L’Écho annamite
- Honest Men
- Gentlemen and Dear Compatriots
- Elections to the Colonial Council
Two days before the Colonial Council vote due on Sunday, 10 October 1926, the front page of L'Écho annamite was given over to the campaign. An editorial headed "Honnêtes gens" accused the candidate Lê-quang Trinh of breaking his pledges and using his seat as colonial councillor for profit. It tied him to the regime of the departed governor Maurice Cognacq and urged voters to sweep away what was left of it. A notice, surviving only as a fragment, charged him with exploiting a claimed friendship with the late patriot Phan Châu Trinh and said that Phan Văn Trường had twice denied it. A profession of faith from outgoing councillors asked voters to renew a four-year mandate that, they said, had been served in unrewarded independence from the Administration.
This reading covers three front-page passages transcribed from unreliable OCR: the editorial against Lê-quang Trinh, a notice fragment that begins mid-sentence, and the opening of the profession of faith. It leaves out the signatories of the profession of faith, the rest of the small-print columns, the cartoon "COGNACQ, QUAN-LON OI!", the masthead subscription and advertising rates, and the full issue number. Words may be missing where lines are cut at tile edges.
Translation
Honest Men
My dear compatriots,
You now know what M. Lê-quang Trinh's assertions are worth. Breaking his most formal promises, trampling on his most solemn commitments, abdicating all dignity, riding roughshod over the interests of his country, he sought to draw the greatest possible profit from his mandate as colonial councillor.
M. Lê-quang-Trinh today has the audacity to solicit your votes. Trying to mislead you, he attacks his opponents, he slobbers venom over them, when he ought to have the decency to keep silent so that the veil of oblivion might spread, merciful, over him and his misdeeds.
Do not forget on Sunday that it is thanks to M. Lê-quang Trinh and his accomplices that Cochinchina lived for several years in an atmosphere which M. Fays, another victim of M. Cognacq and his clique, quite rightly called mephitic.
With M. Cognacq a regime of oppression, of informing, of shameful trafficking disappears. It is up to you to sweep away its last vestiges with an avenging gesture.
Gentlemen and Dear Compatriots
… heedless of all truth and all sense of decency, to exploit the so-called friendship he had for the great patriot whom, in his lifetime, he never approached, and for good reason. On this subject he has brought upon himself, from M. Phan-van Truong, the friend and companion in misfortune of M. Phan-châu-Trinh, two stinging denials which are for him two resounding slaps in the face.
Gentlemen and dear compatriots
Elections to the Colonial Council
PROFESSION OF FAITH
Dear compatriots and electors,
We have now reached the end of the mandate you entrusted to us four years ago. We have fulfilled it as best we could; we have drawn from it only a moral satisfaction which is, for us, it is true, a reward far more enviable than the administrative favours with which compromises and abdications of conscience are paid.
Toward the Administration we have maintained an independence which, while bringing no profit, was at times not without risks. In doing so, we have only done our duty, for in seeking your votes we made to you a commitment whose gravity became clear to us at the moments when the interests of our country were at stake, and which we scrupulously honoured as honest men faithful to their given word.
This mandate, in which we are conscious of not having failed, we now come to ask you to renew.
Context
L'Écho annamite and the Constitutionalist camp
L'Écho annamite was the liberal paper Nguyễn Phan Long founded in 1920 after working on La Tribune Indigène. Long was deputy leader of the Parti Constitutionnaliste Indochinois, the nationalist party founded in 1923 and led by Bùi Quang Chiêu, and he was himself elected a colonial councillor. That background explains why the page reads as a campaign sheet. The profession of faith speaks for outgoing councillors whose mandate began "four years ago", which puts the previous election in 1922, and it presents independence from the Administration as their main credential. The legible part of the page does not show the signatures, so this reading cannot say which names stood behind the statement. The attack on Lê-quang Trinh comes from a rival camp's newspaper in the last days of a campaign. It is the paper's own indictment, not an established record of his conduct.
Why Governor Cognacq's departure framed the vote
Maurice Cognacq governed Cochinchina from 14 February 1922, acting until 12 April of that year, and by 19 April 1926 Aristide Eugène Le Fol was serving as acting governor, a post he held until 30 December 1926. The October election therefore took place under an interim administration months after Cognacq's exit, which is the moment the editorial seizes on when it declares that a regime of oppression disappears with him. Cognacq's hostility to educated Vietnamese critics is on record: he summoned the journalist Nguyễn An Ninh and told him that the country had no need of intellectuals, and Ninh had earlier refused a magistrate's post and a land concession offered by Cognacq. Offers of that kind illustrate the "administrative favours" that, in the profession of faith, pay for compromise, set against the writers' own claim of unrewarded independence. The description of Lê-quang Trinh as one of Cognacq's "accomplices" remains the paper's partisan charge.
