Party remain in the Second International which had failed in its pledges to oppose World War I? Should it join the Third International formed by the parties or elements from parties, former members of the Second International who had remained true to the pledges made at the 1912 and 1913 Congresses to oppose by every means the approaching war and if war broke out to transform it into an anti-imperialist, struggle? Should it form another "Second and a Half International"? Nguyen-Ai-Quoc attended the fervent discussions but many of the terms used were incomprehensible. Till now he had been a revolutionary patriot – not a student of political economy. His political vocabulary was still weak. Over and over again he heard the words reformism, utopianism, communism, objectivism, subjectivism, saint-simonism and many other terms completely strange to him. But he attended the discussions with a burning interest.
Marcel Cachin and Vaillant-Couturier were supporting adherence to the Third International in I'Humanité, Blum and Paul Faure were the foremost champions of the Second International in Le Populaire. But the arguments were often too difficult for Nguyen to follow.
In one of the heated discussions, he intervened: "Look here, my dear friends. You are all for socialism. That is very good. You all want to emancipate the working class, don't you? That is also very good. In that case, the question of Second, Second and a Half or Third International makes no difference. Aren't they all fighting for Socialism? Decide for one or the other but unite and have done with it. Why do you argue so much? While you are discussing here, our compatriots in Vietnam are suffering..."
A young Paris dress-maker, Rose whispered to him: "You will understand later why we are arguing so much. It is very important for the future of the working class."
During the Tours Congress Nguyen attended as a delegate and spoke up for the colonial peoples.
As he was the only delegate from the French colonies, he attracted much attention – not all of it welcome. The day after be made his first speech, his photo was published in a Paris newspaper and the police came to arrest him. But his fellow delegates refused to allow the police to enter the Congress room. Nguyen continued to take part in the debates, speaking at every occasion offered on the colonial question – and especially the question of Vietnam
When the vote came for Second or Third International – the Second and a Half having been decisively rejected – Nguyen voted with the majority and Cachin for the Third International. A minority headed by Blum voted to remain in the Second International. The dress-maker Rose who was secretary of the Congress was pleasantly surprised and went over to Nguyen to say that at least now he seemed to understand why they had discussed the question so thoroughly in Paris.
"I didn't understand the strategy, tactics and lots of the terms and techniques you discussed," Nguyen replied, "but I did grasp one thing – that the Third International pays much attention to the colonial question. Their delegates promised to help the oppressed colonial peoples regain their freedom and independence. The Second International speakers never mentioned a word about the fate of the colonies. "Rose smiled and said, "Comrade, you've really made some progress."
The French Socialist Party was split. The majority, headed by Marcel Cachin, that voted for the Third International became the French Communist Party for which l'Humanité later became the official organ. The minority remained the Socialist Party headed by Blum affiliated to the Second International with Le Populaire as their official organ.
Nguyen continued at his trade of photographer's retoucher, at editing "the Paria" and at studying in Paris libraries. But the police were constantly on his track seeking some pretext to imprison or deport him. He was also chafing at his exile and wanted to get back to the struggle in Vietnam itself. But he was a marked man and had to watch his every step.
One Saturday afternoon, his Senegalese, Moroccan, Algerian and other friends from the colonies come as was their habit to "the Paria" office to discuss the following week's work and editorials. The office was closed and locked. They visited Nguyen's closest friend, a lawyer from the Antilles and found him and his wife very upset, the children in tears. An opened letter lay on the table and was quickly snatched up by a Moroccan doctor who recognised Nguyen's handwriting. He read the contents out aloud:
"Dear Friends,
"We have been working together for a long time. Though we are people of different races, different countries, different religions, we are attached to each other as brothers of the same family. Together we endure the same misfortunes – the atrocious rule of colonialism. We fight for a common ideal – the liberation of our people and the regaining of independence of our fatherlands. We are not alone in our struggle because we have the support of our entire peoples and also of French democrats, the true sons of France who stand with us...
