The Answer

Now what answer docs this congress provide for such people? Just this—that agreement is possible upon any subject once fear has been put aside, when instead of becoming lost in vain conjecture on the intentions and wishes of "the others" we ask them in so many words what those intentions and wishes are.

There is a Chinese Government recognised as such by the whole Chinese people, it has all the power in its hands. It runs the economy of the country. It possesses a strong army. And like any normal government. It is in China. But for the United States and the United Nations it does not exist. For them the Chinese Government consists of a handful of exiles living in Washington or at Lake Success. Is this not abstract? is it not abstract that the French Government is keeping the government of Bao Dai whom nobody wants, and is granting to him little by little, without being able to do anything about it, all the [unclear: concessns] which were refused to Ho Chi Minh? We could go on indefinitely quoting separations, idealistic lines of demarcation, false doors, [unclear: alse] windows, unsupportable agreements, abstractions which can be maintained only by violence since they deliberately violate the historical situation.

In the main, those of us who are here have neither the science of the technician nor the jurisdiction of the ' diplomat, but we have an immense advantage over both in what we are real, concrete. The peoples are concrete and could not themselves violate history because they are history. We have not among us the specialists who juggle with peoples in the United Nations, but we have the representatives of those peoples, of those who suffer most from these abstract situations. They have not come to tell us about the motives of prudence which demand the continuation of the divisions which are tearing the world apart under the protection of armies of occupation. They have come to tell us that they can no longer put up with the lines, the zones, the divisions and the armies; and it is they who can tell us before anyone else where the remedies lie. And when they tell us simply that they want those armies to leave, they already have helped us to make considerable program simply because they have shown us what the truth of the situation is. And they will do more than that. If for instance the German delegates come to us French and say that the dismemberment of Germany—which we consider dangerous to us—is, for them also. Intolerable, then they will have demonstrated the profound solidarity uniting any Frenchman who opposes war with any German who wants German unity. In the United Nations agreements are reached at the best by mutual concessions whereas here they will be reached by taking a census of our common requirements. But it goes without saying that these difficulties which maintain the cold war are born of the cold war itself. They will never be suppressed without a radical change in international relations.