Begging or Truculence?

"The conference is making slow progress," announced Britain's Anthony Eden as he arrived back in London at week's end.

"Progress? What progress?" cried a U.S. official. "If Molotov and the Communists stick to their proposals on a cease-fire commission, where the hell can we make progress?"

Last week the only thing that might be called progress by anybody occurred in a small, pink and gold room in one corner of the Palais des Nations. Without a word to the press, three mufti-clad Viet Minh officers and five French Union officers, also in civilian clothes, walked into the room at a prearranged time and sat down at two widely spaced tables. Their purpose was to map the areas controlled by the opposing forces, and settle areas for regroupment. Without benefit of chairman, they began a hesitant discussion of procedure. Though everybody understood French, the Viet Minh insisted that they would talk only Tonkinese and that all speeches must be translated. After four sessions, the big military maps were still folded and unmarked.

When the pencils do get to work, the Viet Minh would demand large areas that would be economically independent. Since the French control most of the valleys, this meant the French would have to trade rice-producing riverland for barren mountains. If the French had their way, the map would show the French positions as a series of closely grouped goose eggs.

How Much? They would get little support from the British, who made it plain they were prepared to hand over most of Viet Nam to the Communist Viet Minh. "How much of the country have they got now?" asked one British delegate, and answered his own question: "Ninety percent." The British were also unwilling to back up France's stand against Communist demands for partition of Laos. The Communists already control "most" of it, the British said.

The plain fact was that the British, not the French, had become the appeasers of Geneva. From Geneva, confidential dispatches went back to the British Cabinet complaining of Bidault's "truculence" toward the Communists, as if that were a sin. "We are the only ones with a policy for Indo-China." the British told newsmen. "Our policy is that we will not fight in Indo-China." They added: "The French should have done what Britain did in India and Burma right after the war. We can't go in now to make it stick. You have to have land troops, and we don't know that you would win even then."

Old-World Diplomat. Anthony Eden, and the government itself, seemed to have committed their own prestige to "success" at Geneva. Though last week the British had finally allowed its military representatives to begin staff-level talks on Southeast Asia with Australia, New Zealand, France and the U.S., it had promised that the talkers would take no decision. At a special Saturday Cabinet meeting, Eden argued that he could solve the Indo-China problem--if he just had enough time. The only problem was what the British call "American impatience" and the advance of the Viet Minh in the Red River Delta. He did not mention that the "decisive" two-week period he had previously talked about had now passed indecisively.

All week long, to the plaudits of the British press, dapper Anthony Eden played old-world diplomat before the unmoved men of Communism. He dined Chou Enlai; he conferred privately with Molotov, warning him with the air of a man who would never do such a thing himself that if the Communists asked for too much, the U.S. might get mad and make Indo-China another "Korea." He seemed willing to nibble at the smallest bait. British trade delegations flew in to confer with Chou En-lai about increased British-Chinese trade, and the Foreign Office announced happily that the Chinese had agreed to let some British businessmen leave and allow others to come in.

Who's Neutral? While Eden flirted, Georges Bidault seemed to gather resolution and strength. "You don't get results by begging for peace," he said. To the Communist proposal that the military men discuss "regroupment areas" for Laos and Cambodia, thus setting up Communist enclaves in those countries, Bidault retorted defiantly that the only problem there was for the Communist invaders to withdraw.

Regroupment in Viet Nam itself would mean nothing unless supervised by an effective control commission. Bidault rejected the Communists' plan for commissions made up of the two sides. "In case of violations, it would be impossible to control the situation," he said. "There would be interminable quarrels without arbiter, without control, and without end." Russia's Gromyko suggested supervision by a "neutral" control commission comprised of Poland, Czechoslovakia, India and Pakistan. Bidault retorted that a commission which merely balanced countries of opposite tendencies would be impotent, as the Korean commission had shown, and "being impotent is not the same as being neutral." To Chou En-lai's claim that Communist countries are as neutral as can be, Bidault whipped out a 1940 quotation from Mao Tse-tung: "From now on, the word 'neutrality' is only good to deceive the people."

Bidault's firmness reflected and helped increase some sense of a new firmness in France itself. The fall of Dienbienphu had not led to hysterical demands for peace at any price, as the Communists had hoped. French pride was offended. French anger aroused. At the much feared debate on Indo-China, French Assemblymen had cried not for immediate surrender, but for more vigorous efforts to meet new Viet Minh attacks. The Cabinet itself reacted. It pledged itself to the defense of the whole Red River Delta. Marc Jacquet, an apostle of despair, was forced out. General Navarre was relieved, and General Paul Ely, France's Chief of Staff (see box), sent out to take full military and civilian command in Indo-China. Whether or not it fell in this week's debate, the French government had taken its stand with Bidault and "truculence."

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