The United States, after all, was not like the other great powers, or at least it differed from them in key respects; whereas the British, the French, and the Dutch were wholly to be mistrusted, Americans could be believed, if not completely, then at least substantially. Ho Chi Minh, being more farsighted than most, had his suspicions on this score, as he revealed in his August letter to Charles Fenn, but even Ho held to what he thought was a well-founded hope that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would animate the postwar world.
