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No Other Place. How will the South Vietnamese react if, on the contrary, there is a full-scale attack? Will they flee, as tens of thousands did from Danang a few weeks ago? U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin believes not. "At Danang," he told TIME Correspondent William Stewart, "there was much fear of the unknown, and there was still some place else to go. Now there is no other place. This is it."
In the end, a siege of Saigon may be averted by the formation of a coalition government. Three weeks ago, the French tried to act as intermediaries in arranging just such a solution through establishment of a national council of reconciliation that pointedly excluded Nguyen Van Thieu. There was one insurmountable difficulty. "Thieu didn't want a way out," said a European diplomat in Saigon. "And he still doesn't."