Nowadays, anyone claiming he strives for a higher, unseen goal, an abstract and absolute Good, who feels within some sacred mission, and implicitly, the certainty that goes with it, is highly suspect. A major section of modern academia, smugly tracing its contempt for "excessive enthusiasm" all the way back to the "rational" snobbery of an eighteenth century England whose resemblance to our own day otherwise eludes them "a point to be elaborated upon later) go so far as to deny the genuineness of spiritual motivation to such godly men as Cromwell and Milton. What emerges instead is an amoral hodgepodge of selfish "economic" motives and post-Freudian psychoanalysis. The New Subjectivism intolerantly insists on denying others possess what it stifles within itself: a thirst for God, for a Spiritual Absolute, a universally valid Moral Principle both above self and beyond its reach; One without which self is incomplete. This subjectivism is neither so new nor so distant from our subject as might be supposed. What is new is its virtual domination of contemporary thinking. Back in 1930, M. Vanlande found it rampant enough in Indochina. He quite correctly considered it a major obstacle to rapport between the natives and French officials:

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"Those blunderers who, not having anything of the kind in their own soul, imagine they can, with impunity, erase a people's beliefs, customs, humble pleasures and ceremonies." *

This artificial and absolute alienation from Church by State is carried to a grotesque extreme in 1967 in South Viet Nam. Official US policy restricts aid to government schools only. All available teachers, however, are often part of some religious school system, Catholic, Cao Dai, etc. The result: many thousands of children, refugees from American bombing, get no school at all. **

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* Vanlande, op. cit., p. 216
** To assure the skeptical of the accuracy of these lines, copious quotation from testimony of Mr. Don Luce before the Senate subcommittee on refugees is in order. Mr. Luce spent the years 1958-1967 in South Viet Nam as an agricultural expert for IVS, an ultra-respectable private, nonsectarian relief organization. From 1961 on, he headed IVS. In September of 1967 he resigned in protest. His testimony follows:

"When Vietnamese face a disaster, say there has been a flood, when people become refugees, etc., they look mainly to the Church, to the Catholic Church, or to the Catholic priest, the Buddhist monk, the Hao Hao, Cao Dai priest or monk, etc. At the same time our own economic aid program in Viet Nam today specifically forbids assistance to religious organizations. To the extent that in working with one village, ..., US AID, CORDS, I am sorry, would not give cement to build that particular school because it was being done under the auspices of the Church and not under the auspices of the local government.""We felt it had to be built by the Church because the only way a teacher would be provided for is if a Church had control of it because the government just did not have teachers, and didn't have the machinery to get the teachers and so on."

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Saigon, the capital, is an exception. There it is easy for a bright nine-year old to learn... how to sell his ten year-old sister. The practice is that open. * For the New Subjectivism, Soul-Chaos, so long as it is "moderate" is far less controversial than any positive assertion of spiritual value, while a social, mental trespassing is quite acceptable if it appears a smiling child. Such "freedom" may or may not be un-American. Not only is it unquestionably un-Vietnamese. They find it unfathomable, beyond their ken. The author is in a position to know ** that Radio Hanoi, in its broadcasts to US troops in South Viet Nam, often takes a lofty moral tone, an approach so humanitarian it might almost be described as Christian. He also knows that the Vietnamese are surprised by the utter ineffectiveness of this approach, since they seem unaware their moral indignation is so often addressed to the projects of an "urban culture" which openly despises the aggregate of spiritual, unselfish, humanitarian and democratic values which America still blithely allows others to credit her. A poem recited amidst the glare of Con Thien by its Marine Corporal creator may reflect a truer image *** :

When youth was a soldier,
(he began, his voice low and flat)
And I fought across the Sea
We were young and cold hearts
of bloody savagery.

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Still, avowal of the cold depravity, the savage numbness he witnessed, suggests Corporal Broderick retains a glimmer of spiritual awareness. Could that awareness be a relic of Christian sentiment * endowed at a distant childhood Mass? Is it possible the Vietnamese appealing on Hanoi Radio are saying, "You out there, who call yourselves Christians, why don't you apply the Biblical Commandments to our country?" Perhaps they are really addressing something far stronger within themselves than in the largely impenetrable "young, cold hearts of bloody savagery" who make up their audience. Some important Vietnamese Communist leaders are imbued with Christian values, ** but neither feel nor practice them as jaded and callous late Twentieth Century hearts do. *** A voyage to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth might help. Both Jesuit and Puritan are closer psychologically to Hanoi than any familiar panorama comfortable to middle class moderatism.

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* To avoid confusion, sentiment is used, although charity, from caritas, or the Greek agape, love of one's fellow as a creature in God's image, as quite different from Eros, love based on sexual attraction.
** Any reader of Ho Chi Minh's early (1925) work, The Case Against French Colonialism, find from beginning to tend emphasis on the immorality of Colonial rule by the standard of Christian civilization. The appeal throughout is to Nineteenth Century liberals. One thinks of a type with who Ho sat at Tours in 1920 at the last unified Socialist Convention. Men quite dignified and bourgeois in appearance, mostly formed when the memory of the Second Empire was far from passé; men capable of discarding the supernatural and dogmatic claims of the Church, while holding on very firmly to standards of social ethic derived from Christian civilization.
*** Writing as a Christian well-wisher in fullness of age, Dr. W.A.P. Martin (cf. p. 10), sixty years ago in Peking, spoke of "three reforms of vital importance which have been scarcely mentioned at all, which China requires fro full admission to the comity of nations." The second was abolition of Polygamy, leading toward female education, and the end to female abasement. The third was slave traffic, involving boys as well as girls. He concludes by praising Chinese efforts to stamp out the use of opium, "bondage to the hateful vice." Martin, op. cit. pp. 292-306. It is an outright absurdity to deny that whatever else Mao Tse-Tung has done (before him there was nothing beyond talk of these "vital reforms") it took his revolution to introduce them.