"As for me, the answer is clear. Go back home, work with the masses, enlighten them, unite them, train them, set them on the road to struggle for their independence. Perhaps some of you could do the same. Others should carry on our present work, consolidate the League of Colonial Countries and develop our 'Paria'..." It was typical of Nguyen's punctilious attention to details that the letter included such passages as "My compatriot Dai will hand to B. (his lawyer friend from the Antilles) the key of the newspaper office, various papers and documents of our League and the paper as well as its funds. I have paid the rent of the office up to the end of the year. The printing costs are also paid for. We owe money to no-one. The library hook is in the drawer on the right. All books are in, except those lent to members on holiday..."
Another passage too was typical for the great love and care for children which throughout his life were to supplant other sentimental ties which were virtually impossible for a revolutionary in his situation, living a life of extreme asceticism, never knowing at what moment he must disappear underground or move across a border with the police on his trail.
"Now for a few words to my niece and nephew" continued the letter. "You love me very much and I also love you very much. It is true, isn't it my children? I will tell our young friends in Vietnam how good you are. I will shake their hands for you. Perhaps for a long time you will not see Uncle Nguyen, to climb on his back or knees, as you used to. It will also be a long time before I see my Alice and Paul again. When we meet next probably I shall be old and you'll be as big as your Mummy and Daddy. That is not important. I'll always remember you. You'll always be my dear little Alice and my dear little Paul. Be good! Learn well your lessons! Be obedient to your Mummy and Daddy! Don't beat the little dog, Marius! When you grow up, you'll fight for your country like your parents, like Uncle Nguyen and other uncles.
"My little niece and nephew, I kiss you both most affectionately. Kiss your mother for me. Uncle Nguyen."
For all Vietnam children today Uncle Nguyen of the mid 1920's has now become Uncle Ho. One sees in this passage from a letter written over thirty years ago how deep, how genuine is his love for children, how genuine the love and interest with which he guides and aids their developments in Vietnam today.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc's journey back to Vietnam was not as speedy or direct as he had expected. With the French police hot on his trail, normal travel routes were closed to him. He arrived at Leningrad in the winter of 1924 aboard a Soviet steamer, shivering in fur-lined clothes given him by friendly Soviet sailors. He had hoped to see Lenin – but was greeted on arrival with the sad news that Lenin had died two days previously. Nguyen had left France without any papers of any sort. He knew no-one in the Soviet Union and had arrived unannounced and unexpected. But Marcel Cachin and Vaillant-Couturier were in Moscow for Lenin's funeral and they were only too pleased to introduce him to those who could help most. Nguyen was immediately made to feel at home in Moscow and took the opportunity of his visit to the Soviet Union to continue his studies of revolutionary movements and organizational methods.
From the Soviet Union, he moved on the next year to China where he at first eked out a meagre living selling cigarettes and newspapers in South China gradually making contacts with the Vietnamese nationals there. Nguyen later answered an advertisement in the Kwangchow daily for a Chinese-English translator. He spoke, read and wrote Chinese fluently. He answered the advertisement, got the job and found himself working for Borodin, the Soviet political adviser to Sun Yat-sen, founder of the first Chinese Republic. It was a period of intense revolutionary upsurge in China. The Kuomintang-Communist coalition had been forged to overthrow the remnants of feudalism, to wipe out the warlord regimes, unify the country and to deal a death blow to the colonialists installed in China's main cities. It was the period of mass actions and strikes by Chinese workers in Shanghai and other big cities brutally repressed by the British and Japanese police. It was the golden period of the Sun Yat-sen revolution. A revolutionary government supported by the Chinese Communist Party was installed at Canton, a revolutionary military academy had been opened at Whampoa in Kwantung province to form cadres for a new army which was first to consolidate the position in Kwantung province and then sweep northwards to unify the whole country south of the Yangtze, sweeping the warlords aside and preparing to deal the final blow to feudalism and imperialism in China. Heading the Whampoa Academy were Chiang Kai-shek and Chou En-lai.
