Nation: Blood on the Ballot

One form of Communist "escalation" that critics of the war generally overlook is much in evidence. As General William Westmoreland points out in a speech this week to the Associated Press managing editors at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria hotel during one of his rare stateside visits: "During the past nine years, 53,000 Vietnamese—a large share of them teachers, policemen and elected or natural leaders—have been killed or kidnaped. Translated to the United States, that would be more than 600,000 people, with emphasis on mayors, councilmen, policemen, teachers, government officials and even journalists who would not submit to black mail." For the past three weeks, Communist terrorists have relentlessly harassed the inhabitants of 991 Vietnamese hamlets and villages, which this month are casting ballots in the nation's first local elections to be held since 1964 (see THE WORLD).

In a land where violence is constant and commonplace, the Communists have elevated terror to the level of a macabre political art. During the elections to date, they have blown up at least 14 polling places, snapped bullets into lines of voters, murdered eight candidates for office, abducted 25 more, and killed a total of nearly 200 civilians in purely election-oriented acts of intimidation. In the hamlet of Suoi Chan, only 40 miles east of Saigon, the Viet Cong slaughtered at least 18 civilians, three of them girls working for the Revolutionary Development pacification program that has been the target of much Viet Cong violence in the past month. The girls, none of them older than 18, were trussed up with their hands behind their backs and shot through the head. Other victims were burned, and the hamlet was later set on fire.

No one pretends that the Vietnamese turnout is an act of pure political enlightenment. Most villagers are under strong pressure to vote. Unquestionably, though, it takes brave men to run for office in Highland or Delta hamlets where every peasant knows that the Viet Cong are lurking just beyond the nearest paddy. The fact that the Vietnamese turn out so strongly in the face of terror—and sometimes end up marking their ballot with their own blood-shows that the candidates' courage does not go unappreciated.