SENIOR GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP REMEMBERS

Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2003 by Currey, Cecil B

The Quoc Hoc school in Hue was indeed the cradle of the student patriotic movement of central Viet Nam. Students there used to share with one another texts and poems written patriotically. To this day, I remember one Vietnamese professor at the Quoc Hoc. He was a teacher of the quoc ngu and he liked to communicate progressive, patriotic opinions to his students.

Serious and hard-working, students at Quoc Hoc were very interested in politics. This main stream of feeling blew up at the least incident-on the occasion of the request for Phan boi Chau's liberation [Chau was a famous national patriot and leader of an independence movement] or the funeral of Phan chu Trinh {1872-1926. a leading anti-French reformer].

One of my school mates, Hai Trieu, gave me a copy of the article Proces del a colonisation francaise written by Nguyen Ai Quoc [an early pseudonym of ho Chi Minh]. Later I discovered [patriotic] newspapers such as Le Paria and Viet Nam hon.

Since arriving at the Quoc Hoc school my awareness of politics strengthened. Very often, with some of my friends, we visited Phan boi Chau, who was sentenced to house arrest in Hue after he returned from exile. Phan boi Chau spoke about problems of Viet Nam to us, of colonialist malpractice, of democracy, and so forth. I also liked to organize meetings in my student room with my friends. Together we used to discuss about youth, about the school program, about colonialism and the world problems. I fluently read {in French] texts by Marx, by Lenin, by Nguyen Ai Quoc written in French.

The French headmaster chief and the supervisors were hard, even inquisitorial with the students. On one occasion I protested against an injustice committed by the headmaster chief concerning a student, Nguyen chi Dieu, a close friend of mine. During an examination, Dieu, well known for his anti-colonialist opinions, was charged arbitrarily with cheating. Another friend and I organized a student strike. This movement succeeded to an unthought-of extent and spread widely throughout central Viet Nam, from Quoc Hoc school to Dong Khanh, the associated school for girls. Then it spread even to Catholic high schools. Of course, because of my role in these events, I was expelled from the Quoc Hoc. I was not surprised by this decision. I acted in full consciousness of the consequences.

Despite the fact that I expected to be expelled, I still raged with anger and decided to write an article, in French, entitled "Down with the tyrant of Quoc Hoc." This article was published by L'Annam, a French language newspaper, published in Saigon, run by Phan van Truong. It was the only newspaper at that time which ventured to criticize French colonialism. The paper was successful not only in Hue, but in other towns of the country.

Question: Those were exciting times for you, General. But tell me, since you had now been expelled from school, what did you do then?

Answer: My friend Nguyen Chi Dieu [who had been accused of cheating] joined the Tan Viet party. His function within that party was to foment and spread ideological propaganda. I continued to live in Hue and organized an underground library. A great part of the documents were supplied by the French communist organizations.