Just as things seemed to be going better in his struggle to save South Viet Nam (pop. 10.5 million), Nationalist Premier Ngo Dinh Diem last week ran into serious trouble. He was caught in an ambush set by the discredited but still powerful rearguards of his country's past—feudal warlords, religious fanatics and big-city hoodlums, with French colonials hovering indistinctly in the background. About 30,000 well-armed troops of the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao and Binh Xuyen sects (long subsidized by the French) were out in coalition against Diem's national government, lobbing mortar shells into peasant villages to...
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