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Mandarin in the Marshes. But the Annamese warriors were no match for the French, who arrived in the mid-19th century to cut roads and rail lines through the jungle, introduce rubber and expand the rice area for the profit of Paris. But the conquerors were not suffered docilely. As early as 1912, an anti-French nationalist organization called the Viet Nam Quang Phuc Hoi (Association for the Restoration of Viet Nam) was operating from Canton.
It was in this atmosphere of smoldering resentment that Ngo Dinh Diem grew to manhood. His father, Ngo Dinh Kha, was a cultured, educated mandarin whose family had been converted to Catholicism by missionaries in the 17th century. He was called to serve as administrative adviser to Emperor Thanh Thai in central Viet Nam's imperial capital of Hué, but quit in a huff when the French, interfering constantly in the affairs of the court, decided to depose the Emperor. Penniless ("We did not even have enough to pay for school," recalls Diem), Kha resigned himself to life as a farmer, borrowed enough money to rent some rice fields from neighbors, who were awed at the thought of an aristocrat and his family working beside them in the paddy fields.
Leaflets in the Haystacks. At first, young Diem seriously considered the priesthood. But the example of his scholar father soon led him to the local French school of law and administration in Hué (where he graduated first in a class of 20), then into government service as a district administrator.
In China, in the middle '20s, the youthful Vietnamese Communist, Ho Chi Minh, had formed his "Young Vietnamese Revolutionary League," was sending agents and propaganda south to foment trouble in Viet Nam itself. Soon Ho's products were showing up by the bushel in Diem's area. Diem himself was already a fervent nationalist, but he was shocked by the extremist cries for violence. Energetically he went to work arresting local Communists, gathering material for a 15-page anti-Communist booklet, which he distributed throughout his area. Rising rapidly to become a provincial governor at 28, Diem went to work on the French, hoping to alert them to the Communist threat; but they would listen neither to Diem's warnings nor to his persistent pleas for better living conditions for the peasants and a little more freedom.
"Don't Argue." The French were interested only in holding power. When Diem was invited to become Minister of the Interior, he demanded assurance that the French would agree to a strong nationalist voice in the promised new legislature. "You have a difficult character," he was told. "Take the job and don't argue so much."
Sure enough, the French-designed "democratic" assembly proved to be a rubber-stamp affair dominated by a French chairman. Ngo Dinh Diem resigned, and the French indignantly branded him a revolutionary, stripped him of all his academic titles and government decorations. "Take them," retorted Diem. "I don't need them. They are not important."