Tremors from Washington

Reports that South Viet Nam's Premier Ngo Dinh Diem is about to resign "may be a bit premature," said a State Department official carefully. Returning from Saigon to report to Dwight Eisenhower, the President's special envoy, General J. Lawton Collins, would only say that "We are behind the legal government of Viet Nam," and he didn't mention Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. The French government, wise in such subtleties of omission, concluded that General Collins had perhaps given way to them, and was recommending Diem's replacement.

The tremors of such uncertainty in the U.S.--upon which South Viet Nam now depends almost solely for support--did much last week to undermine Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon. An unmistakable deterioration was taking place on the scene as well. Several junior Cabinet ministers and civil servants resigned, and the administration ground to near-standstill. Vietnamese army staff officers, anxious to come out on the winning side, sent greetings to Bao Dai, whom they expect to come back from the French Riviera as his country's "arbiter." There was much talk of the Premier's possible replacements: Phan Huy Quat (whom Diem considers a Fascist) and Ho Thong Minh (a former Defense Minister who quit rather than send the army against rebellious sects).

In his third-floor bedroom at Freedom Palace, Ngo Dinh Diem still talked wistfully of his aspirations: "My doctrine is to fight Communists. The experience of the Indo-China war showed that it was impossible to defeat the Communists without the people's support. How do you get it? By freeing the people from oppression by colonialism and the warlords of the sects . . . Yet the French military no longer wishes to leave Viet Nam and the U.S. grants financial aid to them.* The French want to get the best part of the cake and if they cannot get it, they are ready to crush it. The hesitations of U.S. policy give my enemies an incentive."

In the absence of total reassurance from the U.S., these had the sound of late and futile words. The bristling headquarters of the Binh Xuyen gangster sect (which runs both the police and the prostitutes) lay only 800 yards from Freedom Palace; whenever loyal troops tried to move against the Binh Xuyen last week, a French general interposed: "Remember the truce, messieurs." Yet in Paris, a high French official privately assured newsmen that Diem could not put down the sects because his troops would refuse to fight.

Ngo Dinh Diem, his country's leading nationalist, has bodyguards outside his bedroom and a .45-cal. pistol in his desk. It is getting late in the Freedom Palace of Saigon, and Diem can sometimes be seen at his window on sultry nights, a chunky silhouette, staring at the moon.

* $100 million a year for the upkeep of the French Expeditionary Corps.

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