OME of the more far - sighted Americans are coming to realise the hopelessness of the Vietnam situation. It is not merely the political instability, the way in which one grubby military despot follows another as head of the South Vietnamese Government and a fearless warrior for the “free world”. But, also, that this instability is, in its turn, a product of the putrifaction of the whole society. South Vietnam is a decaying and decadent society. Richard Keatley, writing in the Yall Street Fournal (15.6.64) described the situation: “Long An proyince just south-west of Saigon, is a potentially rich area. Its fertile land produces quantities of rice and fruit, and large number of the white Peking ducks so highly favoured in Vietnamese cuisine are raised locally. But prosperity hasn’t touched most of the province’s 300,000 inhabitants. Many live on small plots of rented land and pay §0% to 75% of their crops to landlords,
“A hired field hand earns 70 cents
a day, if he can get work. Two young
girls spend a long day weaving three
fibre mats on a crude handloom,
dividing wages of only 50 cents
between them. Vo Van Sang, a pork
butcher here in Thaun Dao, one of
290 hamlets in Long An province,
broke his leg 17 months ago and has
yet to receive adequate medical
care; the injured leg still bends at
the break six inches below the knee
and the muscles are shrivelling.”
Would you fight to maintain a
society with conditions like these? Is
it surprising many South Vietnamese
are “rice soldiers’, interested in
being well-fed and well-clothed by
the Americans — but in doing no
fighting? From the U.S. Army
standpoint it may be exasperating,
yet the main concern of the “rice
soldiers” is to remain alive. They
deliberately avoid meeting the Viet-
cong or, when they do, try to arrive
at some clandestine agreement not
to. fight each other.