The Monstrosity of Civilization

Source: Le Libertaire, September 30–October 10, 1921

Hồ Chí Minh toàn tập, Tập 1, Chính trị Quốc gia - Sự thật, Hanoi, 2011, pp. 66-67.

Translation: Foreign Languages Press, Paris, 2021.

In all their speeches, in all their reports, in all the places where they have the opportunity to open their mouths and where there are people to listen to them, our statesmen continue to assert that only barbarous Germany is a militaristic and imperialist state, while France—peaceful, humanitarian, republican and democratic France—the very France they represented, is neither imperialist nor militaristic. Oh, not at all! If these same statesmen send soldiers—children of workers and workers themselves—to massacre the workers of other countries, it is simply to teach them how to lead good lives.

To understand their acts of civilization, read this excerpt from the travel diary of a colonial soldier.

Upon the arrival of the four soldiers, the entire population had fled, with only two old men and two women remaining; a virgin and a mother nursing her newborn child and holding an eight-year-old girl by the hand. The soldiers asked for money, brandy, and opium. And as we didn’t understand, they became furious and hit one of the elderly men with their rifle butts. For the next few hours, two of them, already drunk upon arrival, amused themselves (by) roasting the second old man over a fire of wooden branches. Meanwhile, the other men were raping the two women and the little girl; once they tired, they killed the latter. By then, her mother had been able to flee with the other child and, two hundred meters away, while hiding in the bush, had seen her companion being tortured. For what reason, she didn’t know; the young girl, lying on her back, gagged, was repeatedly stabbed her in the belly with the bayonet of one of the men, in a slow and continuous movement. Finally, they cut off the dead woman’s finger and head to steal both her ring and necklace.

 The three corpses were spread out on the flat ground of the old saltworks; the naked girl, the disemboweled woman at the end of whose stiffened left forearm a clenched fist pointed towards the indifferent sky, and the corpse of the old man—the most horrifying of the three—naked like the others, disfigured by being cooked, with his body fat dripping, dissolving and with the skin of his belly blistered, scorched, gilded like the skin of a roasted pig.

 As I copy this passage, my hand trembles and my eyes are blinded by the tears that run down and mingle with the faded ink. I cannot go on any longer. Oh, poor France! Poor Indochina!!! Poor humanity!!!

Nguyễn A. Q.