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            About a year after his murder, Diem was described by Mao Tse-Tung as "not so bad." * And Ho Chi Minh, before that event, astonished the Indian ICSC ** chairman with the comment, "After all, Mr. Diem is a patriot in his own way." *** Neither Mao nor Ho, in glaring contrast to the official line of their own governments, berated Diem as a monster of absolute evil. Perhaps his zeal, purity and honest conviction, all features so close to their own makeup, forbade such abuse. If so, the comparison with Jesuit and Puritan may seem less far-fetched. For Diem, responding to a French Catholic who spoke of our "common faith" is "reported to have answered calmly, "Your know, I consider myself rather as a Spanish Catholic." **** So sharp ( and unfriendly ) an observer as Brian Crozier, when he saw Ho in later 1956, noticed "a face that lends itself to sublimation. An El Greco face built vertically," etc. ***** Wasn't El Greco the master at depicting late fifteenth century Spain in its mystical and monastic grandeur? In that age also, Wars of National Liberation or National Independence ( Holland and England respectively offer good examples ) were always inseparable from the incessant global conflict between World revolution and Orthodoxy. And, while exceeding in intensity anything reported today, they surely matched our time in ferocity.

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* Edgar Snow in the New Republic, 27 February, 1965.
** The International Commission set up to super vise the 1954 Geneva Accords.
*** Lacouture, op. cit., p. 97.
**** Fall, The two Viet Names. p. 236.
***** Crozier, The Morning After. NY Oxford Univ. Press. 1963. p. 31.

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            To explore the Catholic imprint on Viet Nam, and it should never be forgotten that it was the first European impact with anything permanent about it, some view of its place of origin, Spain, Spain of the inquisition, must be sought. The Inquisition was the most thorough, the most pervasive system of thought control ever devised. It was hunting down heretics and burning them for the edification of delighted crowds even before Martin Luther's christening. * Its main target was the Sephardim, the Jew who had adopted Christianity to stay alive. ** That he harbored mental reservations as he kneeled in church, it did not doubt. Not the alien priest for him, but the forbidden Torah, pronounced the Word of the living God. The Jew was guilty until proven otherwise.

            During most of the Sixteenth Century, Spain magnified her peninsular conquests of the Fifteenth with worldwide invasions of unprecedented extent. Catalonian and Portuguese seafarers shared the lead in this momentous sequence. From Laos *** to the Philippines, from Mexico to the southernmost capes of America, Spain penetrated, often subduing multitudes in the Name of Christ. And with, or soon after, the galleons of the Holy Cross came the Inquisition. On reaching Goa and Macao, it made these Portuguese enclaves fit places to receive a new order of men called into

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* Luther was born in 1483. The first Auto da Fe roasted six who would not renounce heresy at Sevilla in 1481. John Lynch, Spain under the Hapsburgs, Volume I. NY Oxford Univ. Press. 1964. p. 20
** Dr. Rafael Altamira, History of Spain. English edition. D. Van Nostrand, NY 1949. p. 289.
*** Diego Belloso, a Portuguese subject of Philip II, had a series of amazing adventures from 1580 until he was murdered in 1599. Among other things, he married a royal Cambodian princess, and walked across Viet Nam all the way to Laos on the Mekong, a distance well over two hundred miles through some of the worst jungle and mountain terrain in the world. See Quiroga de San Antonio. ...Ralacion... del Reino de Camboxa. Valladolid. 1604.

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being to preserve the old. But what an improbable army it was. No swords or cannon, nor armor, except the shield of faith and the inspiring courage of a stalwart founder. Ignancio of Loyola believed the Church to be in a state of war. And the Inquisition was not enough. The Dominicans, the "Black Friars," were all right for snooping down helpless and despised Jew converts. Now there were whole kingdoms of armed and haughty heretics. Only a cosmopolitan, cultured company, untrammeled by monastery walls, yet bound by such faith it would accept cheerfully the discipline of soldiers, could wring (?) with this Revolution and save humanity from eternal hellfire. For as Spain expanded in Asia and America, a wave of subversion from the north was shaking the very doctrine on which was founded its Pontifical faith: Reformation in the Germanys, spreading quickly to Holland, Poland, France, etc. From wayward England defiance. The most drastic measures failing, the Inquisition useless where doubt was legal, the Dominican a laughing stock when confronted by erudite Germanic theology, only the company of Jesus could man the ramparts against the insidious Calvinist tide, the Komintern of four hundred years ago. * Pope Paul III revived the Inquisition. Spain again took the lead. As the rekindled hunt sniffed for heresy, none could claim exemption. After 1526, it was no longer legal to profess Islam, much less the Talmud. A surge of exalted and mystical feeling,

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* "A modern English historian, Mr. Trevor Davies, has put forward the view that Calvinism was the Third International of the Sixteenth Century and Philip certainly saw it in that light." Sir Charles Petrie, Philip II. WW Norton. NY 1963. p. 191. It is even more direct to compare the Company of Jesus, in outlook and method, if not in faith and morals, with the inner core of the Soviet Communist Party, while the "Black Friars," the Dominicans, could be fairly compared to the commonplace NKVD interrogators.

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aroused popular fervor. * The Jews had already been expelled, in the flesh, ** just as Columbus was about to sail the westward ocean. While converted brethren received Holy Communion, the dissenting spirit of the exiles haunted the chancel. Let no one misunderstand. The Inquisition proceeded with massive popularity. Spying each converso to detect the slightest deviation was as natural as crossing oneself. The common throng baptized every Hebraic convert with an unmistakable title. The title is omitted entirely from histories compiled by ashamed Spanish Liberals, *** but well remembered by every unassimilated Jew. "Marrano" means "pig." The Marranos who survived the "new Inquisition" of the Fifteenth Century **** would meet with one in the Sixteenth surpassing it in severity in not in victims.

----------------------------------------------------
* Professor Pears remarks: "So Angel Gavinet is right when he declares that Mysticism is the 'true centre' of the Spanish conception of Christianity so deeply rooted in Spain that we cannot take a step in life without it as our companion." E.A. Peers, The Mystics of Spain. p. 32. Popular feeling did not require too strenuous a rousing. As Elena de la Souchere puts it: "Jews, traditionally considered by the masses as the accomplices and secret agents of the Muslims..." de la Souchere, An Explanation of Spain. Random House. N.Y. 1965. pp. 85-86.
** In connection with the expulsion and the previous footnote, the widely read Hanbuch der Judenfrage blames the expulsion of the Jews solely on the aid a few area alleged to have given to fast fading Moors of Granada. Theodor Fritsch, Hanbuch der Judenfrage, 31st edition (the first was in 1887). Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig, 1932. p. 75. This version is hardly compatible with the one given in Volume 62 of the semiofficial Enciclopedia Universal Illustrada. Madrid. 1958. On pp. 1237 et seq.: "Torquemada had to use all his influence to convince their Majesties of the necessity of throwing out the Jews." The Handbuch der Judenfrage had a respectable and academically proficient board of consultants. Among them Professor Dr. Heinrich Wolf, Dr. Gercke, Dr. Muller, and Parson Falck. It may also be of interest to the reader to know that during his impressionable youth in Old Vienna, Adolf Hitler greedily absorbed the shallow draughts of Herr Fritsch.
*** Dr. Altamira, op. cit.
**** The original Inquisition goes back to the Thirteenth Century.

