L’Écho annamite
- To the Annamite voters of Cochinchina
- Gentlemen and dear compatriots
- Interview with Mr. Chamberlain
Printed five days before the Cochinchina Colonial Council vote of 10 October 1926, this front page of L'Écho Annamite was given over mainly to the election. Bui Quang Chieu signed an appeal urging Annamite voters to back the full "list of ten", arguing that only a united bloc could carry weight on the port concession, taxes, rice export duties, salt works and forests, and he named the two candidates in each of five constituencies. The ten candidates then set out their joint programme: loyal but firm collaboration with the French administration, reforms obtained through mutual confidence, and no challenge to French sovereignty. A wire report gave Austen Chamberlain's account, on his return to London, of his meeting with Mussolini and of the Briand–Stresemann talks at Thoiry, which he said had produced no new agreement.
Translation
To the Annamite voters of Cochinchina
Dear fellow citizens,
Five days before the poll, I come to urge my compatriots throughout Cochinchina to silence all personal considerations and think only of the higher interest of the country in the vote of 10 October 1926.
By voting for the complete list of ten, which includes the names of Annamites well known for their independent position, their devotion to public affairs and their moral and intellectual worth, the voters will be assured of finding in this representation the exact emanation of the Annamite people, with its aspirations toward a state of affairs in which the respective rights and duties of the two races are balanced in harmonious understanding.
Each of the 10 candidates, taken individually, no doubt has his qualities and his faults; but taken as a whole, individual temperaments and imperfections merge into a freely accepted discipline placed at the service of the general good. Indeed, for the Annamite representation on the Colonial Council to do useful work, it must be homogeneous and cast unanimous votes on the vital questions in which the general interests of the country are at stake, such as the concession of the Commercial Port, the question of taxes, of the duties on the export of paddy and rice, on the regime of the salt works, of the forests, of state land concessions, etc., etc.
If, on the contrary, the Annamite representation on the Colonial Council lacks cohesion, that is, if it is made up of disparate or hostile elements that differ in opinion on the questions essential to Annamite evolution, the councillors' action with the French Administration, both in the Colony and in the Metropole, will be ineffective, because it will not represent the unanimity of the population.
And since, moreover, popular sentiment unanimously approves my policy, I ask all voters, without exception, to grant their confidence to the candidates of the list of ten:
1st constituency: Messrs. Nguyen-van-Thinh, Doctor of Medicine; Tran-van-Don, Doctor of Medicine.
2nd constituency: Messrs. Nguyen-phan-Long, outgoing councillor; Truong-van-Ben, outgoing councillor.
3rd constituency: Messrs. Bui-quang-Chiêu, agricultural engineer; Nguyen-van-Huot, landowner.
4th constituency: Messrs. Huynh-ngoc-Binh, honorary Doc Phu Su; Ngô-van-Huân, Tri Phu on non-active status.
5th constituency: Messrs. Lê quang-Liêm known as Bay, retired Doc Phu Su; Nguyen tân-Duoc, outgoing councillor.
Hand in hand, we shall enter the Colonial Council with the firm intention of bringing to the Administration on the one hand, and to the elected French representation on the other, a loyal collaboration inspired solely by the concern to make this country richer and more powerful, and above all to endow it with the constitutional liberties without which life has no value.
Annamites, vote for our ten candidates, and you will be acting as good patriots.
Long live Cochinchina!
BUI-QUANG-CHIEU.
Gentlemen and dear compatriots
United in a common thought, which is to hasten the evolution of our country, we come together to solicit your votes. Doctors, engineers, industrialists, merchants, farmers, publicists, former officials, we present ourselves before the electoral college conscious of pursuing no personal aim, each of us occupying in society a material and moral position capable of assuring us an independent and decent existence.
The hour seems to us to have come to express to the French Government the legitimate aspirations of the People of Annam. Each of us, as far as his means allowed, has devoted himself to this for many years. Invested with the official mandate to represent the Annamites, we shall do so with greater force and authority.
Our programme? It is the one we set out in the Cahiers des Vœux presented to Governor General Varenne last November; it is the one developed and upheld by La Tribune Indigène, L'Écho Annamite and La Tribune Indochinoise; it is also the one that Mr. Bui-quang-Chiêu, with the help of compatriots studying in the Metropole, students and manual workers, defended in France with the authority and the resonance you know. The People of Cochinchina ratified this programme last 24 March in grand demonstrations. We shall pursue its realization even more firmly if the electoral college, by voting for us, signifies that such is its will.
We make no empty electoral promises. Our deeds answer for the sincerity of our words. We shall bring to the fulfilment of our mandate the experience we have acquired of the men and affairs of the country.
