L’Écho annamite
- Fluctuat Nec Mergitur! — Tossed by the Waves but Never Sunk!
- To the Electors of the Constituency
- A Reader Writes to Us
This page of L'Echo Annamite from 1 October 1926 combined anticolonial argument with electoral politics and a complaint about the post. A signed column by Van-Anh argued that every conquest is unjust. It mocked France's claim that colonizing meant civilizing, and quoted the republican writer A. E. Babut's admission that interest and force had brought France to Indochina and kept it there. In an election address, Bui Quang Chieu offered voters his record of 29 years in the administration and twenty years of advocacy. He promised to seek "Franco-Annamite collaboration", more schooling and more dignity on the Colonial Council, and recalled the oath he swore before the body of Phan Chau Trinh. A reader writing from Donghoi reported that issues of the paper often went missing and blamed interception in post offices and French Residences. In its reply, the editors accused unnamed "black cabinets" of interfering with the mail.
Translation
Fluctuat Nec Mergitur! — Tossed by the Waves but Never Sunk!
FLUCTUAT NEC M One may boldly assert, without fear of contradiction, that all conquests are iniquitous in themselves. Our masters of the hour are not unaware of this, and, being aware of it, they seek to justify their presence in Indochina by proclaiming to anyone who will listen the benefits of French colonization, because in their view to colonize a people is to civilize it. We have no intention of examining here whether this assertion is well founded. We may at least be permitted to find that, where the Annamites are concerned, such obliviousness is truly admirable. We hope we will be excused from recalling the esteem that distinguished minds in the countries of Europe have professed for our thousand-year-old civilization. Whatever the French Government may say, the Annamite people are no longer taken in by its grand words... The hard experience they have acquired at their own expense, over nearly 70 years of domination, has cured them of their error of having believed, for a moment, in official liberalism. Today they know only too well that it was not sentimental reasons that drove the French to come and establish themselves in their country. Readers of L'Echo Annamite will be pleased to read this admission, which we came across from the pen of none other than the republican A. E. Babut: "It is interest," he wrote in the Revue du Pacifique of July 1926, "and that alone which led us to Indochina, and force which enabled us to establish ourselves there; likewise today, it is still interest that keeps us there and force that maintains us there. [?] Interest! What injustices and abuses have not been committed, seduced by the Golden Calf, that sinew of war, ever since men have existed—men whose History, the mirror of peoples, sometimes reflects a few happy traits of that natural goodness of which Bossuet speaks, but very often shows us, laid bare, the hideous face of Homo lupus! Why should colonial France have escaped this common rule, which holds that a strong people exploits a weak people in contempt of all justice and all humanity? [?]
To the Electors of the Constituency
[?] in coming to solicit your votes, I harbor no personal ambition. After 29 years of service in the Administration, I could have continued my career under the most enviable material and moral conditions. I voluntarily retired before the legal term, the better to serve the interests of our country, free of any administrative ties. What I have done for the Annamites, you all know. For twenty years I have been in the breach, resolutely defending their interests against abuses of authority, racial prejudice and bureaucratic routine. In Indochina and in France, I have set out our wishes in an effort to interest the Metropole in the fate of the People of Annam. The enthusiastic reception the country gave me on 21 March last has amply rewarded me: it encourages me to persevere. What will my conduct be on the Colonial Council, if you do me the honor of sending me there? With the same ardor and the same conviction, I will continue the work I have begun. My program? You know it. Everything that can help strengthen Franco-Annamite collaboration, frank and loyal on both sides, with constant care to respect the rights of both peoples in their collective life in the land of Annam. Without violence, but also without weakness, as in the past, I will pursue the realization of all our legitimate aspirations; I would like more education for our children, more dignity for the people—in short, a regime more in keeping with law and justice. Before the body of our eminent and lamented compatriot Phan-châu Trinh, I swore a solemn oath to devote the rest of my days to the Annamite cause; I will keep my word. As I have been, so I am, and so I shall remain. [?]
A Reader Writes to Us
[?], 24 September 1926. Dear Editor-in-Chief, I have the honor to inform you that for the past three months the newspapers have been reaching us very irregularly. I cannot list all the issues we are missing, for the list would be very long; I will point out only that we sometimes lose as many as 3 or 4 in a row, so that in such cases we have gone roughly two weeks without receiving anything. Each time I notice an irregularity, I keep asking myself what the cause might be. Among other conjectures, I am inclined to believe that this situation is due to diversions carried out in the Post Offices and the Residences, where private correspondence is still being censored. Will you find a way, Mr. Editor-in-Chief, to put an end to this intolerable state of affairs? Let the Administration close our newspaper if it judges it dangerous! If it lets it live, the subscribers must be able to read it! Yours, etc. D. Editor's note (N. D. L. R.) – The state of affairs reported by our correspondent is not peculiar to Donghoi. We are in a position to affirm that our dispatch department has nothing to do with it. We must therefore accept the existence of "black cabinets," already observed many times and against which the press has protested. We renew these protests with the utmost vigor.
