Background For War: REPORT ON INDO-CHINA

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Certainly, there is no call for wild optimism. French equipment sadly needs modernization and overhaul. The French would put up a stiff fight against invasion, but there is no doubt that if Stalin threw caution to the winds and ordered Mao to march south with everything he had, the French would be swept into the sea.

The political disadvantages of an open Chinese invasion (it would be a death blow to the Communist pretense of fighting for the national independence of Asia's people), and the fact that in the near future the native Reds alone can scarcely hope to overrun the French, make the odds slightly against an all-out attack this fall. But only slightly: the Red radio is still talking blithely of the coming "general offensive."

Ho's Show. The Vietminh, completely dominated by the Communist Party of Indo-China, is a state as well as an army, recognized by the U.S.S.R. and her satellites, though the government has no capital and dares not sit for two successive days in the same place. Its chief is a 60-year-old Tonkinese agitator named Nguyen* Tat Thanh, who has a dozen aliases, of which the best known is Ho Chi Minh (One Who Shines).

He has had a gaudy revolutionary career in Britain, France, Russia, China and Indo-China. Today, Ho Chi Minh is a great figurehead whose prestige as a "liberator" still stands high, even outside the areas he controls. But his star in the Communist firmament has waned. His health is poor (tuberculosis). He has traveled too far, and seen too much, and talked to too many people to have the rigidly closed type of mind required of a top party militant in time of war. He is one of those international Communist bosses—France's Maurice Thorez is another—who retain titular leadership mainly because their names still ring strongly in the world's ears.

Ho Chi Minh and his government are prisoners of the sinister Tong Bo, the Communist Party Politburo, and in particular of five of its members, rising young extremists who really run the show. The most important is Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietminh's frail, passionate, 38-year-old Minister of National Defense. Vo Nguyen Giap, a Communist since his teens, was first arrested when he was 18. His wife died in a French jail four years ago. More than anyone else, he created the Vietminh army. A ruthless and bloodthirsty man, he has coldly directed the liquidation of anti-Communists in "liberated villages,"and he has ordered French prisoners buried alive.

Bao Dai's Show. Facing the Vietminh is a weak Vietnamese government without credit in the country. The chief of state and Descendant of Heaven, Emperor Bao Dai, is still a symbol commanding great respect, only some of which has been frittered away by his consistent neglect of public affairs.

Bao Dai's government has no social policy at all; in fact, it has no social sense. There are some emergency relief operations for the homeless, but nothing is done on a serious scale to combat the diseases (malaria, conjunctivitis, amebic dysentery) which ravage the country. There is no overall plan to help agriculture or expand education facilities.