The Price of Crumbs

The talks at Geneva hobbled along at a pace somewhere between a balk and a breakdown. The Communists planned it that way.

Their obvious tactic was to stall until the Viet Minh could mount an offensive against the Red River Delta or drive westward into Laos. Whenever the West showed signs of impatience, they could throw another crumb on the table. If the West finally got disgusted and moved toward intervention, the Communists could always accept the half-loaf that France was all too willing to give them.

Last week the Communists threw a crumb. Viet Minh's Pham Van Dong* suggested an immediate cease-fire and a readjustment of the zones held by the two sides into large "economic areas." The U.S.'s Bedell Smith promptly declared that this would lead to a "dishonorable" peace. But Bidault seized the crumb, carried it off to Paris and a meeting with the Cabinet. He returned with orders to examine the proposal prayerfully and to suggest a modification: troops should stay in their present general positions, thus creating a smallpox pattern instead of large divisions, which would amount to partition. At week's end both sides had agreed to summon military commanders from Indo-China to study the regrouping and make recommendations. Pleaded Bidault: "There is need for haste here to save lives." Since he was thinking about French lives, the Communists were unimpressed.

More persuasive than pleas was Bidault's effort to shore up France's military posture. In Paris, he asked the Cabinet "to make one last military effort in IndoChina to back up my diplomatic effort." The Cabinet, which has acquired a certain courage from the realization that nobody wants to take over its unpleasant task, agreed, and set about sending reinforcements to Indo-China (see below).

* Whose debates with Viet Nam Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dinh are known to Western newsmen as Dinh-Dong battles.

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