The smell of peace was in the air as the Foreign Ministers reassembled in Geneva.
The Communists came in wary triumph, as if fearing only some unforeseen development; the British arrived with the studied detachment of a consulting surgeon at an operating table; the French with the resolute air of a patient who has at last decided to undergo major surgery.
The Communists had made good use of the three weeks. While military committees talked in calculated deadlock, while the West stayed its hand in indecision, the Viet Minh armies had pressed deep into the Red River Delta. The French had abandoned 3,000,000 Vietnamese. The fall of Hanoi, by siege or by default, seemed imminently possible.
Chou & Ho. But peace—bitter for the Vietnamese, triumphant for the Communists—was in the air. From India, Nehru cabled Britain's Anthony Eden after his meeting in New Delhi with Red China's Chou Enlai. Little now divided the French from the Chinese, Chou had told Nehru. There would be a line drawn across Viet Nam. Laos and Cambodia would be independent but "neutral." These terms, Chou said, had been accepted by Mendeès-France.
In Peking, Chou summoned British Chargeé d'Affaires Humphrey Trevelyan for the first time since Trevelyan arrived a year ago, informed him that he had seen Indo-China's Ho Chi Minh and got his agreement to the projected settlement.
In Paris, Mendesès-France told reporters: "I have reason to smile." The only arguments left, said the British, were 1) whether the French would be allowed to keep a right of access to the port of Haiphong, and 2) how soon elections should be held in Viet Nam. The Communists wanted them soon, confident that electoral victory would win them the parts of Viet Nam that they had not got around to taking by force of arms. The French wanted elections late, hoping that in, say, 18 months, a stronger independent government might win the support of the Vietnamese. Of course, with things going so easily for them, the Communists might increase their demands at the last moment; but the British and French were satisfied that the Communists really want a settlement now.
The Summit Again. If it was peace, it was peace with a rancid smell for American nostrils. Secretary of State Dulles wanted to signify his distaste by staying away, and thus disassociating the U.S. from any bargain made at Geneva. But Britain and France were putting heavy pressure on him to sit in on the capitulation of the West, and to give a U.S. guarantee that the terms would be met.
There was no question that in France and Britain such a peace would be hailed with thanksgiving. For France it meant relief; for Britain, it meant tidying up an explosive situation which had been giving the British nothing but nervous jitters.