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            The Grand Inquisitor himself, Tomas de Torquemada *, had he lived under Philip II instead of Fernando and Isabel, could never have risen to become so infamous a tormentor of the suspect. His blood was impure. A grandmother once Jewish had become, under Philip, eternal disqualification from any role in chambers inquisitorial. ** To Spaniards of Liberal (Nineteenth Century Liberal) persuasion, the "noble designs" of St. Ignatius Loyola were still admirable, the inquisition nothing but a "terrible institution." *** It took the Twentieth Century to produce the following outright defense, and that not from a Spaniard. ****

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* Llorente, Historia de la Inquisicion, claims Torquemada was personally responsible for roasting 8,800 heretics. Graetz, History of the Jews. Philadelphia, 1897, gives a figure of 2,000 Hebraic victims. Although either figure is paltry by Twentieth Century standards, it should be remembered that unlike Eichmann, Torquemada knew and cared about each of his victims. Each had a hearing, was tortured and urged to confess, and only condemned when deemed hopeless. Perhaps Torquemada's piety was misplaced when he appropriated his victims' gold to build the magnificent and majestic monasteries of segovia and Avila. The semiofficial Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada insists apologetically this covered only a fraction of the cost. loc. cit.
** "Limpieza de Sangre," "purity of blood" became essential. "This prejudice against Jewish blood continued, even among some religious orders. By the end of the sixteenth century various bodies excluded men of "tainted" descent from admittance: "The Inquisition itself,..., all university colleges,... The Inquisition was the instrument for testing purity of descent. All the above... required the most rigorous investigation to trace the slightest... two sources of impurity: Jew or Moor ancestor, or one sentenced by the Inquisition." Lynch, op. cit. p. 27
*** Francesco Giner de los Rios (1860-1915), Professor of the Philosophy of Law at the University of Madrid, and moving spirit behind the Institucion Libre de Ensenanza. Quoted by Dr. Altamira on p. 358.
**** W.T. Walsh, Philip II, pp. 235-236, cited by Petrie, op. cit. p. 191. The apologetic Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada, loc. cit., remarks, "...if Torquemada went too far, it was with the best of intentions."

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------------------------------------------------------ "The lives of a few agitators, most of them descendants of the Jews who had summoned the Mohammedans to ravage Spain for nearly eight centuries, were to be sacrificed to keep peace and unity in Spain. *  Germany had had her peasants' war and in the next century would know the horrors of the Thirty Years War with the butchery of many thousands... and a people forever divided, **  All as a result of the tolerance of Charles.  In Spain, as long as the Inquisition lasted, there would be no religious wars, no burning of churches, no slaughtered priests.  France would know these atrocities, and England and the Netherlands.  It would be centuries before the enemies of Christendom could introduce them again into Spain.  If the method seems cruel to us, it is because we forget the cruel fate, the long crucifixion of a great people, to which it was the harsh reply.  It at least had the merit of proceeding judicially.  It could at least claim that the evil it caused was far less than the horror it averted."

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*Does Father Walsh mean, 'A few worthless Jew traitors, surely a small price, eh?'  With such Scholars tolerated by the Vatican, it is scarcely right to blame those Jews (or even such as Hochhuth) who bristle angrily with excess of accusation against the Holy See for its connivance by passivity in genocide.  Dr. Walsh's line of reasoning, if broadcast today by some Blach Walsh, could incite, in fact, it already has incited the already considerable inclination to murder among not  a few American Negroes into a righteous wrath which makes trifles of successful homicide.  Black Muslims, James Baldwin and the magazine Ebony all further this mania by constantly harping on how their people were ravaged three centuries ago, or a century ago, and how this debt is now due and overdue, perhaps in blood... It may be too much to expect a keen attachment to the doctrine on which the slender thread of civilization hangs:  individual responsibility, from such products of its violation as a Baldwin.  Unfortunately, to tolerate its denial, even by a Baldwin is to invite Neo-Nazism.  The old Nazis put it best in their jingle:   Was er sagt ist einerlei / Die Rasse ist die Schweinerei.  Which, translated freely, goes:  No matter how you coo / Your swinish race won't do.
**One can almost hear Dr. Walsh leading the chorus of a decade or so ago in chanting, 'Germany divided due to F.D.R. tolerating Communism at Yalta.'

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One prosperous Hebraic family of Aragon, failing to appreciate the historic advantages of sacrificing itself to avert the even greater horror alluded to by Dr. Walsh, moved to France.  As Catholics, of course.  Jews of the Exodus must part with their gold, silver and precious stones, * perhaps to edify thereby monasteries consoling to retired inquisitors.  How then cross a French frontier, already legally closed to infidel **, without cash in hand to soften refusal into oversight?  For there were many who returned to Spain, and converted to remain;  they had been abroad and none would have them abide. ***  The Rueda family of Aragon were a tenacious clan.  Starting out in Avignon, where Pope protected, as mere silk merchants, they were not long in scaling to noble height as de Rhodes. ****  Loyola's Jesuits welcomed the capable and willing faithful of any race.

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* Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain.  Volume II, Jewish Publ. Soc. of America.  Philadelphia.  1966. p. 338
** ibid. p. 438.
*** ibid. p. 510.  Until the Reformation broke the solid front against the fleeing Sephardim their chances of staying anywhere in Christendom were slim.  In 1498, Fernando y Isabel  "sent special messengers to England to express their sorrow that Flanders and England were infested with infidels cast out of Spain.  Henry VII, laying both hands on his breast, swore he would treat without mercy any Jew or heretic whom the King of Spain had exiled."  Professor Mark Vishniak, An International Convention Against Antisemitism.  N.Y. 1946.  p. 81
**** Solange Hertz, Rhodes of Viet Nam.  The Newman Press.  Westminster, Maryland. 1966.  p. x.  The reader might, by this point, find it difficult to believe anyone could discuss a family of Sixteenth Century Spanish Jews, converted or not, without mentioning the Inquisition.  Americans, however, are known for attacking the impossible, for taking any dare.  And Mrs. Hertz succeeds in accomplishing it.  Not a hint in her ten page translator's preface nor in any of her numerous footnotes that there ever was such a thing.  The unsuspecting reader might easily suppose that the de Rhodes moved to Avignon because fashions there were silkier.

