INDO-CHINA: The New Frontier

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But the issue of native sympathy is complex. The vast majority of the people are simple rice farmers, who want peace and order so they may tend their paddy-fields. Ho Chi Minh himself does not now preach Communism openly: his explanation is that his people have no understanding of the word. Besides a crude, hate-the-French appeal (including atrocity propaganda—see cut), he has another effective persuasion: terror. His guerrillas and underground operators stalk the countryside; his assassins and bomb-throwers terrorize the cities. Indefatigably he spreads the word that he is winning, as his comrades have won in China.

The result is that many are cowed into helping him, or at least staying out of the anti-Communist effort. Others, especially among the intelligentsia, sit on the fence, waiting to jump on the winning side. This is where Bao Dai comes in.

A Display of Strength. It is Bao Dai's mission, and the U.S.-French hope, to rally his countrymen to the anti-Communist camp of the West. In this undertaking he needs time. "Nothing can be done overnight," he says. He needs time to organize an effective native government, train an army and militia that can restore order in the villages, win over the doubting fence-sitters among the intelligentsia. Besides a military shield, he also needs a display of winning strength and patient understanding by his Western allies.

As a national leader, Bao Dai has his weaknesses, and largely because of them he does not enjoy the kind of popularity achieved by India's Jawaharlal Nehru. But, as the lineal heir of the old monarchs of Annam, he is his nation's traditional "father & mother," its first priest (Buddhist) and judge. The French say that Bao Dai should act more decisively; whenever he does, there is impressive popular response.

Nehru's government of India, trailed by Burma's Thakin Nu, Indonesia's Soekarno and even by the Philippines' Elpidio Quirino, has so far refused to follow the major Western democracies in recognizing Bao Dai's Viet Nam Republic. They look on him as a French puppet. But Bao Dai has shown a judgment on the crucial ideological conflict of his time that compares strikingly and favorably with the petulant, third-force position of Pandit Nehru.

Recently, for example, Bao Dai told a TIME correspondent about his impressions of Ho Chi Minh in 1946, when both leaders were cooperating with the French to establish a new Viet Nam regime.

"At first," recalled Bao Dai, "we all believed the Ho government was really a nationalistic regime . . . I called Ho 'Elder Brother' and he called me 'Younger Brother.' . . .

"Then, I saw he was fighting a battle within himself. He realized that Communism was not best for our country. But it was too late. He could not overcome his own allegiance to Communism."

A Royal Notion. Bao Dai is essentially a product of the old French colonialism—the best of it thwarted by some of the worst.

Born in 1913, the only son of the ailing Emperor Khai Dinh, he studied under Chinese tutors until nine. Then his father's French advisers decided he should go to France for a Western education.