WRB E RRR RRR EVE PPE ECR EERE EB NEN RUBE ES ENELE IBHSUB BBY ad C to wor peace is open (EOE RUE REC RUE EUR EURO B ENB RB EERE) EUEU BUS CERNE NE BURR BOEDE OOOO tna tt tit Ot tn a nt Pl et By ARTHUR CLEGG RRR UE BEEBE UE RENEE EEE EERE EEE EEE EACE in Indochina means that the way is open for the settlement of all Asian problems —and other world problems, too. Peace in Indochina, achieved in the teeth of U.S. opposition, is another victory of the popular Peace forces. Four months ago John Foster Dulles sent U.S. aircraft carriers to the seas of northern Indochina and was demanding that the Brit- ish and other governments, even before the Geneva Conference had started, should commit them- selves to an extensidn of the war. U.S. Air Force men, disguised as technicians, were already serv- ing in Indochina. Reinforcements . Of U.S. bombers were being flown in from the Philippines and Japan. The U.S. was paying three-quarters of the current cost ot the war, while others provided the blood: When the Geneva Conference at last began in April, Dulles tried to bring it to a deadlock before it could even start talking about Indochina. First he advanced impossible de- mands over Korea and, when that tactic failed, he walked out in a fury. © But the conference did not cor lapse. It went on with its work. That was the first lesson to Dulles that his war plans were coming unstuck. His second lesson came in June When the French Assembly, in- creasingly alarmed at the pro- U.S. policy of the Laniel govern- Ment and M. Bidault, its foreign Minister, brought down the gov- ernment and chose instead one led by M. Mendes-France com- mitted to find a way to end the War. Dulles’ plan to bully and threat: €n France into continuing a wal) it did not want was also coming unstuck. Now Dulles has learnt his third After eight years © He vee dramatic ; significance of the + Arthur Clegg in it plane destroyed on t “Ussed by Far Eastern exper! Show (left) a burning U.S.-bui The French have been given North of the 17th parallel. f the “dirty war airport by guerilla units of the P (right) a French soldier buying 4 lesson: that if Britain and the Soviet Union, China and France are determined on peace, then peace will come — whether the U.S. government wants it or not. And the U.S. government, not caring to face utter isolation, can- not afford to dissociate itself en- tirely from either the peace dis- cussions or the peace. settlement. When peace in Indochina be- came at last a practical policy, Dulles found it necessary to rush to Paris: When he found he had little chance of upsetting the peace, he found it wiser to send General Bedell Smith to Geneva rather than leave the United States with no voice at all in the final discus- sion. ~ If Britain and France agree on peace they have the power not only to see that peace 1s made, but they also have the power to compel the United States, how- even grudgingly, to come in too. That is a lesson, learnt over Southeast Asia, which is the’ key ty the solution of European prob- lems as well. Another lesson of : the Indo- china war is the folly, in this 20th century, of wars against colonial peoples. Ss In. 1946 the then French gov- ernment made a sensible treaty with the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam by which that country remained within the French Un- ion. But to French militarists a colonialists the treaty was nol @ treaty to be observed but only a cover for a military build-up to destroy the Democratic Republic by war. That war, started by the French in December, 1946, has lasted nearly eight years. It has ended in utter failure. _Suecess has at last attended the efforts of the French Communist party, which left the government on the issue “4” peace moves at Geneva, eople’s ar meal in f days to remove all he market-p’ their troops \ hig article on this page. he ground at Dien Bien Phu my of the Democratic Republic; and lace of a northern town. from territory of Indochina, and has fought ever since against the “dirty war.”. Though the French government aimed to fight the war on the cheap by using local puppet troops, the largely German For- eign Legion, and troops from North and Central Africa, French casualties have been high. Nearly 20,000 French officers ond NCOs have lost their lives. In recent years casualties of French officers have been greater than the output of officers from the famous St.-Cyr military acad- emy. Altogether the French official figures, which seriously under- estimate the position, show that rearly 100,000 men on their side were killed in seven year.s And the latest French figures reveal that 114,000 of their troops were wounded. The Indochina war has unbal- anced every French budget in re- cent years. Every brutality was used to try to cow the peoples of Indochina, especially those of Viet Nam. But these methods were in the end self-defeating. Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh the people of Viet Nam struck back. They organized the smuggling of French and U.S. arms to the People’s Army, which they guided to blow up French and U.S. arms dumps and _air- fields. And in the end French meth- ods led to the collapse of the whole puppet structure of the night-club “@mperor” Bao Dai. Last year men of the puppet armies deserted the French in tens and hundreds. In recent weeks they have deserted in thousands, bringing over ° great quantities of U.S. arms. In the first five months of this year 35,000 men, including many officers, had come over in north- ern Viet Nam alone. / The whole has been won for Indochina. and of the war itself, is dis- Photos PRESIDENT HO CHI MINH basis of the Franco-American plans for continuing the war was destroyed. — : The French Commander-in- Chief, General Navarre, dismissed because of his defeat at Dien Bien Phu, declared that even more serious was the collapse of the great offensive he launched with U.S. support in central Viet Nam this spring. It had collapsed because, he said, the puppet troops he used did not “want to die.’ With its collapse, the sole remaining mili- tary question in Indochina was not whether the French could hold Hanoi—which they could not -—but whether they could hold Saigon the capital. After eight years of war, the French parliament and govern- ment has learnt that there is no way now to settle the problem of Indochina other than by negotia- tion with the leaders of its peo- ples. : That is a lesson which the British government and_parlia- ment has still to learn in Malaya, where war has lasted for six years and in Kenya, where it has last ed two years. Bidault refused to meet the re- presentatives of the Viet Nam Tyemocratic Republic, just as General Templer refused to meet the representatives. of the Malay- an Liberation Army, and Govern- or Baring in Kenya refuses’ to deal with the Africdn Resistance forces. Bidault’s policy has ended in total bankruptcy, as will Lyttel- ton’s, unless he, too, opens nego- tiations to end the wars in Kenya and Malaya. The calling of the Geneva Con- ference involved the recognition of the importance of People’s China in world affairs. It has led already to the meet- ing between Nehru and Chou En- lai, to the agreement to open a Chinesé diplomatic mission in London,* to Chinese trade mis- sions, and the projected Labor party delegation to China. The United States has respond- ed by increasing its campaign to exclude China from the United Nations, and has certainly noi xbandoned its plans to provoke aggression in Asia. ' It plans, however, have suffer- ed a great defeat. The last ex- cuse for keeping China out of the United Nations has been re- moved. Enormously strengthened by its achievements, the peace move- ment: can now. win similar sue- cess in Korea}; Germany and the field of disarmament. : PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 30, 1954 — PAGE 9 .