Among the People

On tour through the rice belt south of the 17th parallel, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem last week got his second big ovation from his people. Rice growers thronged around him, beating gongs; soldiers competed to eat at his table; refugees chaired him around their hovels in informal marches of triumph. Diem took his reception spiritedly, with none of his celebrated reticence, enjoying crayfish that had been smuggled south to him from the Communist North, and a Confucian ballet performed by 32 silk-clad girls. Diem also impressed the villagers by his coolness when his ceremonial barge, overloaded with admirers who clambered aboard, capsized and sank in the river near Hue. "Ladies first," Diem insisted from knee-deep in the river, when rescuers put out from shore.

Diem intended his second tour to shame Communist President Ho Chi Minh, who has barely stirred from his Hanoi palace since last fall. Diem's second big ovation confirmed that his strength lies increasingly among nationalist-minded villagers who suffered Communist depredations during the war, rather than among the aperitif drinkers in French Saigon.

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