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Alexandre, the greatest of the de Rhodes, first saw earth's shadows three years after Philips' Armada floundered attempting to subdue the English and punish the Dutch.   When he joined the Society of Jesus, the news and talk in defiant England was of "how the Great Henry was stabbed in Paris streets; assassinated by the Jesuits; black sons of the scarlet woman, murderous to soul and to body." *  Alexandre chose the Jesuits to better reach his goal, the Farthest East of pagan Asia where "so many souls are perishing for want of preachers." **  Then not one, but three New Worlds shone on youth's horizon.  America, which only had its tropic fringes settled, the East Indies, long past overcrowding with powerful, heathen kingdoms, and finally, the now proximate stars above. ***

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* Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.  Vol. I. London, 1897. p. 39  Dr. John Donne, who is usually restricted to incanting, "No man is an island unto himself...", described the hottest part of Hell as shared equally by Macchiavelli and Ignatius Loyola.  The Jesuits remained the favorite symbol of absolute evil in Britain long after Henry of Navarre had moldered, and the Gunpowder Plot became a holiday.  The foundation for this common English fury was the role of Jesuits as agents of a Power bent on destroying England's national independence.  Even today, all has not abated.  Some calm controversy can still flare into bitterness.  Trevor-Roper, finding contemporary apologists crying religious persecution (a wholly justifiable generality)  retorts:  "...like our ancestors, we cannot take it. Like them, we put 'the Bloody Question' ---whose orders, in politics, do these men take?  It is bloody because it is inconveniently clear; and when it leads to equivocation only we do as our ancestors did.  They sent the priests to the scaffold, to cold storage, or back to Flanders; we send their biographies to oblivion,..."  H. R. Trevor-Roper, Men and Events.  Harpers. N.Y.  1957, p. 116
** Originally de Rhodes had his heart set on Japan, where, a generation earlier, other Jesuits "confidently promised to redeem for the Papacy the loss of England by the conquest of Japan."  Trevor-Roper, op. cit. p. 119.  He wrote, "our superiors, (in 1624) seeing Japan closed, believed God had permitted this misfortune so that Cochin China (Viet Nam) might be opened to the Holy Gospel."  Hertz, op. cit. p. 49.  The body of Mrs. Hertz' work is an English translation of Father de Rhodes' account of Viet Nam.
*** cf. Father Ricci's exquisite Galileo in China.  An apoligia proinquisitione.

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aura, he seemed one dropped a herald from those stars, reaching down for the heart of Viet Nam.* Dazzled by his resonating inner light, the matrix of its body politic trembled.** Offering his wares free of charge, displaying publicly images of Life Eternal in blissful purity to the faithful, admonishing the doubtful against hellfire in boundless anguish, he stirred that deep sense of unfulfilment, that hunger for completeness in dramatic, exalting, mystical, yet clear and final choices which marks off Vietnamese from Chinese.*** All for the winning from perdition of souls: "My sole ambition in my travels has been the glory of my good Captain Jesus Christ and the benefit of the souls he conquers. I traveled neigher for the sake of riches, nor for knowledge, nor to amuse myself." So wrote the R.P. Alexandre de Rhodes in 1652.**** Foremost of persuasive propagandists, prince of agitators, most beloved fellow conspirator, he was finally expelled, first from one, then from the other part divided

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* The metaphor is valid well into the Twentieth Century.  Among Vietnamese the Emperor was the Agent of Heaven above, and the white suited, starched Mandarins from France, ca. 1930, were looked on as Angels of Death, more awful than the Son of Heaven himself.
P. Mus, op. cit. p. 121, 128.  The nearby Meo, in 1919, gave refuge to rebels from Tonkin: "Rumor had it a Prophet fallen from the sky was calling on all the Meo to rise up and form an independent kingdom at Dien Bien Phu."  le Boulanger, le Laos, quoted by J. S. Halpern,  Government, Politics and Social Structure in Laos. 1964. p. 74.
**  "The first storm arose from that which originally disturbed the world.  (This was in 1627, in Tonkin, and Father de Rhodes is referring here to Eve).  The wives, finding themselves rejected by the new Christians who had had several, made so loud an uproar that the whole kingdom was disturbed.  The King, who till then had shown us great kindness,..."  Hertz, op. cit. p. 70.
*** "I began with all my strength to convert the Chinese, but...it was much easier in the blessed kingdom (Tonkin)  I had just left... The other reason (de Rhodes mentions his need for an interpreter as one obstacle) might well be the pride of the Chinese, who consider themselves the greatest men on earth.  I noticed they came to sermons (only) as long as they had something to argue about..." ibid.
p. 76.
**** R. P. is reverend pere, Reverend Father, and the title is used in that form to retain the French flavor of our subject.

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Viet Nam. His monuments include the first dictionary from. Vietnamese to Latin and Portuguese. Compiling this, he had to devise some way of transcribing a tongue so exotic it seemed at first a twittering of birds. The resulting script is still used today. The Society of Foreign Missions (S.F.E), a creature of his gratitude to France*, would soon take the lead in evangelizing Viet Nam. In its emphasis on native self-reliance, local responsibility, and use of the native language, his approach was much closer to late nineteenth century American. Presbyterian than to later Catholic missionaries.** In mystical intensity, and limitless devotion to the Person of Jesus, he was straight sixth century Spaniard; his inexhaustible resilience before the harshest secular rejection, while never giving an inch on Moral Principle, suggests the Old Hebraic element, even unto Isaiah.

The methods and structure of the whole enterprise de Rhodes organized in Viet Nam from 1624 until his last banishment in 1645, strong resembles all apology here for any presumption of blasphemy as none is intended, the Viet Cong. His, too, was a revolutionary conspiracy implying the overthrow of the authority of existing government. The true believer, and de Rhodes taught his Vietnamese coadjutors the rule so well they threw it right into the Imperial Presence, obeys a Higher law, not government.

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* "I thought France the most pious kingdom of the world,...with the greatest monarch en earth(the boy king, Louis XIV, not yet le roi soleil), though the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, was reached by Msgr. de Maupas, her confessor, and beloved superior of de Rhodes. Hertz, p. 237.
** In the case of Korea, e.g., American Presbyterians reaped a windfall after 1895 with such methods, while their Catholic competitors were still referring to Rome for every detail and insisting on the exclusive use of Latin. The result is that today most Korean Christians are Protestant.
*** Statement by Mr ???? the Catholics, and the communists resemble the Catholics so much...! Washington Post 7 April 1968 P. 35.

