BRITISH IN INDIA HAVE LESSON FOR THE FRENCH

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27277, 18 February 1954, Page 10

BRITISH IN INDIA HAVE LESSON FOR THE FRENCH

INDO-CHINA SETTLEMENT

(By

WALTER LIPPMANN

in the "New York Herald Tribune")

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

Mr Bidault is under heavy pressure! from his own countrymen to find the [ way to a cease-fire in Indo-China. I There is now, one may say, I think. I an almost unanimous opinion in ; France that the fighting should be; ended. As we are deeply involved in l this enormously difficult affair, we may. begin by asking what has produced | this unanimity. It did not exist four) months ago. Opinion was still divided, with the Laniel-Bidualt government in favour] of continuing the war. That was be-1 fore the present fighting season opened. l . There had been a change of command-] ers; there was a new military plan.) There were to bfe some reinforcements! coming from France. Anfi there had' been a heavy injection of American ■ dollars and material aid. There is no particular reason for i thinking that the French have suffered I a military disaster which might have I decisive consequences. The reason • for the change of opinion in Paris is that the expectation has not been fulfilled, has in fact been dashed, which caused Mr Laniel and others to believe in fighting on. A Theory that Failed They never did believe, to be sure, i what our supposedly gullible public was asked to believe, that the country would be united and cleared of Communists by a military victory. They were determined to test out a much soberer and more realistic theory. It ' was that the great mass of the people 1 are primarily concerned with the civil ’ war in order to see who is is going to win it. Then they will ! rally to the support of the winner. The theory is and was plausible. It : recognised that a war of this kind, es- . sentially a guerrilla war. cannot be ’ Won by orthodox military measures. ; Success depends on winning the sup- ; port of the non-combatant masses, who j shelter and support the guerrilla fight- i ers as much as they must and, on the j whole, as little as they dare. If, therefore, a few decisive and i spectacular, though local, victories 1 could be won, there was a good chance that in a large region around them the < people would come over to the anti- < Communist side. If that could be 1 to ha fpen, it would then be pos- ! sible to propose a negotiation for an i armistice from “a position of strength.” c That was the most, and that was all, 1 mat the more determined and the more c optimistic French authorities have ever 1 hoped to accomplish by fighting on. j \Vhat has happened during the last 1 four months is that the theory has been , put to the test and has not worked. J The new military plan has brought no , spectacular local victory. The native • armies, which present a very different < problem from the South Korean army, . are not nearly near the point where f they could be counted upon to fight - a war under their own officers. And ‘

i there has been no evidence of any ; popular rally to the French side. American Troops No Solution ; The theory that the people would rcllv to the winner, once they knew who was going to win, is still no doubt | true. But how arc the French to (become the winners? They cannot (send the rest of the French army now in Germany and in North Africa to Indo-China. They do not expect us to send an American army into Indo- ; China, nor would they wish us to Ido so. For. supposing that the Eisenhower Administration reversed everyi thing it has been saying about its new strategy, the sending of American (troops would be a repetition of Mac- | Arthur’s march to the Yalu. It could hardly fail to be followed by a Chinese intervention, which would probably I expand the local war into an interi national war that could engulf Thailand and. perhaps. Burma, too. i When fighting ceases to be profitable and no rational end is attainable by going on with it, a sensible government will move to end the fighting That is what Eisenhower did in Korea, and that is what Laniel should be helped to do if it can be done. It is, however, very difficult to do and probably more difficult now than it would have been a year ago. We have missed the chance, which we were then advised to seize, of making a package of a Korean and an IndoChinese armistice. We would have played with fairly strong cards. Withdrawing French Authority That, however, is in the past. The basic questions on which an armistice depends are not going to be easy to answer or to accept. They have to do with much more concrete things than the somewhat abstract and formal question of whether Red China is to be represented in the United Nations. At bottom the questions are under what conditions is the French military and political authority to be withdrawn from Indo-China—as the British authority was withdrawn from India and the Dutch from Indonesia. It will not be nrudent to assume that the Soviet Union would, or even that it surely could, direct Red China and Ho Chi-minh to make an armistice which accepts the continuation of French authority. Needless to say it is enormouslv difficult to see how, after seven years of civil war. the French authority can be Withdrawn without leaving the native states, in all their frailty and inexperience, to become the satellites of a Red Chinese empire. But that is the problem which confronts us. We can be sure that we shall not solve it. that in fact we shall only obscure It for ourselves and confuse it for the French, if we act as if it were merely a question of a little more or a little less money and military aid. For meeting that problem we shall need men, first of all in Paris, but also in London and in Washington, of the stature and with the general outlook upon Asian matters of those who brought the British safely and honourably—and in the long run so profitably —out of India.