Toward the French Administration, we are resolved to adopt a deferential and firm attitude, which cannot exclude the fervent desire for a trusting and loyal collaboration, free of reticence and perfectly disinterested. With regard to the French elected members, we shall maintain the cordial relations that, in private life, we have never ceased to keep with the Europeans who have been kind enough to honour us with their friendship.
In a word, we shall pursue the policy of Franco-Annamite collaboration, sincere and dignified, so as to obtain, through mutual confidence and esteem, the reforms necessary to our normal evolution, an evolution which could not contain any thought hostile to the very principle of French sovereignty over this country.
If this is, as we believe, your conception of the mandate you intend to entrust to your representatives, vote for us. We have given proof of our devotion to public affairs; we have dedicated ourselves to the defence of your interests. We have done our duty toward our country and toward our fellow citizens; do yours toward yourselves and toward your children by granting your confidence only to tried and experienced men, who will not use the mandate of Colonial Councillor in a way harmful to the higher interest of the country.
BUI QUANG CHIEU, HUYNH NGOC BINH, LE QUANG LIEM known as BAY, NGUYEN PHAN LONG, NGUYEN TAN DUOC, NGUYEN VAN HUOT, NGO VAN HUAN, Doctor NGUYEN VAN THINH, Doctor TRAN VAN DON, TRUONG VAN BEN
Interview with Mr. Chamberlain
Mr. Chamberlain has arrived in London. He declared in an interview that his meeting with Mr. Mussolini was a conversation first between friends, then between Foreign Ministers. He rejected the idea that the meeting was intended to counterbalance the Thoiry talks. He was delighted with the Thoiry meeting, which seems to him the continuation of progress toward the recovery of Europe, the natural and satisfying consequence of Locarno and of Germany's admission to the League of Nations; he added that it was absurd to suppose that the friendly demonstrations and dispositions of the two countries were directed against a third; the policy of the two countries aims at maintaining peace and at developing trade, a factor in the world's economic recovery.
Mr. Chamberlain gave Mr. Briand an account of everything in his conversation with Mr. Mussolini likely to interest him. Mr. Chamberlain then declared that Mr. Briand had communicated to him the results of his conversation with Mr. Stresemann; no new agreement was concluded or planned. Mr. Chamberlain finally declared that there had only been a double conversation, complete, frank and friendly, on common problems and interests, and added that since Locarno he too has been on friendly terms with Mr. Stresemann. He praised the work of the last Geneva Assembly, expressed regret at the withdrawal of Brazil and Spain, and concluded that the League of Nations had emerged stronger from the crisis it had gone through.
Context
Bui Quang Chieu's return and the street demonstrations of spring 1926
The joint manifesto claims that the people of Cochinchina "ratified" the candidates' programme on 24 March in grand demonstrations, and credits Bui Quang Chieu with defending it in France. A biographical account of Nguyen An Ninh dates Bui Quang Chieu's return from France, as leader of the moderate-nationalist Constitutionalist Party, to 21 March 1926, the same day the colonial authorities arrested the radical journalist Nguyen An Ninh. The crowds that accompanied Chieu through Saigon chanted for Ninh's release, and on 4 April some seventy thousand people marched in the funeral cortege of the nationalist Phan Chau Trinh in an unprecedented demonstration against the government. The street mobilisation the candidates invoked thus mixed welcome for a moderate leader with protest associated with more radical figures, so the manifesto's statement that the whole people had endorsed the Constitutionalist programme is best read as the candidates' own campaign claim. That account gives 21 March for the return, while the manifesto names 24 March as the day of ratification.
A narrow electorate and the Constitutionalists' later defeat
Bui Quang Chieu's appeal rests on unanimity: ten men voting as one on the port concession, taxes and rice duties would speak for "the unanimity of the population". The joint manifesto itself is addressed to the "collège électoral", the body of registered voters, rather than to the population at large. The same Colonial Council later became a field of competition between the Constitutionalists and the left. An account of the April 1939 Cochinchina Colonial Council elections describes them as a restricted election of income-tax payers, and records that the Constitutionalist slate was defeated there, together with the Democratic Front list of Nguyen An Ninh and Communist Party cadres, by the Trotskyist La Lutte group. The 1939 result says nothing about how the list of ten fared in 1926. It does show that the Constitutionalists, who on this page claimed to speak for the whole Annamite people, lost to left-wing rivals thirteen years later in a Colonial Council election held under a restricted franchise.
