The Quarterback

For decades wisp-whiskered Ho Chi Minh sipped at the savory cup of intrigue, conspiracy and revolution. Then, with the partitioning of Viet Nam at Geneva, he abruptly became President of Communist North Viet Nam. But running the petty affairs of a nation at peace was not, it seemed, the revolutionary's cup of tea. Last month, turning over the premiership to his trusted lieutenant, Pham Van Dong, "Uncle" Ho withdrew from the public eye. He even neglected to send his usual "Dear nephews and nieces" greeting to the mid-autumn festival.

Almost immediately, toothy Premier Dong found that he had chewed off a peck of troubles. When, last fortnight, he held his first Cabinet meeting (absent: President Ho), Hanoi's streets were still littered with the debris of Typhoon Kate, which had sunk junks and barges, torn up railroad tracks, burst dikes and spun off thatched roofs as though they were flying saucers. Although Hanoi is swarming with Russians, East Germans, Poles and Chinese (a Canadian truce-commission officer observed that "there are more white faces than during the French administration"), the Communist big brothers seem to regard North Viet Nam as an economic leech that they wish would go away. With floods and typhoons wiping out crops, overcrowded North Viet Nam cried for food even more loudly than it did last summer when Ho returned from a trip to Peking and Moscow loaded with good will, but not a grain of rice.

Russia finally bought some Burmese rice to feed hungry North Vietnamese mouths, but Premier Dong still felt he should make an earnest, nonbellicose bid for trade and reunification with Premier Ngo Dinh Diem's government of rice-rich South Viet Nam. The Communists took a mellifluous line: "Reunification must not be accomplished by pressure or annexation, but by negotiations." Dong has even held out a promise of the right of political dissent for his people. Diem, unimpressed, told his people, "Intensify your efforts in the crusade against Communism."

Meanwhile, what of Ho? Some observers guess that he longs for untroubled retirement. Others think he has lost his grip, may be forced out. A less wishful and probably sounder conjecture is that Ho has gone back to his old trick of standing behind the lines and quarterbacking Communist strategy for all Southeast Asia. Old revolutionaries may die, but with revolution to be done they do not just fade away. In Red eyes, there is revolution to be done in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya, and across the Malacca Strait in Indonesia.

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