Nguyen-Ai-Quoc threw all his energies and talents into this movement. He saw immediately that the success as of the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist movement in China could open the way for victory in Vietnam. But while making his own contribution to the struggle there, he did not neglect his main aim – the liberation of Vietnam. He started organizing the Vietnamese living in China and formed the "League of Revolutionary Vietnamese Youth". He set up a training centre for the future cadres of the revolution. Young patriots, especially students secretly came to this training centre from Vietnam and later as secretly returned to carry on the work of organizing the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam on a new, scientific basis. With the help of other compatriots and revolutionaries living in South China, Nguyen founded the "League of Oppressed Peoples in Asia" in which there were Vietnamese, Koreans, Indonesians and other Asiatics. He began the publication of pamphlets and newspapers which were secretly sent into Vietnam and soon attracted the attention of the French police. But the more the literature was seized and its distributors punished, the more this literature began to attract the attention of Vietnamese intellectuals and patriots, and the more patriots began to contact the organizations established under Nguyen's guidance.
The betrayal by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 of the Chinese national revolution when he massacred the Communists and workers in Shanghai and other cities and subverted Sun-Yat-sen's Republic into his personal dictatorship was a setback to Nguyen's work also. Borodin and the other Comintern advisers, after many adventures and narrow escapes from assassination by Chiang Kai-shek's thugs returned to the Soviet Union. Nguyen moved his base into Siam where there was a large Vietnam minority. Always closely pursued by the agents of the French police, be moved from place to place in different disguises, organizing, awakening the consciousness of his compatriots, training them, always maintaining contact with the independence movement and revolutionary groups inside the homeland. He earned his living in these difficult days in diverse ways. His varied professions became his best disguises. At times he was an agricultural labourer – thanks to his peasant background he could plough and do general agricultural work – sometimes a Buddhist monk with a shaven head and begging bowl or a street corner merchant selling cigarettes. But wherever he was and however he was gaining his living, he organized and taught. In Siam he founded the "Vietnam Association for Mutual Assistance" and put out a weekly paper, "I'Humanité" which infiltrated into Vietnam.
In late 1929, Nguyen went back to China for a conference at Kweilin – then capital of Kwangsi province which bordered northern Vietnam – with delegates from the three main revolutionary parties in Indo-China. Until this conference, they had not been able to agree on a common programme, but each wanted to be recognised as the sole Communist Party. When Nguyen arrived his words were few – but as usual to the point.
"In the Soviet Union, England, France and China", he said, "and in colonial countries such as India, Indonesia etc... there is only one Communist Party. Likewise Vietnam cannot afford to have three communist parties.
"We must unite the entire people to fight for national independence and to achieve this aim there must be unity of organization. This organisation could keep its old name 'Revolutionary Youth' or adopt the name 'Communist Party' but its political programme must be National Independence, Freedom to the People, Forward to Socialism".
After a short discussion agreement was reached to unify the three groups under the name of Communist Party of Indo-China. A programme of action was agreed and delegates returned to carry on the fight. Thus on January 6, 1930 was born the Communist Party of lndo-China. The new Party soon made its presence felt with a series of big strikes the same year and the setting up of People's Soviets in three central districts in September 1930. The discussion to establish the Communist Party (which later was dissolved and replaced by the Lao-Dong or Workers' Party of Vietnam) were much shorter than those in which Nguyen had taken part almost ten years previously at Tours, but the results were unanimity and the forging of the party which was to lead the Vietnam masses in heroic and successful struggles in their bitter fight for independence.
Nguyen continued to move around the perimeter of Vietnam, directing the movement from without, continually dodging the French and Kuomintang police and their agents. Sometimes in China, sometimes in Siam and even further afield, adopting scores of different names and disguises, he was always on the move, always organizing and directing, knitting together ever more closely all the anti-imperialist forces inside the country. In Hong-Kong in 1933, he was arrested on trumped up charges that he was a Soviet agent and that he was plotting the destruction of the British Crown Colony. He was flung into a darkened, bug-ridden, flea-infested cell with 15 minutes exercise daily. The only moments he enjoyed were those when he was taken out for questioning. He had become an ardent smoker – and the British security officers who questioned him freely plied him with cigarettes. But most of all he was glad to have a chance of studying the methods of the British security police, of finding out their line of questioning, how much they knew, how much they guessed, how much they fabricated.