What Briand and Stresemann agreed at Thoiry
Chamberlain said in the interview that Briand had passed on the results of his talk with Stresemann and that no new agreement had been concluded or planned. The Thoiry meeting followed Germany's admission to the League of Nations on 10 September 1926, when Germany also received a permanent seat on the League Council. On 17 September Briand and Stresemann met in the French village of Thoiry and agreed to support each other's main foreign-policy aims: Stresemann pledged material support to stabilise the franc, and Briand agreed to an early return of the Saar Basin, an early end to the military control and occupation of the Rhineland, and a German–Belgian arrangement on the return of Eupen-Malmedy. Objections from both the German and French governments soon narrowed the scope of these understandings, and historians often treat Thoiry as both the peak and the end point of the Locarno policy. Chamberlain's insistence that nothing new had been concluded matches the provisional character of understandings that both governments soon cut back, while his praise of Thoiry as the natural sequel to Locarno and to Germany's League entry shows how London chose to present the episode.
Why Chamberlain's private meetings with Mussolini drew suspicion
In the interview Chamberlain describes his talk with Mussolini as a conversation first between friends and then between foreign ministers, and denies that it was meant to counterbalance Thoiry. A study by the historian Peter Edwards in The Historical Journal (1971) notes that during Chamberlain's term as Foreign Secretary, from November 1924 to June 1929, the two men met five times in complete privacy, without aides or interpreters, since both spoke fluent French. Their communiqués stressed personal friendship and political harmony but named no specific subjects, and rumours of secret agreements spread as a result. Among the press sources in his notes is Le Temps of 2 October 1926, quoting an interview with the Daily Telegraph whose date he could not establish. Working from Chamberlain's papers and British and Italian diplomatic documents, Edwards concluded that much of the speculation was very wide of the mark. Chamberlain's denials here are one example of the public reassurances that followed these private encounters.
Original
Aux électeurs annamites de Cochinchine
Aux électeurs annamites de Cochinchine Chers concitoyens, Cinq jours avant le scrutin, je viens demander instamment à mes compatriotes de la Cochinchine entière de vouloir bien faire taire toutes les considérations personnelles pour ne songer qu'à l'intérêt supérieur du pays, dans le vote du 10 Octobre 1926 En votant pour la liste complète des dix, où figurent des noms d'Annamites notoirement connus par leur situation indépendante, par leur dévouement à la chose publique, par leur valeur morale et intellectuelle, les électeurs seront assurés de trouver dans cette représentation l'émanation exacte du peuple annamite avec ses aspirations vers un état de choses où les droits et devoirs respectifs des deux races s'équilibront dans une entente harmonieuse. Chacun des 10 candidats, pris individuellement, a sans doute des qualités et ses défauts; mais, pris dans l'ensemble, les tempéraments et les imperfections individuels se fondent dans une discipline librement acceptée et mise au service du bien général. En effet, pour que la représentation annamite au Conseil Colonial fasse œuvre utile, il faut qu'elle soit homogène et émette des votes unanimes sur les questions vitales où les intérêts généraux du pays sont en jeu, telle que la concession du Port de Commerce, la question des impôts, des taxes sur la sortie du paddy et du riz, sur le régime des salines, des forêts des concessions domaniales, etc... etc... Si, au contraire, la représentation annamite au Conseil Colonial manque de cohésion, c'est-à-dire composée d'éléments disparates ou hostiles qui diffèrent d'avis sur les questions essentielles à l'évolution annamite, l'action des conseillers auprès de l'Administration française, tant dans la Colonie que dans la Métropole, sera inefficace, parce que ne représentant pas l'unanimité de la population. Et puisqu'aussi bien, le sentiment populaire approuve unanimement ma politique, je demande à tous les électeurs, sans exception, d'accorder leur confiance aux candidats de la liste des dix: 1ère circonscription MM. Nguyen-van-Thinh, Docteur en Médecine. Tran-van-Don, Docteur en Médecine. 2e circonscription MM. Nguyen-phan-Long, Conseiller sortant. Truong-van-Ben, Conseiller sortant. 3e circonscription MM. Bui-quang-Chiêu, Ingénieur Agronome. Nguyen-van-Huot, Propriétaire. 4e circonscription MM. Huynh-ngoc-Binh, Doc Phu-Su Honoraire. Ngô-van-Huân, Tri-Phu en disponibilité. 5e circonscription MM. Lê quang-Liêm dit Bay, Doc Phu Su en retraite. Nguyen tân-Duoc, Conseiller sortant. La main dans la main, nous entrerons au Conseil Colonial avec la ferme intention d'apporter à l'Administration d'une part et à la représentation élue française d'autre part, une collaboration loyale, inspirée du seul souci de faire ce pays plus riche, plus puissant, et surtout de le doter des franchises constitutionnelles sans lesquelles la vie n'a aucun prix. Annamites, votez pour nos dix candidats, vous ferez œuvre de bons patriotes. Vive la Cochinchine! BUI-QUANG-CHIEU.
