Bringing the War Home

A honeyed voice oozed into millions of French living rooms, speaking of American "genocide" in Viet Nam.

Baron Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie was using 15 minutes of state-controlled French television prime time to praise "my friend Ho Chi Minh" for canceling war-crimes trials of American pilots in Hanoi. It sounded as if the 66-year-old baron, Interior Minister in President Charles de Gaulle's first postwar Cabinet and a leader of Gaullism's left wing today, just might be echoing his master's loudly repeated opposition to U.S. policy in Viet Nam.

At any rate, U.S. Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen certainly thought so. When D'Astier suggested that the North Vietnamese protect themselves against bombing by staking out American prisoners as hostages near factories and villages, Chip Bohlen blew his stack. At a half-hour meeting last week with French Minister of State Louis Joxe, Bohlen protested D'Astier's use of French government transmitters for his "virulent attack." The French shrugged away the complaint, insisting that TV producers were free to present the news as they saw it.

American diplomats in Paris seldom expect to see anything good about the U.S. in Viet Nam on French TV screens these days; often it is not so much the script as it is the commentator's sarcastic tone of voice that plants the barb. In any case, the TV fare does not help the U.S. image in France--or anywhere else for that matter.

British viewers are shocked by scenes of Americans bearing away their own dead; film clips of G.I.s in the jungle remind older West Germans of ruthless Nazi anti-guerrilla tactics in France and Russia, which were not only unsavory but unsuccessful. A current poll shows that 30% of Frenchmen think Lyndon Johnson is more dangerous than Communist China's Mao Tse-tung; 35% of West Germans favor ending the bombing of North Viet Nam. Says West German Vice Chancellor Erich Mende:

"There is no question in my mind that the Viet Nam war is unpopular largely because of television. People see the horrors and the misery of this war--burning villages, weeping mothers, maimed children. They see South Vietnamese troops manhandling Viet Cong suspects, and they see the more sordid aspects of Saigon night life." Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak put it more succinctly. "The U.S.," he said, "has completely lost the information war in Viet Nam."

What is to be done about it? Not much. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese release a negligible amount of news film on their side of the war and of course do not allow foreign TV crewmen to work with their combat units. That leaves television stations all over the world dependent on the film taken mainly by U.S. TV crewmen of U.S. and South Vietnamese troops in action. Inevitably, it leaves a lopsided impression.

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