World: SOUTH VIET NAM: RISING RESENTMENT OF THE U.S.

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THERE were no Vietnamese demonstrations in South Viet Nam last week to coincide with Moratorium Day, U.S.A. If there had been, though, a surprising number of Vietnamese might have joined in, not simply to join in expressing their weariness with the war but also to hurry all those Americans out of their country. Anti-Americanism is rising perceptibly in Viet Nam, an inevitable phenomenon when half a million U.S. troops are plunked down in the midst of a nation of 17 million people.

An odd if understandable ambivalence characterizes this particular species of anti-Americanism. The Vietnamese are at once grateful for and hostile to the U.S. presence, which has placed enormous strains on the fragile fabric of their society. They would like to see the ubiquitous Americans go home—but not before South Viet Nam is more firmly established than at present. They may find the Americans an irritant, but many would scourge them as bugouts if they withdraw too rapidly, leaving South Viet Nam to an uncertain fate. More than a year ago, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky voiced that duality when he said: "If the Americans want to withdraw, they can go ahead. We only want people who want to stay." Last week President Nguyen Van Thieu phrased it similarly. Said Thieu, who occasionally has sought to enhance his popularity by playing on South Vietnamese resentment of the Americans: "I do not ask the U.S. troops to stay here for 100 years. I only ask the Americans to have the courage and the clear sight to remain here until we nationalists have enough military, economic and political strength."

Cultural Defoliation. The signs of anti-Americanism are most obvious in Saigon. Nightly, along the city's gaudy Tu Do and Hai Ba Trung streets, G.I.s and South Vietnamese troops swap insults and punches—often over the favors of bar girls. In one such honky-tonk brawl earlier this month, a major in the Vietnamese Rangers chopped off the hand of a U.S. military policeman with a machete. In June, two American military police who had rushed to a bar in response to complaints that a drunken G.I. was making trouble were shot to death by Lieut. Colonel Nguyen Viet Can, commander of the Vietnamese airborne battalion that guards President Thieu's Independence Palace. No charges were filed against the colonel.

The taunts of Saigon's "cowboys," the Honda-riding young toughs who infest the capital, have become so nasty that few respectable women like to be seen walking with foreigners, particularly with Americans. "O.K., ten dollars" or "O.K., Salem" are favorite "cowboy" slurs, implying that the woman has sold herself for money or cigarettes. The Vietnamese press abounds with tearful stories of happily married Vietnamese women who left their husbands for the lure of the dollar and the company of Americans. By word of mouth, other, more bizarre tales make the rounds. Some uneducated Vietnamese men actually believe that U.S. troops are carriers of the "shrinking bird" disease, which is said to cause the slow shriveling of the male genitals; the Americans, so the story goes, are immune because of pills and inoculations.