South Viet Nam: The Storm Breaks

For a nation fighting for its very life, the rioting that pockmarked South Viet Nam last week seemed a senseless and dangerous self-indulgence. Night after night, motley mobs—students and street urchins, town toughs and saffron-robed Buddhist monks, Boy Scouts and Communist agitators—surged through the streets of Saigon. In battles with police and Vietnamese troopers, they answered tear gas with stones, staves and homemade spears, occasionally even a hand grenade. In South Viet Nam's capital of discontent, Hué, and in Danang, Dalat, Pleiku, Nha Trang and Ban Me Thuot, the rioters roamed virtually at will, their ranks often swelled by...