Normally the full hypocrisy of the British ruling class was brought to bear by the state machinery in such cases. The accused were usually revolutionaries from the Chinese mainland, whose skins or heads Chiang Kai-shek wanted. As they were innocent of any crime, they were sentenced to deportation to China, where they were arrested – as the British authorities knew full well they would be – at the point where British police pushed them over the frontier. A similar fate would have befallen Nguyen had it not been for the extraordinary diligence of a British lawyer named Loseby, who distinguished his profession and did credit to his people by his devoted defence of Nguyen. His activities and the fact that ultimately he probably saved Nguyen' life, have not been forgotten by president Ho. The Hong-Kong authorities tried to force Loseby to abandon the case and to persuade Nguyen that it would be better for him not to retain Loseby as his lawyer. But to no avail.
Loseby said to his client one day: "Sun Yat-sen was once saved by an Englishman. I will likewise endeavour to save you. Tell me no more than I need to know in order successfully to defend you. No need to say more for I know every revolutionary has his secrets."
Nguyen was eventually brought to trial in the Hong-Kong Supreme Court where Loseby directed a panel of lawyers in his defence. Neither Nguyen nor Loseby were permitted to address the Court. The case lasted over a month. Finally the judges decided there was no case for the prosecution, dismissed the charges – but resorted to the old trick and ordered Nguyen deported from Hong-Kong on a French ship which was just what the French police were waiting for Loseby protested the decision and appealed to the Privy Council in London where Sir Stafford Cripps (member of the Labour Party Executive and later Finance Minister) defended the case.
In the meantime Nguyen had fallen ill and was transferred to the prison hospital together with opium addicts, murderers and pirates. Two Kuomintang secret agents kept constant watch inside, and two British policemen outside the ward – which was especially enclosed in barbed wire. Sir Stafford Cripps followed up Loseby's good work and the Privy Council decided there was no evidence that Nguyen was a "Soviet agent".
It had not been proved that he was plotting the destruction of Hong-Kong, the fact that he was a Communist or Nationalist was not a violation of British law. Therefore Nguyen-Ai-Quoc should be immediately released.
It was all very well to be set free – but where to go? French and Kuomintang police were waiting for him to move outside Hong-Kong, or even to move around in Hong-Kong within range of their assassins. Loseby applied on Nguyen's behalf for a visa for England and as the agents were hot on his trail, Nguyen secretly boarded a ship to England. But he was taken off at Singapore, deported to Hong-Kong – and arrested on the grounds that he had entered the colony without a visa. This time again, Loseby came to the rescue. As there was little chance of winning a second trial, Loseby organized his escape – and evading French and Kuomintang agents who were swarming around the policy station and Loseby's own house – he managed to smuggle Nguyen out of Hong-Kong. And here began one of the most restful periods that the hunted revolutionary had ever known. Disguised as a wealthy Chinese businessman, he was spirited out of Hong-Kong to live in the home of one of Loseby's intimate friends on the Chinese mainland. Under the very noses of some of his worst enemies, he lived as a wealthy merchant on vacation, went for long walks in the forest, gradually recovered his health, visited pagodas and beauty spots and was soon contributing asides under various names in English and Chinese for local newspapers. This period greatly contributed to rehabilitating his health.
When things had quietened down again, Nguyen was on the move, re-establishing contact with secret committees abroad, advising and guiding the movement at home, nourishing the last awakening sentiment for national independence. During the period of the Popular Front government in France, Nguyen immediately saw the chance of gaining some terrain. He urged cooperation between the independence movement and the Popular Front government and the formulation of demands for immediate reforms. This was done with some success. Certain democratic rights were granted, better conditions were created for carrying on the struggle. Among other results was the release of Pham-van-Dong and a number of patriots from the Poulo-Condor penal settlement. But with the break-up of the Popular Front government, reaction set in again and when World War II broke out savage repressions robbed the movement of almost all the gains it had achieved. Political prisoners who had been released were rearrested – wherever the French could lay hands on them – newspapers that had started up were closed down, patriots were hounded into jail and the prisons and concentration camps were soon full again but in the meantime the independence movement had moved on to a new level. New links had been forged which even the most brutal repressions could not break.
