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A Medieval Touch. Bao Dai is gaining support. Many nationalists who in the past fought the French are joining him. They have come to believe that the French are sincere in giving Indo-China self-rule. By year's end, Viet Nam will run its own courts, finances, railways and utilities. The French will have to retain a heavy hand in military affairs; they are now training a Viet Namese national army of 90,000 to complement the 130,000 French troops now in Indo-China. Chief problem of the French is to clear the Communists from the country's rich food-producing areas and to prevent a junction between Ho's forces and the victorious Communists of China.
The French are doing well in both respects. Last year, the Communists controlled virtually the entire country except the major cities. Since then they have lost the key rural areas, including the Red River delta and Mekong River delta, where 90% of IndoChina's rice is grown. In a land that is five-sixths jungle, Ho and his forces can still strike almost anywhere. But while last year the Communists levied $30 million worth of money and rice from farmers taking their crops to town, government forces now guard the roads so well that the Reds' toll is almost nil. This has been achieved by what one French colonel called un petit cachet medieval: sentries are posted on 40-ft. towers recently built on each road at one-mile intervals. A dawn patrol from each tower digs up the land mines which the Communists plant during the night.
Mangoes & Chanel No. 5. The little medieval touch has given the new regime a valuable breather. Some of the country's wounds are healing fast. In Sontay, once a thriving town of 6,000 in the Red River delta, only seven people and one church were left when the French took it from the Communists last November. When I visited Sontay last month, it was largely rebuilt, 5,000 of its people had returned, and in its bustling market, cheerful, slim-hipped women were buying everything from mangoes to Chanel No. 5.
The approach of the Chinese Communists across the border has given the Reds visions of decisive victory, but it has also aggravated a growing rift between the hard Communist core of leaders around Ho, who are ready to accept Mao Tse-tung's leadership, and the rank & file, who fear China and want Viet Nam for the Viet Namese. One French general told me: "For two years I had to keep statistics of desertions to the Communists. For the last two months my statistics are Communist desertions to us."
Guilty Husband. France has taught many Indo-Chinese to read (they have one of Asia's highest literacy rates—40%), but it did not teach them how to rule themselves. Viet Nam has many ambitious politicians with loose personal followings. The most remarkable of these is perky little Ho Phap, self-styled pope of Caodaism, a faith (founded by him in 1926) which combines belief in everything from Confucianism to Christianity. Ho Phap, who claims 2,000,000 disciples, has a private army of 20,000 which provides Bao Dai's personal guard and bitterly fights the Communists as enemies of religion.