The War: Thin Green Line

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Once again the U.S. had to separate fond hope from grim fact. On successive days, the Johnson Administration announced that reinforcements would be sent immediately to South Viet Nam and that the latest rumors about peace feelers from Hanoi had added up to nothing. As if to underscore the news, Communist forces over the weekend launched a savage new offensive across South Viet Nam.

The winter so far has been marked by the familiar progression of incongruities: worldwide speculation about imminent peace talks, yielding to carnage, followed in turn by further hints of negotiations. The most recent talk about talks became intense in late December and early January, when the North Vietnamese said officially that they would agree to discussions if the U.S. stopped bombing North Viet Nam. Washington followed up with a deep probe of Hanoi's intentions. The chief question throughout was whether Hanoi would give assurances that it would not militarily exploit a bombing cessation. This demand was part of the "San Antonio formula" laid down by Lyndon Johnson in September and later denned as meaning that Hanoi should not increase its infiltration rate of South Viet Nam beyond existing levels.

Fiercely Exasperated. The diplomatic exploration grew in drama and widened in scope. Washington employed a still-anonymous foreign intermediary to sound out officials in Hanoi last month, meanwhile suspending bombing in the Hanoi-Haiphong region. Italy's Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani met with North Vietnamese envoys in Rome, sent Washington a lengthy report of Hanoi's views. U.N. Secretary-General U Thant jetted to New Delhi, Moscow, London and Paris, arriving back in Manhattan last week. Hanoi made an other gesture—plainly calculated, no matter how welcome—by releasing three captured U.S. flyers.

Johnson, meanwhile, kept repeating that he would begin a conference "tomorrow" if possible and that he would consent to whatever initial agenda the other side might propose. The President also invited Thant to Washington this week to "thank him very much for another try." In fact, the Administration was fiercely yet helplessly exasperated by Hanoi's skillful use of inconclusive peace hints as a psychological counterweight to its bloody assaults on South Viet Nam. Furthermore, Communist propagandists in South Viet Nam assiduously spread the word that the U.S. was conniving with the North to sell out the Saigon regime and establish a coalition government that would include the Viet Cong.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk bluntly set the record straight: "At no time has Hanoi indicated publicly or privately that it will refrain from taking military advantage of any cessation of the bombing. Nor has it shown any interest in preliminary negotiations to arrange a general cease-fire." Lyndon Johnson added at an impromptu press conference at the White House that Hanoi is no more ready "to negotiate today than it was a year ago, two years ago or three years ago," and the Communists' attacks throughout South Viet Nam proved it.