40 Years' Struggle

The new state has been created largely by the struggles of one man—Ho Chi Minh, known affectionately to the peasants as "Uncle Ho." Ho Chi Minh provided the leadership in the long struggle against French colonialism and forged a new unity of the Vietnamese people in the war-torn jungles and paddy fields of the North.

It was difficult to realise that this quietly - spoken scholar had spent 40 years of his life in either underground resistance work or open warfare against the Japanese and French.

In Vietnamese films of the resistance war I had seen, the President sharing the wartime sufferings of his people, the dedicated, infinitely patient, leader of an Asian revolution; meeting him in the early sunshne of a November morning I saw another aspect of his personality—a gentleness and warm humanity which rose above past bitterness and the narrowness of fanatical nationalism.

I left with the impression of a great man, who combined in his person the gentleness and warm-heartedness of these people and the toughness and determination which carried them through years of war and which sustains them in their long uphill struggle to rebuild their economy and reunite their divided country.