Why a claimed friendship with Phan Châu Trinh mattered
Phan Châu Trinh returned to Saigon in 1925 after years in France and died there on 24 March 1926. His funeral on 4 April became an unprecedented demonstration against the colonial government. Nguyễn An Ninh's biography says seventy thousand people paraded with the cortege, while another account puts attendance at over 60,000. The figures differ, but both point to a mass event. Six months later, a personal tie to Trinh was political capital in Saigon. That is why the notice accuses Lê-quang Trinh of exploiting a "so-called friendship" with "the great patriot" he had never approached. The witness it cites, Phan Văn Trường, had worked with Phan Châu Trinh in the Group of Vietnamese Patriots in Paris alongside Nguyễn An Ninh and Nguyễn Tất Thành. Trường also wrote a book describing a plot the French government had hatched against himself and Trinh, which fits the notice's phrase "companion in misfortune". The two denials the notice reports are not part of the legible text.
The Constitutionalists after the upheaval of spring 1926
The campaign followed a spring in which the Constitutionalist leader had been drawn into mass politics. Nguyễn An Ninh's arrest on 21 March 1926 coincided with Bùi Quang Chiêu's return from France, and crowds escorting Chiêu through Saigon chanted for Ninh's release. Together with the Phan Châu Trinh funeral, those weeks gave nationalist feeling in Saigon a public, street-level form. By October the contest for Colonial Council seats was being fought over who could claim that legacy honestly. The profession of faith answers with the vocabulary of honour, of commitments kept "when the interests of our country were at stake", and the editorial urges voters to finish Cognacq's regime at the ballot box. Both pieces address an electorate that had recently watched colonial authority confronted in the streets, and both ask it to express that mood through the Council election.
Original
HONNÊTES GENS
HONNETES GENS Mes chers compatriotes, Vous voilà édifiés sur la valeur des affirmations de M. Lê-quang Trinh. Manquant à ses promesses les plus formelles, foulant aux pieds ses engagements les plus solennels, abdiquant toute dignité, faisant litière des intérêts de son pays, il a cherché à tirer le plus de profit de son mandat de conseiller colonial. M. Lê-quang-Trinh a aujourd'hui l'audace de solliciter vos suffrages. Essayant de vous donner le change, il attaque ses adversaires, il bave sur eux, alors qu'il devrait avoir la pudeur de se taire pour que le voile de l'oubli s'étende, miséricordieux, sur lui et ses fautes. N'oubliez pas dimanche que c'est grâce à M. Lê-quang Trinh et à ses complices que la Cochinchine a vécu pendant plusieurs années dans une atmosphère que M. Fays, autre victime de M. Cognacq et de sa clique, qualifiait avec juste raison de méphitique. Avec M. Cognacq disparait un régime d'oppression, de mouchardage, de trafics honteux. A vous d'en balayer les derniers vestiges d'un geste vengeur.
Messieurs et chers compatriotes
pris de toute vérité et de tout sentiment de pudeur, d'exploiter la prétendue amitié qu'il avait pour le grand patriote que, de son vivant, il n'a jamais approché, et pour cause. Il s'est attiré à ce sujet de M. Phan-van Truong, l'ami, le compagnon d'infortune de M. Phan-châu-Trinh, deux cinglants démentis qui sont pour lui deux retentissants camouflets. Messieurs et chers compatriotes
ELECTIONS AU CONSEIL COLONIAL
PROFESSION DE FOI Chers compatriotes et électeurs, Nous voici au terme du mandat que vous nous avez confié il y a quatre ans. Nous l'avons rempli de notre mieux; nous n'en avons retiré qu'une satisfaction morale qui est, pour nous, il est vrai, une récompense autrement enviable que les faveurs administratives par quoi se payent les compromissions et les abdications de conscience. Nous avons observé vis-à-vis de l'Administration une indépendance qui, pour être sans profit, n'allait pas parfois sans risques. Ce faisant, nous avons accompli seulement notre devoir, car en briguant vos suffrages nous avons pris, par devers vous, un engagement dont la gravité nous est apparue aux heures où les intérêts de notre pays se sont trouvés en jeu et auquel nous avons scrupuleusement fait honneur en honnêtes gens fidèles à la parole donnée. Ce mandat, auquel nous avons conscience de n'avoir pas failli, nous venons vous en demander le renouvellement.