INDO-CHINA: Last Hope

INDOCHINA

Regretfully, the plump playboy Emperor Bao Dai had bade adieu (in faultless French) to the pleasures of the Riviera. He had dallied awhile amid the charms of Hong Kong's taxi dance halls. Last week, with French guns behind him, he arrived at last to reclaim his ancestral throne in Indo-China, and to sit uneasily as the new ruler of the State of Viet Nam.

He was France's uninspired choice, and perhaps the West's last hope, to win a rich domain and some 21 million people away from Communist Chief Ho Chi-minh and his rebel Republic of Viet Nam. Almost three years of bloody guerrilla war had convinced the French that arms alone would never defeat the revolutionary nationalism led by Red Ho. They were now trying a rival nationalism with Bao Dai as its head. They had granted his State of Viet Nam independence within the French Union. They hoped that the Emperor, whose ancient lineage commands respect among some Indo-Chinese, would attract the rebel masses who are more nationalist than Marxist.

The competition would be rough. Red Ho greeted Imperial Bao by proclaiming a sentence of death to the Emperor.