Context
What lay behind the column's "nearly 70 years of domination"
Van-Anh's column put French rule at "nearly 70 years" by 1926, which points back to the late 1850s and fits the chronology of conquest. A combined force of French and Spanish ships took over the forts at Danang in 1858, and in February 1859 French troops went on to Saigon and captured its rice granary. In June 1862 Emperor Tu Duc agreed to a treaty ceding the provinces of Gia Dinh, Dinh Tuong and Bien Hoa to France. The column's figure therefore fits best with the experience of Cochinchina, where the paper itself was published, in Saigon. Annam, where the Donghoi letter on the same page came from, became a French protectorate only under the treaty of August 1883, so French rule there was more recent. Van-Anh's own thesis was that all conquest is unjust. To show that France was no exception, he borrowed the words of a French republican, Babut, who said that interest and force had brought France to Indochina and kept it there. That was a polemical argument made in 1926 rather than a historian's verdict, but the piecemeal military annexation of the south gave his readers an obvious reference point.
Why Bui Quang Chieu recalled the reception of 21 March
In his address, Bui Quang Chieu said he had been "amply rewarded" by the enthusiastic welcome he received "on 21 March last". That was the day Chieu, leader of the moderate-nationalist Constitutionalist Party, returned to Saigon from France. It was also the day the colonial authorities arrested the radical journalist Nguyen An Ninh, and the crowds accompanying Chieu through the streets chanted "Free Nguyen An Ninh". By recalling the welcome, the candidate presented a moment of mass mobilization as an endorsement of his own record. The seat he sought was on the Colonial Council of Cochinchina, a body first established under Governor Le Myre de Vilers (1879–82), when it included six elected Vietnamese members. His program of "Franco-Annamite collaboration" looked for reform inside French institutions. That sat awkwardly beside Van-Anh's column on the same page, which declared every conquest unjust. Yet both pieces measured French rule against the justice it claimed to uphold, and the paper printed them on the same page.
The weight of an oath sworn before Phan Chau Trinh's body
Chieu ended his address by recalling the solemn oath he had sworn "before the body" of Phan Chau Trinh. Trinh was a veteran reformer who had been sent to Con Dao and later deported to France. He returned to Saigon in 1925 and died there in March 1926. His biography dates his death to 24 March, while an account of Ninh's arrest says the news arrived on 21 March, the day of Chieu's own return. Either way, Chieu was back in Saigon in time to stand before the body. Trinh opposed both violence and turning to other countries for support. He sought liberation by educating the population and by appealing to France's own democratic principles. Chieu's promise to act "without violence, but also without weakness" and his call for more education for Vietnamese children echo that approach. The funeral procession of 4 April became an unprecedented demonstration against the government. One account puts the crowd at seventy thousand, another at over 60,000. Six months later, by invoking that oath in an election address, a moderate candidate could draw on the moral authority of the mass mourning.
Donghoi, the Residences and a French-language press under pressure
The editors' reply places the letter at Donghoi, a town in Quang-Binh province in the protectorate of Annam, whose forts French forces had once seized. The protectorate treaty of 1883 had given French residents, backed by garrisons, jurisdiction over Vietnamese towns. The "Residences" that the reader named alongside the post offices were the offices of that French administration. The claim that private mail was being censored and newspapers diverted was the correspondent's own. The editors backed it indirectly: they ruled out their own dispatch service and concluded that "black cabinets" must exist. What is clear is how exposed the Saigon press was in 1926. Nguyen An Ninh published La Cloche Fêlée in French because of government restrictions on printing in Vietnamese. Its appeals had drawn young workers and students to demand freedom of the press, education and assembly, and Ninh was arrested on 21 March 1926 in a suppression of the paper. The reader's challenge, "Let the Administration close our newspaper if it judges it dangerous!", was written in that climate.
Original
FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR!
