(See Cover)
The beleaguered man sat in Freedom Palace, small, chunky, tan-tinted and surrounded by a few intimate possessions—a wooden crucifix, a picture of the Virgin, a slide projector, a gaudy spittoon, books entitled Social Justice and Thought of Gandhi. Before him on a shabby desk lay an ultimatum, a blunt threat to tear down the government of South Viet Nam. An odd procession passed in and out of the palace doors for hours on end to deal with the crisis—three of the man's brothers, one in the cloth of a Roman Catholic bishop; his beautiful, politics-minded sister-in-law; U.S. diplomats and U.S. military officers in mufti; eye-rubbing ministers of state summoned from their sleep for emergency consultations.
The ultimatum came from the leaders of three religious-political sects* of South Viet Nam, an exotic consortium of religious fanatics, feudal warlords, uniformed hoodlums and racket bosses bound loosely behind an ambitious general who keeps pet crocodiles. Together, the sects have private armies of some 40,000 men. Their leaders, now losing the subsidies and prerogatives accorded to them by the French colonials, are dangerous. "Reorganize your government within five days," said their ultimatum. "Replace it with one that is suitable." The man at the desk bristled with stubborn irritation. "While we permit ourselves foolishness like this," he snapped, "there is a monolith against us."
But his advisers—including those from the U.S.—cautioned him to go slowly. You are too weak to fight now, they counseled. Invite negotiations; play for time. The advice was accepted. While soldiers and tanks moved through the tense streets of Saigon, the weanling government of the weanling state of South Viet Nam dickered and maneuvered to avert civil war and whittle down the warlords of the sects.
Communists & Calendar. The man who has to do the job is Premier Ngo Dinh Diem,† a resilient, deeply religious Vietnamese nationalist who is burdened with the terrible but challenging task of leading the 10.5 million people of South Viet Nam from the brink of Communism into their long-sought state of sovereign independence. No man in troubled Asia is confronted by more obstacles on the road to order and justice. The sects, in control of a third of the southern portion of the country, threaten not only his control but his life. The refugees from the Communist half of Viet Nam, now exceeding 500,000 and still pouring south at the rate of 10,000 a week, are pleading for food, housing and jobs. Inexperience—his own and his people's—make leaders hard to find, ideas scarce, and decisions difficult to make. ("This government," said one of the U.S. officials anxiously trying to help, "is stuck together by Scotch tape, bits of string and putty.") The French, striving to maintain by fair means and by sly means a remnant of influence and profit in the land they have exploited for seven decades, obstruct him with the wily rearguard maneuvers of colonialism.