Saigon Shrugs About Hanoi

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31115, 19 July 1966, Page 17

Saigon Shrugs About Hanoi

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, July 18. North Vietnam’s order for partial mobilisation and a step-up of the war in South Vietnam brought shrugs of shoulders in Saigon yesterday, the Associated Press reported. The war has been here too long for a single announcement to make any difference. Anyway, to the average Vietnamese it has now become “an American war.” “Today is Sunday, the

people go to the movies,” said a young Vietnamese who has succeeded in obtaining a discharge from the Army—the aim of most draft-age youths. “Who is interested in politics?” asked another. Yesterday afternoon In the capital of a nation at war, it seemed that few people were interested—apart from American diplomats and military planners. The head of the country’s Government, Air Vice-Mar-shal Nguyen Cao Ky, was sailing in the South China Sea. , Many of his generals were either gambling, visiting ' friends or basking in the sun near swimming pools. The fashionable Cercle : Sportif was crowded with bikini-clad beauties and : foreign diplomats. There, few

had heard of the Hanoi announcement. In the heart of the city, where crowds spilled out of movie theatres, dainty Vietnamese women in their colourful, trim gowns were more occupied with how to ignore the whistles of American troops on leave. Black-bereted South Vietnamese troops guarded the palace of the Chief of State, General Nguyen Van Thieu, behind sandbag gun emplacements and rolls of barbed wire, but there was no sign of activity from the white-walled palace surrounded by welltended lawns. In the streets, a stream of traffic moved swiftly with its ramshackle taxis, pedicabs and scooters. From an American officers’

■ billet came the sound of applause and cheering. A singer was performing on the roof ’ terrace and her voice, boomed over a loudspeaker, • dominating the noise of the street below. Vendors in conical straw hats were selling coloured balloons outside the Roman Catholic basilica as crowds left after the evening Mass. Nearby, on Tu Do street, bars were filling with American servicemen and construction workers and attractive girls were opening the doors to let more customers • in. “What do you want, it’s an ' American war,” said a slen- ; der Roman Catholic priest. > “We Vietnamese have little to say about it. We are just ' pawns in the big. game.”