Messieurs et chers compatriotes
Messieurs et chers compatriotes Unis dans une pensée commune, qui est de hâter l'évolution de notre pays, nous venons ensemble solliciter vos suffrages. Docteurs, Ingénieurs, Industriels, Commerçants, Agriculteurs, Publicistes, anciens fonctionnaires, nous nous présentons devant le collège électoral avec la conscience de ne poursuivre aucune visée personnelle, chacun de nous occupant dans la Société une situation matérielle et morale susceptible de nous assurer une existence indépendante et décente. L'heure nous paraît venue d'exprimer au Gouvernement français les aspirations légitimes du Peuple d'Annam. Dans la mesure de ses moyens, chacun de nous s'y est consacré, depuis de longues années. Investis du mandat officiel de représenter les Annamites, nous le ferons avec plus de force et d'autorité. Notre programme? C'est celui que nous avons exposé dans les Cahiers des Vœux présentés à M. le Gouverneur Général Varenne en Novembre dernier, c'est celui qui est développé et soutenu par La Tribune Indigène, L'Echo Annamite et La Tribune Indochinoise, c'est aussi celui que M. Buiquang-Chiêu, avec le concours des compatriotes étudiants dans la Métropole, étudiants et travailleurs manuels, a défendu en France avec l'autorité et le retentissement que vous connaissez. Le Peuple de Cochinchine a ratifié ce programme le 24 Mars dernier en des manifestations grandioses. Nous en poursuivrons la réalisation plus fermement encore si le collège électoral, en votant pour nous, signifie que telle est sa volonté. Nous ne faisons pas de vaines promesses électorales. Nos gestes répondent de la sincérité de nos paroles. Nous apporterons à l'accomplissement de notre mandat l'expérience que nous avons acquise des hommes et des choses du pays. Vis-à-vis de l'Administration française, nous sommes résolus à adopter une attitude déférente et ferme, qui ne saurait exclure le fervent désir d'une collaboration confiante et loyale, exempte de réticence et parfaitement désintéressée. A l'égard des élus français nous saurons conserver les relations sympathiques que, dans la vie privée, nous n'avons cessé d'entretenir avec les Européens qui ont bien voulu nous honorer de leur amitié. En un mot, nous poursuivrons la politique de collaboration franco-annamite, sincère et digne, de manière à obtenir, par la confiance et l'estime réciproques, les réformes nécessaires à notre évolution normale, évolution qui ne saurait comporter aucune pensée hostile au principe même de la souveraineté française de ce pays. Si telle est, comme nous le croyons, votre conception du mandat que vous entendez confier à vos représentants, votez pour nous. Nous avons donné la preuve de notre dévouement à la chose publique, nous nous sommes consacrés à la défense de vos intérêts. Nous avons fait notre devoir envers notre pays, envers nos concitoyens; faites le vôtre envers vous-même et envers vos enfants en n'accordant votre confiance qu'à des hommes éprouvés et expérimentés, qui ne feront pas du mandat de Conseiller Colonial un usage néfaste à l'intérêt supérieur du pays. BUI QUANG CHIEU HUYNH NGOC BINH LE QUANG LIEM dit BAY NGUYEN PHAN LONG NGUYEN TAN DUOC NGUYEN VAN HUOT NGO VAN HUAN Docteur NGUYEN VAN THINH Docteur TRAN VAN DON TRUONG VAN BEN
Interview de M. Chamberlain
Interview de M. Chamberlain M. Chamberlain est arrivé à Londres, il a déclaré dans un interview que sa rencontre avec M. Mussolini a été un entretien d'abord entre amis, ensuite entre Ministres des Affaires Etrangères. Il a réfuté l'idée que la rencontre visait à contrebalancer l'entretien de Thoiry. Il a été enchanté de la réunion de Thoiry, qui lui paraît être la suite du progrès vers le relèvement de l'Europe, la conséquence naturelle et satisfaisante de Locarno et de l'admission de l'Allemagne dans la Société des Nations; il a ajouté qu'il était absurde de supposer que les manifestations et dispositions amicales des deux pays soient dirigées contre un troisième; la politique des deux pays vise au maintien de la paix et au développement du commerce, facteur du relèvement économique mondial. M. Chamberlain a rendu compte à M. Briand de tout ce qui était susceptible de l'intéresser de son entretien avec M. Mussolini. M. Chamberlain a déclaré ensuite que M. Briand lui a communiqué les résultats de son entretien avec M. Stresemann; aucun nouvel accord n'a été conclu ou projeté. M. Chamberlain a déclaré enfin qu'il y eut seulement une double conversation complète, franche et amicale, sur les problèmes et des intérêts communs et a ajouté qu'il est, depuis Locarno, aussi en rapports amicaux avec M. Stresemann. Il a loué les travaux de la dernière assemblée de Genève, exprimé le regret de la retraite du Brésil et de l'Espagne et conclu que la Société des Nations était sortie plus forte de la crise traversée.