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"Six magistrates questioned me on the new doctrine I was preaching, and why I was making so many converts despite the King' forbidding it. I answered that in doing so I was obeying God, who was above the King, that all of us had to obey Him without fear..." * This inquest occurred soon after the Christmas of 1644, celebrated by de Rhodes as the Emperor soldiers next door tortured a blind man to find out where Mass was hidden.

The main thing here is to first set up the proper dictionary. Satan, the chief of Devils, is American Imperialism, the Final Paradise, a life of dignity only possible by doing God's will to gain Redemption = Revolution, mainly against the Devil. This, in turn, can only come through the Holy Church = NLF, which promises Salvation = National Liberation by Faith and Works = Patriotism. Officials of the existing government, if they renounce the Devil, acknowledge their sins to a duly sanctified Priest = Party Cadre Confession = Self Criticism may be spared. *** Neither race, nor previous faith, not even class is a barrier to the penitent. Anyone can join, provided

-----------------------------------------
*Father de Rhodes implies that fear of earthly government should not keep us from obeying the Lord. Hertz, p. 146. What made it so repugnant was not that de Rhodes himself disregarded the law but that he taught his flock of Vietnamese converts: "The King; himself questioned them, asking whether they were Christians, and ordering them to be such no more. (Vietnamese) spoke for all, saying they were Christians, and that, by God's Grace would remain so until death. Let him (the King) test that as soon as possible. The King grew angry and wondered aloud if their ability to suffer exceeded his own to inflict torture... Ignatius replied they were indeed weak, but the Grace of Jesus Christ was more powerful than all the Kings of earth." Hertz, p. 178.
** ibid p. 143.
***"As to the soldiers and officials of the administration in power...if they have done wrong to the people, and repented thereafter, the NLF will not hold it against them and punish them severely, or treat them as enemies."
Declaration of the First NLF Congress, March, 1962. Hanoi. July 1962.

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his opposition to the Devil is sincere.* Certain oppressed groups get special attention. Women, down trodden before, or supposedly so, are now deliberately elevated to positions of leadership, and retaliation. Going beyond the comforting doctrines of Buddhist and Catholic, it bids for their support by promising a vague, but enticing " full equality" which must, by any interpretation, further disrupt family life.**

In the Roman Church founded by de Rhodes and his Jesuit companions, unshakeable Vietnamese like the proto-martyr Andrew of Phu Yen excited Governors to crucify them and rushed joyous at heart to feel the executioner's blade.***Expecting capital condemnation, six faithful Vietnamese went along as "gaily as if they had wings."**** And what of the V.C.? Douglas Pike, perhaps the furthest a scholar can be from any glimmer of sympathetic consideration foe the organization he fought against f!or six years over in South Viet Nam, notes: " The NLF goaded the government into increasingly repressive measures...a theme constantly employed ( by the NLF) in the early period was, 'The enemy (Diem) brings violence; we wish only to resist peacefully'."*****

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*It is ready to work with them against the common enemy ( this refers to solders and officials of the Saigon government who have duly repented)...NLF is for union of all layers of the people, all social classes, all nationalities, all parties,... all religious organizations... It offers the warmest welcome to all organizations and all persons who wish to join the NLF, and be a militant in its ranks." 1962 NLF Declaration .
**Obviously family life is already grievously disrupted by the cruder, more blatant American approach. Ironically, the NLF also promises women an end to polygamy, disregarding both the female oppositio!n which de Rhodes stirred by this three centuries ago, and more recent uproar Mme. Nhu provoked when she attempted it for the same reasons in 1958-1963.
***Hertz, p. 130, 131.
****ibid. p. 139.
*****Douglas Pike, Viet Cong. M.I.T. Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1966. p. 155

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An official NLF pamphlet : " That is why men smile on their way to the firing squad... ( Patriotism )."* The main impact of killing off religious ( or patriotic) individuals who die cheerfully while their executioners wonder is to outrage popular decency. provided the victims are not tarnished by alien connection. As to the fervor of the faithful de Rhodes informs us " it grew more ardent from its enemies atrocities."** Here is a major cause of the present war in South Viet Nam, and one largely overlooked by both the most professional of Communist publicist *** and, quite naturally, by his opposite number at M.I.T.**** A safe statement today, though it wasn't at the time respectable to deny that "we have against us (i.e. France in 1945-1946) only a handful of convicts...forcing themselves on the people by terror...the immense majority of the Vietnamese people fear and reject them...", is that Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh enjoyed broad public support during it!s war for independence against 'French Colonialist'".****

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*Sparking Fires in the South, by Che Lan Vien, quoted by Pike , op. cit. p. 437. Significantly enough, Pike sarcastically recommends it for insight into the mind of the NLF 'True Believer' (Pikes's phrase). Equally significant, Che emphasizes the horrible contrast between the Christians professions of 'Diemist officers' and their practice of cannibalism.
**Hertz, p. 139.
***Wilfred Burchett, My visit to the Liberated Zones of South Viet Nam, Hanoi. 1966. pp.17-22. Burchett gives a full account of the bestial torture and killing in Quang Ngai Province, 1956-1959, but instead of talking about popular indignation he tells of a populace so thoroughly terrorized it served Ngo Dinh Can's Inquisition. His whole approach is materialistic, and shallow. The NLF Declaration, however, resounds, "The atrocious nature of the repression! let loose by American Imperialism and its agents can only solidify the people of South Viet NAM in its struggle and strengthen its resolve."
****Pike blandly ignoring the 1956-1959 Inquisition, says: "( a revolutionary organization begins ) with persons suffering genuine grievances...Exactly the reverse was the case with NLF...The grievances were developed or manufactured almost as a necessary afterthought." Pike, op. cit., p. 76
*****Mus, op.cit.p. 55. If this has a familiar ring to Americans of today, perhaps they should ponder why.

