L’Écho annamite
- Primary education in Japan
- The United States and the French debts
- Events for the benefit of the Tonkin disaster victims
The page set a signed column on schooling beside foreign financial news and a report on disasters in Tonkin. In a column signed VAN-GIANG, the writer described Japanese primary schools drilling children every morning in a catechism of love for parents, teacher and, above all, Japan, and argued that this daily repetition turned love of family and country into a faith that would unfold fully in adulthood. A brief dispatch, citing the Daily News correspondent in Washington, reported under a heading on French debts that the American government had decided to let Wall Street mobilize German railway bonds. A report datelined Dalat, introducing benefit events for Tonkin's disaster victims, listed the year's calamities: cholera, floods across most of the delta that costly engineers could not tame, millions of piastres lost, and the wreck of the Dông Loi with 400 dead.
Translation
Primary education in Japan
— Whom else do you love? — My teacher. — What is there above your parents and your teacher that you must love even more? — Japan. And always, ceaselessly, every morning, the same questions and the same answers begin again. In this way the child's heart is kneaded, from the most tender age, out of the most generous feelings, and love of family and love of the fatherland become for him a faith, a true belief. When he has become a man, this patriotism, which flows in his very veins, will need only to unfold with all its strength, sustained and nourished for ye-
The United States and the French debts
The American Government authorizes the mobilization of German railway bonds. According to the Daily News correspondent in Washington, the United States Government has decided to authorize Wall Street to mobilize the bon-
Events for the benefit of the Tonkin disaster victims
HUONG GIANG. DALAT. (From our special correspondent.) Severe calamities have struck Tonkin this year. After the cholera epidemic, floods ravaged the greater part of the delta, furiously sweeping away harvests, property, people and animals, sowing ruin and misery everywhere. The science of the technicians and engineers, maintained at great expense by the taxpayers, unfortunately cannot master the waters of the Red River. Several million piastres have been swallowed up, not counting the countless human lives that meet the same fate. Just recently, to the two scourges mentioned, yet another misfortune has been added: the wreck of the Dông Loi, which caused 400 deaths. A figure unknown until now in the annals of Tonkin [?]
Context
The colonial school system Van-Giang's readers knew
Van-Giang's column describes Japanese schools, but its Vietnamese readers lived under a school system that France had only recently reorganized. According to Gloria Kwok's study of colonial schools in Vietnam, the French administration carried out a set of reforms between 1917 and 1924 that created separate French schools and Franco-Vietnamese schools. Those reforms made quốc ngữ the medium of instruction in the first three levels and French the medium at the upper levels. Kwok names the aims behind them as keeping Vietnamese out of French schools and providing the administration with lower-level civil servants. The column, for its part, portrays a school where every morning a child is taught to place Japan above parents and teacher, and it presents that drill as the source of adult patriotism. Within the excerpt the writer never mentions Indochinese schools, yet a reader in 1926 could set his picture of a school devoted to love of one's own country beside the stated purposes of the Franco-Vietnamese system.
Why France's war debt to America was so contested in 1926
The paper filed its Washington dispatch under the heading of French debts because France's war debt to the United States was a raw issue that autumn. Henry Bérenger, appointed ambassador to Washington by Aristide Briand in 1926, negotiated the Mellon–Bérenger Agreement, signed on 29 April 1926, which fixed how France would repay loans from the First World War and the period after the armistice. The settlement was deeply unpopular in France, where most people felt the United States should waive the debt; 20,000 war veterans demonstrated in Paris against it. The French had wanted payments tied to the reparations they received from Germany, as in Britain's settlement, but the United States refused that linkage. Washington had also been quietly blocking private and public loans to France while the debt remained unsettled, which put pressure on the franc. The French parliament did not ratify the agreement until July 1929. Read against this, any American decision about German securities bore directly on how France might find the money to pay.
German money and the defence of the franc
German payments were already woven into the Franco-American debt question. Under the Dawes Plan of 1924, Germany could borrow in the United States at reasonable rates and use the money to pay Britain and France, which in turn used reparations to repay their American debts. In September 1926, a few weeks before this issue, Briand and Gustav Stresemann met at Thoiry, where Stresemann pledged material support to stabilize the franc and Briand agreed to concessions including an early return of the Saar Basin to Germany. The scope of the Thoiry resolutions was soon reduced by objections from the German and French governments. The dispatch the paper printed reports only that Washington would let Wall Street mobilize German railway bonds; the excerpt breaks off before it explains what the proceeds were meant for, so it does not show whether the page connected the bonds to the Thoiry bargain.
The Red River and the limits of colonial engineering
The Dalat correspondent's complaint that taxpayer-funded engineers could not master the Red River touches a long-standing problem of colonial Tonkin. The historian Corey Ross describes the Red River as notorious for its huge seasonal fluctuations and violent floods, with a gradient far steeper than the Mekong's. In his account, French administrators believed modern know-how would improve the flooding situation, and colonial engineers studied the river from the 1890s, yet they ended up working within the pre-colonial system of dikes, which deepened existing flood vulnerabilities. The correspondent's specific figures, the millions of piastres lost and the 400 deaths in the wreck of the Dông Loi, are the paper's own report.
Original
L'enseignement primaire au Japon
- Qui aimes-tu encore? - Mon maitre. - Qu'est-ce qu'il y a au-dessus de tes parents et de ton maitre et que tu dois aimer beaucoup plus encore? - Le Japon. Et toujours, sans cesse, on recommence, tous les matins, les mêmes questions et les mêmes réponses. Le cœur de l'enfant est ainsi pétri, dès l'âge le plus tendre, des sentiments les plus généreux, et l'amour de la famille et celui de la patrie deviennent pour lui une foi, une véritable croyance. Quand il sera devenu un homme, ce patriotisme qui coule dans ses veines mêmes n'aura plus qu'à se déployer avec toutes ses forces, entretenues et nourries depuis des an -
Les Etats-Unis et les dettes françaises
Les Etats-Unis et les dettes françaises Le Gouvernement américain autorise la mobilisation des obligations des chemins de fer allemands Selon le correspondant du Daily News à Washington, le Gouvernement des Etats-Unis a décidé d'autoriser Wall Street à mobiliser les obliga -
Manifestations au profit des Sinistrés du Tonkin
HUONG GIANG. DALAT Manifestations au profit des Sinistrés du Tonkin (De notre correspondant particulier.) De fortes calamités se sont abattu cette année sur le Tonkin. Après l'épidémie de choléra, les inondations ont ravagé la plus grande partie du delta, emportant furieusement récoltes, biens, hommes et animaux, semant partout la ruine et la misère. La scien ce des techniciens, et des ingénieurs, entretenus à gros frais par les contribuables, ne peut malheureusement maîtriser les eaux du Fleuve Rouge. Plusieurs millions de piastres sont engloutis, sans compter les innombrables vies humaines qui subissent le même sort. Tout récemment encore, aux deux fléaux cités, vient s'ajouter un autre malheur: le naufrage du Dông Loi qui a causé 400 morts. Chiffre inconnu à ce jour dans les annales tonkinoises [?]