On May 9th 1957 the South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem addressed a joint session of the United States Congress:

“Mister President, Mister Speaker, distinguished Members of the Congress of the United States, it is a rare privilege for me to have this opportunity to address you today… I am proud to bring to the distinguished representatives of the noble republic of the United States, the fraternal best wishes of the Vietnamese people. I bring as well the expression of their profound gratitude for the moral and material aid given by the people of the United States. My people appreciate both its great import and its profound significance.

Since the end of the last war, when Asia broke her chains, the conscience of the world has at last awakened to a profound and inevitable development: the birth of Asian independence. This realisation has brought about a condemnation in the most concrete terms of the old system of exploitation which governed, in the past, the relationship between East and West. In its place firm efforts are being made to establish a new formula of international cooperation… It is the battle for independence, the growing awareness of the colonial peoples that the origin of their poverty has been the systematic withholding of technical development, coupled with the growing nationalist and social sentiment, that have combined to bring about a profound transformation in the Asian state of mind and given to its masses an irresistible dynamism.

The Asian people – long humiliated in their national aspirations, their human dignity injured – are no longer, as in the past, resigned and passive. They are impatient. They are eager to reduce their immense technical backwardness. They clamour for a rapid and immediate economic development, the only sound base for democratic political independence…

It is in this debate – unfortunately influenced in many countries by the false but seductive promises of fascism and communism – that the efforts being made to safeguard liberal democracy through aid given by the industrial countries of the West, play a vital role. For the honour of humanity, the United States has made the most important contribution to this end…

At great human sacrifice – and thanks to the aid given by the generous American people – free Vietnam has succeeded, in record time, to overcome the chaos brought about by war and the Geneva Accords. The national rehabilitation and stability which have been achieved, have permitted the integration of over 860,000 refugees into the economy of the other 11 million people in free Vietnam, and have permitted the adoption of important economic and political reforms…

We [the government] affirm our faith in the absolute value of the human being – whose dignity antidates society and whose destiny is greater than time.

We affirm that the sole legitimate object of the state is to protect the fundamental rights of human beings to existence [and] to the free development of their intellectual, moral, and spiritual life.

We affirm that democracy is neither material happiness nor the supremacy of numbers. Democracy is essentially a permanent effort to find the right political means in order to assure to all citizens the right of free development and of maximum initiative, responsibility and spiritual life…

The Republic of Vietnam, the youngest republic in Asia, soon will be two years old. Our Republic was born among great suffering. She is courageously facing up to economic competition with the Communists, despite heavy and difficult conditions, which become daily more complex. Vietnam nevertheless has good reason for confidence and hope. Her people are intelligent, have imagination and courage. They also draw strength from the moral and material aid they receive from the free world, particularly that given by the American people.

In the face of increased international tension and Communist pressure in Southeast Asia, I could not repeat too often how much the Vietnamese people are grateful for American aid, and how much they are conscious of its importance, profound significance and amount…”