When World War II moved out of the stage of the "phoney war" and began to be transformed into a genuine anti-fascist struggle, Nguyen called for the Vietnamese people to join in the fight and without abandoning the fight for national independence to stand on the side of the Allies and help defeat Fascism. Above all the Vietnam people must unite. On the initiative of Nguyen the League Against Imperialism funded in 1930 was now transformed into a much broader organizations the Vietnam Doc-Lap Dong-Minh, the Vietnam Independence League or Vietminh in its abbreviated form. The driving force of this organization was the Communist Party but it united other political parties, workers and peasants organizations as well as those of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals into the broadest national front organization ever known till that time pledged to work and fight for Vietnam independence. This was the rich fruit of twenty years of Nguyen's painful organizational work, first awakening the national consciousness, arousing the sentiments for national independence, training and inspiring fighters and devoted cadres in this cause, then gradually fusing all the patriotic elements and organizations into a single united front. So great was Nguyen's prestige that although he was not in Vietnam at the time of the formation, he was unanimously elected President of the Vietminh.
Nguyen had already returned by the time the Japanese entered the war and invaded Vietnam, and on behalf of the Vietminh, he offered to join hands with the French in a common struggle against the Japanese invaders. Instead, the French military joined hands with the Japanese in hunting down Vietminh supporters. The Vietminh started fighting the Japanese on their own. But allies were needed and it was decided to contact the Chinese – their nearest allies in the war against the Japanese – and that, as Nguyen best knew China and the Chinese, he should go to Chungking and establish contact with Chiang Kai-shek who had established his government there after the Japanese had driven him out of Hankow.
It was no easy task to go from North Vietnam to Chungking with communications virtually non-existent and certainly not available to marked revolutionaries. To put the French, Japanese and Kuomintang secret police off the scent, Nguyen changed his name again – this time to Ho-Chi-Minh, the name under which he was soon to become known throughout the world. He set out on foot and after walking for ten nights (to avoid the Japanese and French police) and five days in the safer areas, he reached the first Chinese town. On the evening of his arrival, before he even had a chance to rest, he was arrested by the Kuomintang police and flung into jail. No charges were levelled against him. Letters and telegrams he sent – or asked to be sent – to high ranking authorities remained unanswered. For the first two weeks his legs were fettered at night and a yoke was placed around his neck by day.
Six weeks later with his arms chained behind his back and an escort of soldiers, Ho-Chi -Minh was marched away – with no idea what was in store for him or where he was going. Day after day over the steep border mountains, across swamps and plains, in broiling sun and pounding rain, from sunrise to sunset, his arms always chained behind his back and sometimes his legs chained together as well, he marched with his escort, happy at first to be rid of the stinking cell and yokes. But while enjoying the changing landscape, the relative freedom and the fresh air after the filthy, cramped prison cell, his heart and soul was with the bitter struggle he knew was being waged at home. He tried to keep his mind active by composing and reciting poems as he marched. At nights he and his escort stayed in small villages. The chains binding his arms were released and he slept on rice-straw in the local lock-up. It was when they arrived at a district capital that he suffered most intensely. He was usually kept a week or two sharing crowded cells with murderers, opium smokers, criminals with terrible infectious diseases and loathsome habits. As he was usually the last-comer, he had to clean the toilet in the morning, sweep the floor of the cell and do all the "dirty work". Often enough his "bed" was a seat on the stinking bucket used as a W.C. to be awakened every-time an inmate felt the need.
One morning he awoke to find that the man who slept back to back with him had died during the night. He helped a fellow inmate to carry the corpse into the court-yard. The cells of course were vermin-ridden and it was from this that Ho suffered most physically. Clothes and the cell floor and all the cell inmates were crawling with lice, fleas and bugs and in addition to the vermin there were clouds of mosquitoes at night. His whole body itched and burned. There was no way of getting rid of the angry, red rashes which formed, no way even of washing either body or vermin-ridden clothes. And killing them was a method of passing time rather than with any serious thought of reducing their numbers.
