Viet Nam fights for freedom

T damp, heavy heat seemed to muffle the tread of the
dingy-uniformed French soldiers as they sloshed along
the track through the rice field’ It could not disguise the
sharp, crisp rattle of small arms fire which came suddenly

from the bamboo thickets around them.

realized as he* dived. His patrol fired
widely at targets which were

young lieutenant

When the relief detachment
found the bodies lying in the
rice, their arms and amunition
had been taken by the guerillas.
Otherwise they were undisturbed.

The crumpled leaflet the cor-
poral had been handed that
morning was still in his pocket.
“Fellow soldiers! Why are we
fighting the people of Viet-Nam,
our allies against the Japs and
the Germans? We should return
to France to rebuild our country!
Stop this senseless war!”

But the corporal, who had
fought in Africa, Italy and Ger-
many before assisting SS men to
suppress the people of Cochin
China, would never now be able
to answer the leafiet’s appeal.

For two years Viet-Nam has
been’ fighting for its existence.
Blockaded, with many of its main
towns under uneasy French oc-
cupation, and its people subjected
to the high-pressure splitting tac-
tics and propaganda of puppets
and would-be puppets, today ‘the
young republic remains strong
and united, pitting stubborn de-
termination against the tanks,
artillery and bombing aircraft of
the French. French patrols
march through the streets of
Saigon and Hue, but 95 percent
of the country’s area is still
firmly held by twénty million
Vietnamese, and the governments
of 20 of the 21 provinces still re-
cognize the authority of Viet-
Nam.

Outside the towns French and
Vietnamese die—16,000 French
and many more Vietnamese have
so far been killed—but beyond
the blood-spattered rice fields, @
free, .democratic republic is tak-
ing shape.

: e
“ALL power in Viet-Nam be-
longs to the people without
distinction of race, class, creed,
wealth or sex,” runs the opening
article of the new constitution.
The government itself is a coali-
tion of parties, races and creeds
including Marxists and Catholics,
Socialists and Conservatives,
trade unionists and Buddhists.
All Vietnamese over 18 have the
right to vote. A national assem-
bly of 400, and local “peoples’
committees” were appointed at a
general election in 1946.

Freedom of speech, press, re-
ligion and assembly are guaran-
teed by the new constitution
adopted by the assembly. The
government. is earrying out
thoroughgoing . educational re-
form, and its campaign against
illiteracy has met with striking
success. Two-and-a-half million
men and women, taught by 80,000
teachers, have learned to read
and write in a year.

Teachers are the greatest short-
age: In the first three months of
1947 over 2,000 were trained and
had already supervised the work
of 15,000 students. Many of
these classes are held in the
firing lines and within earshot of
French troops.

[here is a great thirst for
knowledge—over 100 newspapers
were founded in 1946; under
French occupation there had only
been 20 altogether. People have
responded enthusiastically to
ealls for voluntary contributions
to. defence loans, now that the
hated poll tox has been abolished.
The old enemies of Eastern pro-
gress—gambling, alcohol, opium
and prostitution — have. been
banned. a

Before the war hundreds of
thousands died yearly from epi-
demic diseases. Two million
people were killed by starvation
and disease in‘ 1945 and 1946,

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1948

“Ambush!” the

everywhere and nowhere.

owing to the French blockade
and occupation, Now health is
always in the forefront of the
government’s program. This year
more than 500,000 people have
been vacinated against cholera
and strong measures have been
taken to reduce plague and
malaria. Hospitals have been
built and rudimentary clinical
services established. But food
is still the medicine most urgent-
ly needed, and this year the
harvest has been saved.

Every weapon from diplomatic
intrigue to straightforward mili-
tary action has been used by the
French in efforts to maintain @
grip on their ex-colony. Recruit-
ing offices in the French zone of
Germany have raised thousands
for the “foreign legion.” Of
their 15,000 troops now in Indo-
China at least 90 percent are
German, many of them SS men
and ex-Nazi party members.