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As the Voice of America 'expert' on Viet Nam affirms: " An important factor usually unnoticed by outside observers was the moral indignation generated in ordinary decent Vietnamese people by the corrupt practices sanctioned by the colonial regime...For the Vietnamese people, the Revolution was a conflict between virtue and vice...This attitude partly explains why neither Bao Dai, the ex-Emperor nor Ngo Dinh Diem, the ex-mandarin, have ever had any chance of success against Ho Chi Minh, the model revolutionary and symbol of virtue..."* The Revolution Hoang Van Chi refers to is that begun in August 1945; it soon merged into the War of Resistance which went until 1954. If the moral indignation was great against corrupt mandarins, how much greater must it have been against those who punished the bravest opponents of the mandarins? If the postulate that Viet Minh was a Holy Church embracing hordes of followers is correct, then persecution of its Preachers=Cadre! could only make the faithful more ardent. It just was downright evil to come into a village, hunt down and torture as a despicable "Communist" a man almost everybody in town knew and looked up to as a selfless, devoted patriot, a catechist in the religion of Patriotism. Paul Mus has said, " Vietnamese, however, do have grounds for taking their history more seriously than we do."**

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*Hoang Van Chi, From Colonialism to Communism. Praeger.N.Y. 1964. p. 35. As a standard method sources are selected which have either no interest in furthering the conclusion aimed at, or are actually inclined to its opposite. None have less love for Ho Chi Minh or Vietnamese Communism than Hoang Van Chi.
**Mus, op. cit. p. 67. The analogy given above is even more valid if the NLF in action is compared to Moses and Joshua, leaders of the first National liberation movement recorded. Discipline was strictly !enforced by the latter during the last battles and partition of lands. Achan, disobediently pillaging after a victorious siege, is put to death along with his entire family and households, such severity...??

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Unfortunately, few of those who should realize that history includes the fact that " from 1921 on, any opponent of colonial rule" was labeled a 'Communist' by the "right-wing dominated colonial administration."* The general association 'Communist--Patriot', the exact opposite of the one in the mind of Mr.&Mrs. America, i.e. 'Communist---Traitor', was established for a generation before Can's 1956-1959 Inquisition attempted to defy it.
How goes a genuinely inspired preacher if his message must be given under the Devil's government? By secret defiance of prohibition, meetings at night, hiding by day, all arranged so well by the faithful that no fear of discovery or betrayal inhibits. Again and again, from 1630 on, de Rhodes did all this, both North and South. To forestall treachery there must be staunch, firm faith,** even unto death. As to the NLF: "That this machine was assembled secretively by night, in the remote back country makes it even more impressive,... the apparatus withstood the threat of constant betrayal in a land where betrayal is the norm."***
Similarity of structure goes even further. Donald Lancaster, in describing Viet Minh control of its own disparages the "inquisitional methods"**** used to keep members in line.

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*Professor Philippe Devillers, The Nation, 5 Dec. 1966. p. 598. In this !excellent article. however, even the astute Devillers misses the issue of popular indignation over persecution of ex- Viet Minh by emphasizing mere self-preservation in the
1956-- 1959 period as a principal motive.
**Hertz, pp. 72-73, 102, 139.
***Pike, p. 111.
****Lancaster, The Emancipation of French Indochina. 1959. p. 421

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Could it be that the real issue in Viet Nam was not whether "Inquisitorial methods" would be used, but whose Inquisition would prevail? Would it be one for the country, for that precious sovereign independence Anglo-Saxons so imprudently take for granted at home, or would it be one for some little clique whose political fief required foreign, rather then, popular consent? When, in 1956, the amateurish Red Inquisition exceeded the bounds of human endurance, it was the more professional adepts of the medieval one that courageous witnessing of the Faith, went so far as to admit that the DRVN had connived at intolerable religious intolerance.*

The following Komintern document, circa 1929, possibly one retouched by Ho Chi Minh's delicacy, fell into the hands of the colonial police**: " We must find and train propagandist ready for anything, resolved to die if need be as Christian Vietnamese were during the time of persecutions."

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*The confession from Hanoi Radio came on 22 Nov. 1956, less than a fortnight after the uprising had been smothered. That occurred during the second week of November. Roman Catholics in Quynh Luu, 35 miles north of Vinh, Nghe An Province, marched on the district center, disarmed a platoon of the regular army and compelled both soldiery and party cadre to publicly confess their misdeeds and sign statements affirming these transgressions. Fall, Viet Nam Witness. p. 101. People of Nghe An Province are known for their readiness to revolt against tyranny. In 1873, a local revolt there assumed threatening proportions. Imperial forces were defeated. Catholics, just recently armed, were summoned by Mandarins to defend legitimacy. The rebels were defeated, but only with valuable help from the generally hated Christians.
**Vanlande, op. cit. p. 65. M. Vanlande, arch-foe of Moscow and all others challenging the French Emp!ire, comments, "Such propagandist exist. Already some have passed over to deeds, and died with a courage it would be childish for us to ignore." ibid.

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That first summer of World Depression, Ho himself was telling agitator Nguyen Luong Bang he must adopt an entirely new approach in his work with soldiers: " It's not enough to make these appeals to 'Workers and Peasants'. Right now we're out to overthrow the French colonialist and free the nation. The innate patriotism of each of our countrymen must be aroused...That's the way, the only way, to win over those fellows."*

The religion of Patriotism, the identification of Salvation with National Liberation was already underway. It is no coincidence that the Communist Youth League ( PRPYL ) chronicles its martyrology from this time on: " The idea that joining PRPYL meant a new life or rebirth was heavily stressed in long and arduous indoctrination...League members prided themselves on the sacrifices Youth had made for the Revolution, and indoctrination sessions consisted largely of recounting the legendary exploits of revolutionary youths as far back as 1930!."**

Ho Chi Minh has said, "I learned about Revolution not in Moscow, but in Paris." He might have added that France itself had, by a century, anticipated his Cult of Patriotism. Napoleon was looked on not only as a martyr and a saint, but Bellange has a peasant exclaim to the village priest, " Hold it, Father, for me the Eternal Father is over there", pointing to a likeness of Bonaparte.***

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*Nguyen Luong Bang, My meeting with Uncle Ho, in Souv. p. 65
**Pike, op.cit. p. 152. PRPYL is very much alive today in South Viet Nam.
***Philip Guedalla, The Second Empire. G.P. Putnam's Sons. N.Y. 1923. p. 31.

