NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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things, a "common customs system, common currency, and common policy of immigration" is necessary. (This latter was added because of the problems posed by the proximity of China.) These states, M. Bollaert continued, will also plan together the reconstruction of Indo China in which "of course, we (the French) have our own point of view".
"This collaboration is, after all. unavoidable and all those concerned (the French Republic being one of them) will have to decide together how, under the supervision of the High Commissioner,……
……also be "commissioners of the republic" to defend "French economic and cultural interests".
"The High Commissioner, or his delegate (whose function or position is not specified), will take good care that our countrymen are enabled to enjoy all the democratic freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the states belonging to the Union and will see to it that our concerns do not fare worse than local ones; the citizens and concerns of Indochina being, in return, certain of finding the same advantages in France. The High Commissioner or his delegate will therefore insist on ascertaining that the personal and material status of French subjects is never one-sidedly changed."
And finally, M. Bollaert said, the High Commissioner will have a special status drawn up for the "southern and northern minorities of Indo China whose rights are considered by the French as having a sacred character."
All the Indochinese states will be, M. Bollaert said, in the French Union which "must frame in the autonomy of the Indo Chinese people…it does not restrain private immunities…the French Union is resilient and dynamic enough to allow a nation to develop freely in framework…it is an aggregate of forces, ever on the move, each through a never ceasing interplay of exchange, giving and taking at one and the same time…it is the French Union that men will find their raison d'etre".
But, he added, the French Union can have only one army and one diplomacy, "The police forces of the associated states of Indo China will assure in time of peace internal order on their own territory; in case of foreign aggression, they will be integrated in the armed forces of the French Union for the defense of their countries and of the Union."
M. Bollaert also promised that the French "would not take reprisals and that all political and military prisoners would be liberated reciprocally. He made a thrust at the "originators of the December 19th aggression" who have lost "much of their credit with the French people". He extolled the French Union and its accomplishment and possibilities at some length and concluded:
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