In efforts to disrupt Vietnam-
ese unity, the French set up pup-
pet regimes in Northern, Central
and Southern Viet-Nam (Tonkin,
Annan and Cochin China) and
persistent approaches have been
made to Ex-Emperor Bao-Dai
(who abdicated in 1945 and now
lives in Hongkong). But Bao-Dai
has made it clear that he has no
intention of returning to Viet-
Nam unless the Vietnamese gov-
ernment agrees and French
forces are withdrawn, leaving the
country completely independent.

Wall Street, active throughout
the Pacific, is also watching Indo-
Chinese developments with in-
terest. Last February a “nation-
al front” was formed in Nanking,
under General Kai-shek’s patron-
age, uniting a number of Chinese
and emigre Vetnamese elements.
This group has been promised
American support if it can estab-
lish a government. “United
States interests must be protect-
ed in the French colonies,” de-
clared the American millionaire
ex-Ambassador William Bullitt
last April. The United States
is suggesting a loan to Indo-
China on similar throttling terms
to the one offered Indonesia.

i ©
UT the people of Viet-Nam
are answering these intrigues
with increased solidarity—and
vastly increased production. The
rice fields have been extended by
50 percent, while potato and
maize output has increased more
than five times. Voluntary sav-
ings and defence loans have

given financial stability where -

previously there were huge na-
tional debts, an empty treasury
and wild inflation. Fifteen
bridges have been built to enable
the railways to run again, and
661,000 yards of war-breached
dykes have been restored. Land
reform and re-allocation of popu-
lation have been carried through:
Every, citizen’ over 18 years old
has been offered three hectares
of land—provided he makes ap-
propriate use of it.

Reluctantly, foreign observers
are being forced to admit the
strength and determination of
Vietnamese nationalism. “It is
a truly national movement which
enjoys the backing of the people

. . who mean to be free,” wrote
the New York Times in July.

The war is costing France
350 million francs a day, a large
part of it in “hard” currency.
The French people, who fought
so recently for freedom them-
selves, have no wish to pay huge
sums they cannot afford to sup-
press a people who fought
alongside them in the war

against fascism. A special cor-

SR

In country like this the forces of the young Viet Nam republic are fighting a bitter struggle for
independence against the French, Here too, the aims of American imperialism clash with the
national aspirations of the people.

respondent of the London Times
noted recently: “Growing finan-
cial stringency ... has caused
a swing-over... to the Commun-
ist’ view on Indo-China, namely,
that the right course is to sus-
pend military operations ... re-
duce the number of troops to a
minimum, and negotiate an

amicable settlement.”

But fighting continues, and
now, with the end. of the rainy
season, is rising in intensity.
Viet-Nam is determined. Proffers
of “peace” which involve surren-
der of the liberty already won
have been rejected unhesitating-
ly by a people which has tasted

some of the first fruits of free-
dom. The people know. what
French domination would mean:
“They have built more prisons
than schools,’ says Viet-Nam’s
Declaration of Independence. To-
day the schools are going up.
Viet-Nam will not easily sur-
render them.

Plot against Czech democracy

—PRAGUE
political crisis in Czechoslo-
vakia this week, precipitated
by the resignation of eight minis-
ters from the nine-party coalition
government, and the arrest of
National Socialist Party leaders on
the charge that they were organ-
izing an armed revolt, can be
understood better in the light of
some recent events.

Earlier this month, for instance,
it was disclosed that 15 agents
rounded up by security police
were members of a new secret
service organized in the US. zone
of Germany under ‘the direction
of Heinz Guderian, former Nazi
tank marshal. The organization
is reportedly patterned after Hit-
ler’s Abwehr (secret intelligence
corps), branded as a “criminal or-
ganization” in the Nuremberg war
trials.