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Updated smugness might scoff at any suggestion Father de Rhodes could be a living issue in a country preoccupied with bombs and rice bowls. Thich Nhat Hanh, however, perhaps the only bonze to ever beg His Holiness, Paul VI in person to consider a Papal Pilgrimage for peace to Viet Nam, is still rankled by de Rhodes. Else why should he devote two irritated pages of his recent monograph to quoting from the good Father's 'Catechism in Eight Days', referring to de Rhodes' "maligning Buddhism" in "violently provocative language"* Bonze Nhat, aside from maligning de Rhodes and mixing up his centuries,** has a point. Past Catholic intolerance for other theologies has bred its natural reaction. This heritage, unless disavowed, nurtures that hostility keeping Buddhist and Catholic from working toward so commonly felt a need as peace. It may be argued that the Sangha is too tolerant and too gentle to achieve !anything; that the real conflict in the past was between rigid, ancestor-worshiping Confucian and rigid, Holy-Image-worshiping Catholic. If so, it still does not invalidate the timeliness of Buddhist resentment of R.P. de Rhodes, the pathfinder.

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*Thich Nhat Hanh, Viet Nam: Lotus in Sea of Fire. Hill & Wang, N.Y. 1967.
**Rather too credulously quoting Dao Duy Anh's History of...Vietnamese Civilization, Nhat affirms " missionaries were often forerunners of the imperialist." Referring as it does to 1680, that observation is little short of fantastic. Pally, Vicar Apostolic for Viet Nam, could not get Louis XIV, already rebuffed in Thailand, to show the slightest interest in running either fore or aft of the isolated and almost forgotten envoys of the Rhodes' S.M.E. Nhat, on page 15 (op.cit.) says de Rhodes was expelled from Tonkin for "suspicion of having political links !with the western powers". Inasmuch as the King had refused to see him at all, or let him state his case, de Rhodes' claim that courts eunuchs and others with vested interests in perpetuating polygamy had convinced the superstitious sovereign de Rhodes was a hypnotic sorcerer is more plausible.

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A generation after de Rhodes started the S.M.E. Spanish Dominicans were allotted the eastern portion of Tonkin. They were "destined to later (i.e. after 1833) bear the brunt of one of the most terrible persecutions... Repeatedly banished from the country they ( here the pronoun compasses all the sundry missions, French S.M.E., Spanish Dominican, Italian Franciscan, etc.) turned their ships towards land again...thousands of Annamese* --- a race whose name has become a byword for fickleness--- gladly laid down their lives for the faith... no little credit is due (reference here to the period 1825-1885) to the fidelity of the native to their pastors; regardless of danger, they sheltered proscribed priests, escorted them by concealed paths to their next place of hiding and ministry. Although prisons were filled with Christians, cases of apostasy were extremely rare."**

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*Instead of changing it, as we usually do, to Vietnamese, 'Annamese' is here retained in the text quoted in order to preserve the flavor of this article. Written during the high noon of European Empire, and redolent of its easy condescension for subject peoples, this frank account is openly partisan, for Rome. Its vitality emerges if one collates the article by A. Gelinas on Viet Nam in the latest Catholic Encyclopedia ( 1966 Edition, prepared by the faculty of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.., vol. XIV, pp. 661-663). That is hardly much more than a moribund jungle of statistics and nomenclature untarnished by passion or confidence. A note of pertinence to the name is the experience of Edmund Roberts, Andy Jackson's unsuccessful envoy to Minh Mang in 1833. Roberts found his Presidential letter unaccepted. Its address was incorrect. Mandarins form the capital, Hue informed him "the country is not now called An N!am, as formerly, but Wietman (Viet Nam?).
and it is ruled, not by King (wang), but by an Emperor (hwang-te)" Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin China, Siam and Muscat,... Harper & Brothers, N.Y. 1837. p. 182 .
**Article, Indochina, by Thomas Kennedy, R.U.I., in Volume VII, pp. 774 et seq. of the 1910 Edition Catholic Encyclopedia, published with the Nihil Obstat of John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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By the middle of the last century, edict after edict from the Dragon Throne threatened to nullify the loving labors of Pigneau de Behaine. Although foreshadowing modern science, Pigneau remained by the direct, undiminished spiritual descendant of de Rhodes. Besides brewing his own saltpetre, he also founded cannon near Saigon.* Advancing with motley troop of French and Vietnamese, Pigneau, under his silken flag of red**, preserved the dynasty which was to unify and name Viet Nam, while that of his own sovereign crumbled under the guillotine before Thermidor. He received in return a splendid funeral. The Church he loved most of all was spared its Calvary but for an hour.***

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*Lt. John White, Voyage to Cochin China. Boston. 1823. p. 273
**Captain A. Thomazi, la Conquest de l'Indochine. Payot, Paris. 1934. p. 22.
***Emperor Minh Mang (pronounced nasally Meen-Mack)! decreed in 1825 that it was illegal to practice the (sic) Catholic Faith. Nguyen Van Thai, op. cit. p. 256. Eight years later, Edmund Roberts, off Phu Yen, was told "the few French, Spanish and Italian priests living in the country are obliged to conceal themselves. Father Jaccard, a Frenchman is confined wholly to the precincts of Palace, where he is employed in the care of the King's European books, charts, mathematical instruments, etc. It is difficult for foreigners, excepting Chinese to gain admission". Roberts, op. cit. p. 186. That was on 20 January, 1833. Three years later the Emperor decided it was all right for any of his subjects to kill Christian missionaries on sight, while denying on pain of death, the option of concealing such intruders. Nguyen Van Thai, op. cit., p. 257.
Mr. Joseph Buttinger, egregious apologist for what his Communist confreres would call "feudalist tyranny", just so long as it is not European, and a steady purveyor of bias tantamount to !wholesale inaccuracy, insists Minh Mang showed great restraint. He doesn't, as he might have extenuate by the obvious Confucian-Nationalist response. Perhaps the reason is that in this case his favorite target, "the French", are not involved. It was the British who upset Minh Mang. The British, usually somewhat sparingly lashed by Mr. Buttinger's sharp pen, though not wholly immune from his shafts as America and non -Red Vietnamese seem to be. By Seizing Singapore in 1819, then invading Burma in 1826, the British smashed the whole balance of power in S.E. Asia Minh Mang was upset (Devillers, Histoire du Viet Nam.Paris.1952.p. 16). oN 23 January 1833 "they (mandarins from Hue) asked many questions,...particularly desirous to know the affairs of England." Roberts, p. 187.

