Yellow Star (on Red)

The French were returning to IndoChina under strange auspices. The Chinese, who dislike European colonization in Asia, were taking over the northern part of the country from the Japs. The British, who used to look upon France as their chief colonial rival, occupied Saigon in the South. The U.S. was helping both British and Chinese occupation forces.

A token French force accompanied the British, the Chinese had agreed to let 5,000 French soldiers enter with their occupation army, and 2,200 more French troops were on their way from Marseille. Whether they would be enough to cope with explosive Indo-China was doubtful, unless British and Chinese aid was substantial and prolonged. A Hanoi broadcast said that Indo-Chinese nationalists had proclaimed a republic.

Jap Legacy. Japan's "Asia for the Asiatics" policy had not been choosy about its instruments. The Japanese had armed the Communist-led Viet Minh party, encouraged anti-French agitation.

Recently, France's good friend, Annamite Emperor Bao Dai (a topflight ping-pong player), formed a government of Viet Minh leaders who promptly ousted Bao Dai. New ruler of Annam, Tonkin and Cochin China was cagy, tuberculous Russian-speaking Premier Ho Chin Minh (known a generation ago around the Paris Peace Conference as Nguyen-Ai-Quoc). Followers of Communist Ho Chin Minh insulted and cowed the French in Saigon, tore down the World War I memorial, flung earth from the Verdun battlefield into the Saigon River.

In Hanoi the flags of all the United

Nations--except France--greeted Chinese General Lu Han's troops. A new Annamite flag--red with a yellow star--waved in its place. Banners proclaimed: "Independence or Death."

Although the United Nations were helping return Indo-China to France, Paris had long realized that some compromises would be necessary. There was talk of a semi-autonomous Indo-Chinese Federation in a new French Federal Union. Said a spokesman for the Ministry of Colonies in Paris last week: "We would do well to eliminate from our vocabulary such phrases as 'our beautiful colony' and 'our Far Eastern possessions.' "

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