Mrs. Thanh: I suppose so.

Everyday I could hardly sleep two hours every night. I just sit., So even if they keep me there for better conditions (Editor's note: because conditions there are better than at other prisons) they are the same. Doctors understand the situation. We have no fresh air here and it is very bad for asthma.

We've been in a position in general of being retaliated (against) by the government. It all comes from the fact that the government is supported by the Americans. Not many people. From the day the Americans withdraw their support...that day, the Vietnamese people will be able to decide on our fate and the role of the minority of people who actually rule the country, they will collapse by itself because it has no people support.

I don't think that any government that has no support from its own people would be able to stand. Even supported by foreign powers such as America--this is a lesson that we have learned for the last 10 years. With such presence of the U.S. Army, the full support of so-called Allies and yet the puppet government of South Vietnam has failed in all aspects totally--economically, socially and politically. This is a good case, so how could they stand by themselves?

All we are demanding is that Americans could just turn back to the people of Vietnam their sovereignly, and we would handle our business and we are sure that when the war ends in our country-with our country our natural resources with our ability and our will, with our full aspiration to peace and with peace, we could know how to handle our country. The Americans have always ignored the Vietnamese people. All they know is about the few men that they think would serve the interest of America. Who are in fact working against American interest.

I have not only been in America but I have been educated in the traditions of American Democracy. I have graduated from the Law School of Columbia University--a title for which I am very proud.

Because of that. I believe that in America. I mean the Great America, and not some administration of some given time of history, is in fact serving the real ideal that every free man should fight for and I am among them. But unfortunately for this time of the human rebuild-up we are converging towards a new world and I think the new equilibrium has not been found yet. That's why we haven't been able so far to find our real wise solution, but in fact there are some basic rules. As long as every nation would recognize to every other nation with the same rights asked by themselves--the right to hold their own business--as long as every human being would be recognized--any basic right as human beings--as long as no other country would want to impose on other people their way of living, their way of governing themselves--of course, peace would come--peace would last and there would be real cooperation, on equal footing respect of mutual sovereignty.

And I am happy that President Nixon has now recognized that and recently tried to approach Communist China in order to work for peaceful co-existence. Because I also believe in peaceful co-existence. Not on the imposition by a bloc or so called ideology on other people because man has been born to be free and I'm sure that they know how to choose to be free. This is a pride of the world and of our country. But man has to fight in order to be free, and in order to preserve that he must fight. And that's what I'm doing now.

Present-day Vietnamese find their suffering mirrored in the works of past poets.

The poet Nguyen Du wrote two centuries ago of a beautiful lady, Thuy Kieu, who became the concubine of a ruthless merchant to save her father from the clutches of a tax collector.

On Thuy Kieu's request, her betrothed Kim Trong, married her sister Thuy Van. Yet Kim Trong's original love for her never faded throughout Thuy Kieu's miserable association with the merchant.

When the poem begins. Thuy Kieu has returned to her family, and her sister proposes that she and Kim Trong marry.

Thuy Kieu, however, asks that she be allowed to become a nun. Her body has been "battered by many storms," and she does not believe that she is worthy to be a wife.

Kim Trong refuses to allow her to escape from him again. He says that she sacrificed herself in order to show filial loyalty to her father, and that the scars she has suffered only enhance her inner beauty.

"Today, as our destiny has brought us here together let us enjoy the flowers as the mist lifts from the garden path, and the sky clears off again! See! The flower that had faded is fresh and lovely once more! You know, a waning moon is always much brighter than the full one that has passed! Why do you still doubt me? As careless of me as if I was just some mere passerby." --from "Kim Van Kieu"