HAD THIS SITUATION PREVAILED IN THE WHOLE OF VIETNAM, THE long and bloody struggle for Vietnam, so injurious to all who took part, might have been over before it began. In the southern part of the country, however, which the Chinese soldiers did not enter, the situation was more fluid and much more favorable to French prospects. At the moment of Ho’s proclamation of independence in Hanoi, Cochin China was fractious, divided. A multiplicity of rival political and religious groups, some of which had collaborated with the Japanese or the French, competed with the Viet Minh for supremacy.
