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Vietnamese troops are also getting lessons in psychology: do not kill farmers' pigs or rape their daughters; military misconduct has been one of the biggest peasant complaints against the government. To make their point, the instructors unabashedly quote Mao Tse-tung himself on guerrilla tactics: "You are fish in the water, and the water is the people." To knit the villages together, give them some sense of contact with Saigon; villagers will be equipped with radio transmitters to permit fast report to headquarters when guerrillas attack. Diem's growing Youth Corps is being trained to run the transmitters, act as an intelligence network throughout the country.
The U.S. will also push Diem's agroville scheme. Under this program, scattered farm families were brought in from dangerous outlying areas to live in specially constructed developments where they could be more easily defended. Diem completed 26 agrovilles last year, but reaped nothing but antagonism when overzealous Diem men yanked peasants away from their fields just at harvest time, put them to work at forced labor to build the new agrovilles. To compound the peasants' anger, it frequently turned out that there was not enough room for them in the agrovilles that they had been forced to build. But Staley concluded that the basic idea was good, hopes the U.S. will finance the construction of at least another 100 in the next twelve months.
Parallel with such military and defense plans, the U.S. wants to train many more Vietnamese administrative officers, give them authority to act independently without the present minute, hamstringing scrutiny from Saigon. To educate illiterate villagers to the Communist threat, mobile movie units will roam the countryside and lecturers will constantly tour the towns. On a long-range basis, new efforts will be made to increase rice production still further, encourage greater capital investment in industry.
It was late in the game to salvage Southeast Asia and drive the Reds back within their own borders. But given resolve, hard work, and the cooperation of the longtime Communist fighter in the yellow stucco palace, the U.S. hoped that it was not too late. "If we belong to the free world," says President Diem, "we must act. If not, why belong to the free world?"