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Bishop Le Huu Tu is an interesting personality; for 17 of his 54 years he was a Trappist monk. He has black eyebrows and protruding teeth. When he smiles, revealing a dazzling expanse of teeth and pink gums, and his long, bony hands flutter sensitively, he suddenly becomes transfigured into a man of charm and considerable magnetism. In 1945, before his rebellion, Communist Boss Ho Chi Minh named Bishop Tu "Supreme Counselor." "Being Supreme Counselor to Ho Chi Minh," explains Tu suavely, "was only an expedient. I realized from the first that he was Communist, but I used to tell him if you are a nationalist I am for you and your government, but if you are a Communist I am against you." Le Huu Tu has declared allegiance to Bao Dai's government, but in practice he operates as an independent sovereign.
Cheers for Father. Le Huu Tu has so far managed to protect his bishopric from the Communists. Phat Diem is too small to warrant full-scale Viet Minh attack and too determined in its self-defense to be taken without such an attack. Le Huu Tu chuckles at his own cunning. Phat Diem people are happy about it too, because the net effect so far has been favorable : while other towns in the delta region have been systematically destroyed by earth-scorching Viet Minhs, Phat Diem and Bui Chu are alone unscathed.
Among simple people of this region, Bishop Le Huu Tu is clearly a hero. When the sampan carrying him from steamer to shore was in danger of sticking on a mud-bank, crowds of men & women jumped into the river to their waists, virtually carried the whole sampan, including the bishop and his attendant priests, plus the American visitors. Along the road from the river to Phat Diem town, a group of young cyclists waited to greet the returning bishop. He had been away only four days, but the people seemed genuinely moved and excited in welcoming him back. Some knelt by the roadside. Mothers held out their bare-bottomed babies for the bishop's blessing. Little boys & girls ran screaming, laughing, cheering beside the battered old episcopal car. In Hanoi, I have seen frozen-faced people watch Bao Dai pass by. This was very different.
As cheers of "Hoan Ho" (long life) swelled up along the road, Bishop Tu chuckled. "It's always like this," he said. "You see I am the government. I am their father. When I am away they feel lost. They don't quite know what to do. When I return, they feel happy again."
Beatings for Truth. In this isolated part of the country, the old-fashioned "L'Etat c'est moi" seems to provide, for the time being at least, an effective answer to Communism. It is doubtless too medieval to work in more complex conditions elsewhere in Indo-China.
Taxation and justice are a mixture of old Indo-Chinese custom and Bishop Tu's improvisations. He names magistrates as well as every other important official in Phat Diem. "We are very human here," he explains. "If we catch a thief we just keep him in jail for a few months, and then if he is converted to the church or shows himself repentant we let him go. We have no capital punishment. We have no corporal punishment either. Of course, when we catch a spy we beat him. But that is not to punish him. It is only to get the truth out of him."