Indo-China

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25090, 23 January 1947, Page 6

Indo-China

Though France’s efforts to restore order in Indo-China are, in the words of the French Prime Minister, developing favourably, and though the President of the dissident Viet Nam Republic was reported yesterday by the French News Agency to have proposed an immediate peace, it is too early to believe that the worst of France’s difficulties in this distant colony are over. It may be noted, for instance, that the French have still to join battit in the strength their Colonial Minister thinks necessary to win a military decision. According to the account Mr Moutet gave this week to the National Assembly of his mission to Indo-China, France will need an army of 150,000 to subdue the Annamese, and the French strength there, he indicated, is still little more than two-thirds of that which he considers will be required. It may be noted, too, that others estimate the military task more formidably. Basing his statement on the opinion of an officer of the French Foreign Legion who had returned from the fighting fronts in, Cochin-China, ’ the Saigon correspondent of the “New York Times” recently said that the French in Indo-China were meeting a type 6f elusive guerrilla opposition that the Annamese could prolong indefinitely; and he went on to quote his informant to say that it would take 500,000 troops to put down the nationalist movement. Whatever ; the task, however, it is beyond i question that the French Government is determined to quell the revolt. Only when they have ensured order and security, Mr Ramadier says in his first speech to the National Assembly as Prime Minister, will the French end the fighting; the only important thing for the time being in Indo-China, Mr Moutet has said, is to restore order. It is important because Indo-China is an outstanding colonial possession. Upon the retention of Indo-China, with its resources of rice, rubber, and coal, its population of 25,000,000 people, and its strategic position in South-east Asia, depends in considerable measure the restoration of France’s pre-war territorial position as a world Power. Without Indo-China, I France would be a European state holding substantial bases in the Mediterranean and Africa, but retaining no more than the remnants of empire in the Far East. But the outcome in Indo-China is important also because it may shape the future of even the bases France holds in the Mediterranean and Africa. “ Government and Parlia- “ ment in France ”, wrote a “ Chris- “ tian Science Monitor ” correspondent recently, “ believe that the loss “of the French position in the Far “ East will bring acute reaction “ throughout the French Empire. “Paris knows well that the struggle “in Indo-China is closely watched, “ especially by the North African . “ population ”, I