Some Changes Made

Two hundred dainty girls, devoid of makeup and dressed demurely in ivory-colored robes, sat in a compound of Saigon's infamous Palace of Mirrors one day last week for a most unusual ceremony. The famous old bordello, once the headquarters of the most renowned madams and prostitutes in Asia, had been stripped of its mirrors and packed with desks and household equipment. From the front row of the crowd 27 girls made their way to the platform and received certificates of efficiency and good behavior from the Ministry of Health. "We thank the government," said one in a singsong voice, "for helping us leave our wretched existence and start a new and useful life."

Thus did the Vietnamese government proudly graduate its first class of rehabilitated prostitutes from a special school created as part of Premier Diem's anti-vice crusade. In order to be admitted to the school, each girl had to be caught with at least three different male companions ("We must be careful not to offend bona fide lovers," explained a police official). After graduation they were assured jobs as cooks, seamstresses or nurses with the army or other government agencies. The school does not want for replacements: on one night last week police rounded up 100 more prospective students from the streets of Saigon.

Change of Heart. Saigon has changed in other ways too. It no longer reeks of opium smoking. Gambling has practically disappeared. But Saigon's most remarkable change, say old Indo-China hands, is the change in Vietnamese-French relations. In Viet Nam's first months of independence, the French openly connived against Diem's government and the Vietnamese openly showed their dislike of the "dirty colonialists." The Vietnamese worried about the 180,000 French troops still in their midst, the French worried about an uprising against the Europeans once the troops left.

But as the young nation has grown secure in its independence and the French grown to accept its permanence, French businessmen have been wooed instead of. warred on, and the last of the departing French troops, to their surprise, found themselves affectionately cheered. The French government still spends money on Vietnamese agriculture and the maintenance of 300 teachers in free French schools. The Cercle Sportif, once snootily for Europeans only, took in Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu, the attractive First Lady of Viet Nam (she is the bachelor President's sister-in-law).

Change of Title. The biggest remaining affront to Vietnamese pride was French insistence on maintaining a high commissioner instead of an ambassador. Last week that, too, was changed. The Quai d'Orsay announced that High Commissioner Henri Hoppenot, who has never got on well with the Vietnamese, would be recalled and replaced by an ambassador. Delighted, Premier Diem invited Hoppenot to his palace for a farewell Chinese dinner, a gesture unthinkable a year ago.

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