ABSTRACT
Ho Chi Minh remained in France after the Vietnamese delegation had left because he was eager to salvage something positive from the unresolved issues that had impeded the French-DRV conferences Ho arranged with his old friend, Marius Moutet, Minister for Overseas France, for the formulation of a document, to be known as the ‘modus vivendi’, which they jointly signed on the night of 14 September in Moutet’s home. Its contents seemed to have been discussed at an earlier meeting of the two parties which collapsed at the same time as the Fontainebleau conference. New demands by the DRV ‘after a previous agreement had been reached on a draft’ delayed matters because Ho Chi Minh requested a clause be inserted providing for freedom of the press and assembly in Cochinchina and for the release of political prisoners. Ho had to catch his ship to return to Vietnam by 14 September, and the compromise was reached by the two leaders that evening.1 The document declared that both governments ‘in a spirit of mutual friendship and understanding’:
signed a modus vivendi, furnished, within the framework of limited accords, provisional solutions to the principal questions of immediate interest existing between France and Viet-Nam. . . . They are convinced that the measures contained in the modus vivendi will contribute to the reestablishment, in the near future, of an atmosphere of calm and confidence permitting the early undertaking of definitive negotiations.2
