Tongking Troubles

Bamboo whips, bayonets, machine guns and the guillotine were not enough. As a final effort Minister of the Colonies Paul Reynaud was in Hanoi last week to do what he could to settle the growing unrest in French Indo-China.

Contrary to the Britisher's notion of civilizing his subjects, the French thesis is that they must interfere as little as possible with the native life in their colonies. The French go-native system has worked extremely well in Tunis and Morocco, badly in Syria, and has now run into trouble in French Indo-China.

Tongking and Annam are ruled today as they were 400 years ago, by pale, effete coral-and-jade buttoned mandarins, kept in power by French rifles. After the War thousands of native Tongkingese troops went back to their country with new ideas of democracy. Republican and Communist ideas have seeped south from China proper. Rebellion began against the autocratic power of the mandarins some years ago, became a rebellion against France. First shots were fired more than two years ago when an Annamite garrison at Yen Bay on the China frontier mutinied and killed their French officers. Since then secret agents have discovered Communist "cells" in almost every native battalion, in almost every village. France smote hard. French troops and a regiment of the Foreign Legion were rushed from Syria. Mme Guillotine raised her gaunt arms in the public squares at Hanoi and Saigon. It was revealed last week that in the past two years more than 700 heads have fallen, have been stuck, as warning trophies, on spikes about the city streets.

British police in Hongkong recently obliged their French confreres by arresting the terrible N'Guyen Ai Quac and sending him back to his execution. Bearded Sikh policemen in Singapore arrested the French Communist Serge La France and shipped a bundle of incriminating documents to French authorities. After studying this batch of evidence the French Colonial Office realized that the guillotine may not have been the ideal cure. Minister of the Colonies Paul Reynaud left his desk in Paris and hurried East for four months. While he is in Indo-China beheadings will be suspended. Said a spokesman for Paul Reynaud, "M. Le Ministre will examine sympathetically native grievances."

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