War: VILLAGE OF NO ILLUSIONS

In Asia, as elsewhere, Communism grows through force and deceit. In IndoChina—where Communist Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh party is carrying on a stubborn guerrilla war against the French—TIME Correspondent Andre Laguerre found people who understood Communism better than many a "sophisticated" Westerner. Laguerre's report:

IN the primitive, rice-growing villages of the Red River delta, I found a slow building-up of effective antiCommunism. Bai Trang (pop. 2,000) is one such—a village with no illusions.

Its approaches are deceptively peaceful. Water buffaloes patiently drag plows through the flooded rice fields; wiry little peasant women in...