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By 1851, all European priests, if they could be caught, were to be hurled form high into the China Sea, while native clergy would be allowed to remain on the soil of their ancestors, after partition into at least two sections. Then, all had to renounce the 'perverse cult' within six months, Catholic mandarins excepted. They must trample the cross before the next moon had gone. Bishop Delgado, a stubborn Hispanic octogenarian, had perished in prison in 1838. Msgr. Diaz, another Iberian Bishop, lost his head in 1857. The following year, before, an Allied force under French and Spanish command* could land at Da Nang (Touran), a "Christian town was set aflame and all the inhabitants butchered."** Awaiting deliverance by the sluggish allies provided fatal to over 5,000 faithful, 100 nuns and one in every three Vietnamese priests. Many more among the half million or so Christians were horribly branded. Bishop Hermosillo and three other Spanish Bishops along with! twenty eight Dominicans were tortured or done away with

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*In the initial assault on Saigon, in February of 1859, there were three companies of elite French sailors, fusiliers marines, F.M., and two of Filipino infantry under Spanish officers. The later fought well, and bore the brunt of the last major counter-attack at Saigon, 3-4 July, 1860. Thomazi, op. cit. p. 34, 42. This, the maxim, 'Use Asians to fight Asians' was applied by the first western conquerors long before John Foster Dulles, who patented it in 1953 for the Republican Party, was born.
** op.cit. of Thomas Kennedy in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910.

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Vietnamese still recall*, although others may not**, that it was the Empress Eugenie, the Jacqueline Kennedy of a century ago, who prevailed on her hesitant spouse to decide to make Viet Nam safe for missionaries.*** Eugenie Montijo was as loyal to her Spanish concept of the Vatican as any Queen of France could be after Robespierre; she left that worry to others. Born five years to the day after the great Napoleon succumbed at St. Helena, this most remarkable woman came from a noble line. Her father maimed at Trafalgar, was Don Cipriano Montijo, " a younger son of the noble house of Montijo, among whose ancestors figured the famous knightly clan of de Guzman, Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, ...Cardinal Portocarrero who negotiated the French succession...with Louis XIV...an impressive record of great positions in State, Army and Church."**** How could a worthy daughter in the line of Saint Dominic, mixed with fiery blood of Scotland, sit by whil!e his inquisitorial offspring agonized afar.

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*Nguyen Van Thai, op. cit. p. 264. Le Thanh Khoi, le Viet Nam. les editions de minuit. Paris. 1955. p. 367. Both the -Marxist and Marxist here.
**Mr. Buttinger in his History of Viet Nam. Praeger. N.Y.1958.
***Empress Eugenie was irresistible and incessant influence over her often hesitating husband. To compare her with Mme. Nhu might be flattering to neither, or both. Each was beautiful, devout, alert, and far too masterful for their own good. Each pushed enchanted men, step by step, towards abyss of absolute power; then, still avid for more, over the brink of disaster. Mme. Nhu, in urging defiance of the enigmatic Americans, who in their omnipotent inconsistency, had suddenly declared themselves Protectors of the Buddhist Faith in a manner fully comparable to Louis Napoleon's decision to coerce Liberty of religion of Catholics by overthrowing the State. E!ugenie, in prodding Louis Napoleon, first into Mexico, and then toward a war with ironclad Prussia for which his Empire was woefully unprepared.
****Harold Kurtz, The Empress Eugenie. Houghton Mifflin. Boston.1964. p. 5.

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The Drama of Elizabethan England mobilizing to forfend an alliance of native Jesuit, the Fifth column"*, with a foreign protector was replayed in the last century with Louis Napoleon a rakish substitute for Philip. This time, no Dutch allies, nor benevolent storms. Rome was vindicated by application of Galileo's Mechanics** in Mekong channels. The monastic West had triumphed under that once atheist banner, the tricolor. Dai Nam*** was duly racked for its ghastly persecutions of the Faith. Aside from the contagion of imperial ambition, the fundamental reason was the conflict of two religions equally inseparable form State. Minh Mang had reaffirmed in deeds his choic!e of China (Confucian) and rejection of Europe (Catholic). The former rested on ancestral idols, an utterly abominable foundation by pontifical interpretation of the Second Commandment. But calling in question the Emperor's religion meant subverting the State. In Viet Nam, the traditional Viet Nam, every though and act of the government, and this meant above all of its head, had a sacred ceremonial value bound to it.****

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*Trevor-Roper's exact phrase; elsewhere "For the generation before the Plot had been the great age of the English Jesuits. Agents of a hostile power, propagandists of a foreign system, they were understandably regarded as traitors by the Elizabethan government and cruelly treated if found". p. .109.
In 1930, G.K. Chesterton could still rear up: " If the word 'Jesuit' is still to be used synonymous with the word 'liar', I should prefer that the same simple transaction should apply to the word 'journalist', of whic!h it is much more often true." Chesterton, The Thing Why I am a Catholic. Dodd Mead & CO.N.Y. 1930. p. xii.
**cf. Father Ricci's excellent, Galilei in China.
*** Dai Nam was also used as the name for Viet Nam in the period 1820-1945.
****Mus, op. cit. p. 129, 130.

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A secularized government, such as that introduced by M. Doumer and his Civilization after 1900, could, therefore, never be a de jure power, but merely a de facto one. Paul Mus observes, "Either a Spanish--type State or the Second Empire ( in which, he notes there was no separation of church and state) would have been better understood, if not more highly esteemed."* The clear implication is that a lasting conquest might have been possible had not the West turned secular, that once it did, the only hold was physical force and indolent habit.

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*Mus, op. cit., p. 133, 134. The circumstantial validity of an Elizabethan comparison is enhanced by the fact that the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church form 1835 to 1885 in Viet Nam was "without parallel since the fiercest days of the Reformation. " Kennedy, loc. cit.

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Go to Chapter III

CONTENTS:	Background
Introduction	Letter From A Dead Man	page 1, 2
Chapter I	Stubborn and patient National Resistance	page 10
Chapter II	Modern Viet Nam: Product of or Reaction to the Spanish Inquisition	page 16
Chapter III	"Mad Jack" Disguised as Uncle Sam Draws First Blood	page 44
------------	Letters to and from Captain John Percival, Captain, USS Constitution	page 58
Chapter IV	The American Revolution and War of Independence	page 90
Chapter V	Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God	page 95

Editors notes: This unpublished manuscript by Ira Bodry, was written and typed sometime between 1968 and given for publication to Walter Teague in 1970. Unfortunately some of the citations are unreadable and a few may be missing. Where possible such items are indicated. The preparation of this text for the the web and a scanned and notated version were prepared by Walter Teague and other volunteers from 1999 through 2013. This publication is copywrited by Walter Teague, Adelphi, Maryland. (C).

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