(2 of 2)
Putting the living back together again would not be easy. Freed landlords went back to their villages, threw the squatters off their old property, beat up those who had denounced them. Sometimes the new owners cut down fruit trees, stripped the houses, killed the cows and buffaloes and ate them rather than give them back. Warned Nguyen Manh Tuong, dean of the Hanoi Law School: "The movement of revenge is widespread all over the country, and is pushing us back to the dark ages of prehistoric barbarism."
Casting a worried eye on the threatening sky and another on his demoralized cadres, President Ho Chi Minh last week took to the radio to exhort peasants to forget their grievances long enough to build up mud dikes against the coming monsoon floods, then set off on a 300-mile swing through the restive countryside to visit and cheer his flagging cadres.