It was the periods in these district jails which greatly affected Ho-Chi-Minh's health. His hair thinned out rapidly and what remained turned grey. His flesh fell away and he became a living skeleton, his eye-sight weakened. Most of all he suffered mentally. While he was languishing in the vermin, disease-ridden cells or being dragged sick and exhausted from prison to prison – who knows what was happening to the movement at home. Certainly this was just the moment when the comrades most needed his advice and guidance, the benefits of his rich revolutionary experience so painfully acquired over the past 20 years. He knew also that his comrades must be worried to distraction about him. And they urgently needed the support he had set out to get. Just when he felt at the end of his strength, the jail doors would be opened and he would be marched away again often enough leg chains linked with those that pinioned his elbows behind his back. But he always preferred the periods of marching to those spent in the terrible district jails. For 80 days he stumbled up and down the mountain roads, his strength for the march diminishing after each period in jail. He was flung into nearly 30 different jails from the time he was captured till the time he reached the Kwangsi capital of Kweilin where he endured another six weeks in prison and after that was marched again to Liuchow, also in Kwangsi province. Here he was thrown into a military prison, with the slightly more privileged status of a "political prisoner". Neck yokes and leg fetters were not imposed. He could leave his cell to perform his toilet needs. Now and again he even had access to a book or newspaper – and on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion he was given a hair-cut, allowed to have a hot bath and wash his clothes. That one bath did a lot towards curing what threatened to become a permanent rash and itch from his permanent companions – the vermin.
Gradually, Ho-Chi-Minh pieced together at le as part of the reason for his arrest and sufferings. No charges were ever made against him, but he learned that the Kuomintang feared he had come to China to destroy their own instrument for penetration into Vietnam – the Vietnam Cach-Mang Dong-Minh Hoi (Vietnam Kuomintang or Revolutionary League) which had a headquarters at Liuchow. It did not take long incidentally for Ho to establish contact with some of the more patriotic elements at this headquarters. He was kept in Liuchow prison for 14 months and then released but kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to leave the Liuchow area. He was so extremely weak that he could hardly stand up and his eyesight was almost gone. He tried using his legs, walking a little further each day, increasing his strength till he could even take short mountain climbing excursions. He also started exercises to strengthen his eye-sight, at first staring into a darkened room, then gradually increasing the intensity of the light and the range of vision. He used the period of forced residence in Liuchow – as the period of his disguise as a wealthy Chinese merchant on vacation – to prepare himself for the great tasks that lay ahead.
Finally he managed to leave Liuchow and after two years' absence arrived back in Vietnam. He returned to find that great developments had indeed taken place. The Vietminh, under the leadership of Pham-van-Dong and Vo-Nguyen-Giap had organized armed forces and had already carved out important resistance bases in the North. Whole liberated areas had been set up and the ground-work laid for the future nation- wide armed uprising. When Ho-Chi-Minh returned he threw all his talents and energies into directing guerilla activities against the Japanese, above all consolidating arming and training the forces for the armed insurrection, welding the Vietminh into a powerful, united organization with its own armed forces, its own trained cadres capable of seizing and maintaining power when the moment was ripe. And this moment came on August 1945, when the nation-wide uprising took place and State power was seized by the Vietminh.
Even his adversaries have been compelled to pay tribute to the great qualities of this selfless revolutionary patriot whose whole life has been devoted to one aim – freedom for his people. Jean Sainteny who negotiated the first agreement with Ho-Chi-Minh after the August 1945 Revolution has this to say about President Ho in his book "Histoire d'une Paix Manquée" (History of a Lost Peace).
"Like Alessandri and Pignon, I myself from my first contacts with Ho-Chi-Minh had the impression that this ascetic, whose face revealed intelligence, energy, shrewdness and acuteness, was a personality of the first rank who before long would be projected onto the forefront of the Asiatic scene. His vast culture, his intelligence, his incredible activity, his asceticism and his complete selflessness have gained him an incomparable popularity among the population. It is doubtless regrettable that France should have under-estimated this man and failed to understand his value and the forces he represented…" Sainteny concludes his character sketch by saying that according to everything he could learn from Ho-Chi-Minh in conversation, by studying his activities and attitudes – "a solution by force was repugnant to him".
But the French government of the day betrayed the agreements negotiated by Sainteny and sought a "solution by force". If the government at that time had had the same appreciation of the situation as Sainteny seems to have had – France would have been spared 8 years of costly war in which she lost 92,000 killed and missing, 114,000 wounded and three billion pounds sterling of her treasure. She would have been spared the final ignominy of Dien-Bien-Phu.
And this brings us back again to President Ho's sun-helmet and the quiet valley of Dien- Bien-Phu as it was in the autumn of 1953.
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