FLUCTUAT NEC M On peut avancer hardiment, sans crainte d'être contredit, que toutes les conquêtes sont iniques en elles-mêmes. Nos maîtres de l'heure ne sont pas sans le sentir, et le sentant, ils cherchent à justifier leur présence en Indochine en proclamant, à qui veut les entendre, les bienfaits de la colonisation française, parce qu'à leur sens, coloniser un peuple, c'est le civiliser. Nous n'avons pas l'intention de rechercher ici le bien fondé de cette assertion. On nous permettra seulement de trouver, en ce qui concerne les Annamites, qu'une telle inconscience est vraiment admirable. On nous dispensera, nous l'espérons, de rappeler l'estime que des esprits distingués des pays d'Europe ont professée pour notre civilisation millénaire. Le Gouvernement français aura beau dire, le peuple annamite n'est plus dupe de ses grands mots... La dure expérience qu'il a acquise à ses dépens, pendant près de 70 ans de domination, l'a fait revenir de son erreur d'avoir cru, un moment, au libéralisme officiel. Il ne sait que trop aujourd'hui que ce ne sont pas des raisons sentimentales qui ont poussé les Français à venir s'implanter dans son pays. Les lecteurs de l'Echo Annamite liront avec plaisir cet aveu que nous avons rencontré sous la plume même du républicain A. E. Babut: «C'est l'intérêt, écrivait-il dans la Revue du Pacifique de juillet 1926, et cela seul qui nous a conduits en Indochine et la force qui nous a permis de nous y établir; de même aujourd'hui, c'est encore l'intérêt qui nous y retient et la force qui nous y maintient. [?] L'intérêt! Que d'injustices et d'abus n'a-t-on pas commis, séduit par le Veau d'Or, ce nerf de la guerre, depuis que des hommes existent et dont l'Histoire, miroir des peuples, reflète parfois quelques traits heureux de cette bonté naturelle dont parle Bossuet, mais nous montre bien souvent à nu la face hideuse de l'Homo lupus! Pourquoi la France coloniale eût-elle échappé à cette règle commune qui veut qu'un peuple fort exploite, au mépris de toute justice et de toute humanité, un peuple faible? [?]
Aux électeurs de la circonscription
[?] venant solliciter vos suffrages, je ne nourris aucune ambition personnelle. Après 29 années de service dans l'Administration, j'aurais pu continuer ma carrière dans des conditions matérielles et morales des plus enviables. J'ai pris volontairement ma retraite avant le terme légal, afin de mieux servir les intérêts de notre pays, libre de toute attache administrative. Ce que j'ai fait pour les Annamites, vous le savez tous. Depuis vingt ans, je suis sur la brèche, défendant résolument leurs intérêts contre les abus d'autorité, les préjugés de race et la routine bureaucratique. En Indochine et en France, j'ai exposé nos desiderata pour tâcher d'intéresser la Métropole au sort du Peuple d'Annam. La réception enthousiaste que le pays m'a réservée le 21 Mars dernier m'a largement récompensé: elle m'encourage à persévérer. Quelle sera ma conduite au Conseil Colonial, si vous me faites l'honneur de m'y envoyer? Avec la même ardeur, la même conviction je continuerai le travail commencé. Mon programme? Vous le connaissez. Tout ce qui pourra contribuer à fortifier la collaboration franco-annamite, franche et loyale de part et d'autre, avec le constant souci de respecter les droits des deux peuples dans la vie collective au pays d'Annam. Sans violences, mais aussi sans faiblesse, comme par le passé, je poursuivrai la réalisation de toutes nos aspirations légitimes, je voudrais plus d'instruction pour nos enfants, plus de dignité pour le peuple, bref un régime plus conforme au droit et à la justice. Devant le corps de notre éminent et regretté compatriote Phan-châu Trinh, j'ai fait le serment solennel de consacrer le reste de mes jours à la cause annamite, je tiendrai ma parole. Tel j'ai été, tel je suis, tel je resterai. [?]
On nous écrit
[?], le 24 Septembre 1926. Monsieur le Rédacteur en Chef, J'ai l'honneur de vous faire connaître que depuis ces trois derniers mois, les journaux nous arrivent d'une façon très irrégulière. Je ne peux vous citer tous les numéros qui nous manquent, car la liste en serait bien longue; je vous signale seulement que nous en perdons parfois jusqu'à 3 ou 4 de suite, ce qui fait que nous sommes restés dans ces cas à peu près deux semaines sans rien recevoir. Je me demande toujours, chaque fois que je constate une irrégularité, quelle en est la cause. Entre autres conjectures, je penche à croire que cette situation est due aux détournements effectués dans les bureaux de Postes et des Résidences, où on continue à censurer les correspondances privées. Allez-vous trouver le moyen, M. le Rédacteur en Chef, de mettre fin à cet état de choses intolérable? Que l'Administration ferme notre journal si elle le juge dangereux! Si elle le laisse, il faut que les abonnés puissent le lire! Veuillez, etc. D. N. D. L. R. - L'état de choses signalé par notre correspondant n'est pas particulier à Donghoi. Nous sommes en mesure d'affirmer que notre service d'expédition n'y est pour rien. Il faut donc bien admettre l'existence de «cabinets noirs», maintes fois constatée déjà et contre laquelle la presse a protesté. Nous renouvelons ces protestations avec la dernière énergie.