All 15 agents caught red-handed
in Czechoslovakia were Sudeten
Germans, former S.S., Abwehr or
Gestapo members who know the
country well. Admitting they
worked for the new Abwehr cen-
ter in Bavaria, U.S. zone, they
revealed that they collected mili-
tary information. They also ad-
mitted having conducted incen-
diary raids on factories in Czech
border districts. The factories
have been destroyed by fire re-
cently.)

Guderian, head of the new Ab-
wehr, was a commander of mar-
shal Bock’s 2nd tank army, chosen
to lead Hitler’s attack an Mos-
cow. His first assistant is Count
Fabien von Schlabrendorff, former
general staff officer in Bock’s cen-
tral army group in Russia.

Schlabrendorff claims to have
been an American agent in the
Abwehr during the last stage of
the Second World War. Germans,
however, charge that he betrayed
Abwehr General Oster to the Ges-
tapo in 1944. (Oster was among

those executed for o it:
Hitler.) Aas cs .

Schlabrendorff recently published
a book attempting to lay the en-
tire blame for war crimes on the
S.S., painting Nazi military lead-

ers as the core of a “resistance
movement” against Hitler. One
ofthe editors of the book is Allen
W. Dulles, brother of U.S. foreign
policy adviser John Foster Dulles.
Allen Dulles was chief agent of
the Office of Strategic Services
in Switzerland during the war and,
as director of the New York
branch of the Anglo-German
Schroeder Bank, had close prewar
relations with leading Nazi finan-
ciers and industrialists.

Guderian, who has already or-
ganized a skeleton staff of former
Abwehr agents, is now studying
captured files, in U.S. hands, of the

German secret service. His task
is to investigate the possibilities
of tying together the broken net
of the organization, both in Ger-
many and abroad.

The secret service program lai
down by Americans for Guderiax
is:

@ To cooperate with under- ~

ground fascist organizations im
iurope;

@ To infiltrate into the work-
ing-class movement wherever
possible;

@ To reorganize former Ab-
wehr channels. ;

Wallace victory

A™MERICAN political circles have

been thrown into an uproar
by the devastating victory Feb-
ruary 17 of Leo Isacson, Ameri-
can Labor party candidate who
campaigned in a congressional by-
election in New York City as a
supporter of Henry A Wallace and
the third party program.

Isacson didn’t just win. He won
an absolute majority of 56 percent
of the total vote, leading his
Democratic party opponent by 22,-
697 votes to 12,578. The victory,
startling even to those participat-
ing directly in the Isacson cam-
paign, was all the more striking
because the contest took place in

one of the Democratic "Ss
strongholds. ead

The 24th congressional district
was considered’ so tightly sewed
up by the Democratic Party ma-
chine that, late in 1947, Demo-
cratic district “boss”* Edward
Flynn, one of the bigwigs in the
party machine, published a book
about the district entitled ’m the
Boss.

Flynn’s confidence was not great
enough to prevent him from spend-

ing huge sums of money for paid
canvassers, literature, rallies and
other forms of publicity. Mayor
William O'Dwyer and Mrs.

Eleanor Roosevelt were even rush-
ed to the scene to counteract
Wallace’s appearance there. Paid
Democratic party canvassers, how-
ever, were far outnumbered by
volunteer workers for Isacson
from among ALP supporters, union
members and Communists in New
York. f

A significant aspect of the camr-
paign was the strength shown by
the American Labor Party, a
third party founded in 1936 in
New York State alone. In the
1946 election in the 24th district,
the ALP won 27 percent of the

vote, compared to 56 percent thir
time.

o

This success spiked widespread
forecasts that the recent with-
drawal of one of the CIO's largest
unions in New York, the Amalga-
mated Clothing Workers, would
leave the ALP a small, exclusively
left-wing group. The clothing
union withdrew when the ALP
indorsed Wallace's candidacy for
President. The Isacson district,
significantly, includes large num-
bers of members of the CIO cloth-
ing union and of the Internationa!
Ladies Garment Workers Unior
(AFL), whose leaders support the
Liberal Party.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE #