IMPLICATIONS OF TRIALS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31111, 14 July 1966, Page 15

IMPLICATIONS OF TRIALS

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, July 13. In the last few days, Hanoi and the Communist capitals of Eastern Europe have been talking about trying and executing the American airmen captured in North Vietnam. We have had many tragic miscalculations on both sides tn this war, but none more ominous or dangerous than this, James Reston wrote for the “New York Times.” Reston wrote: The Communist photographs of the American pilots being Ted helpless and handcuffed at gunpoint through the menacing crowds are bad enough. But if this is followed by another of those spectacular communist “trials” and the execution of these

men, the reaction of this country is likely to be precisely the opposite of what Hanoi imagines. This is a very critical moment in the long struggle to keep this war limited. The North Vietnamese leaders are no doubt furious about the bombings of the oil dumps in Hanoi and Haiphong. They have ordered the evacuation of the civilian population from those cities and no doubt this has encouraged a spirit of revenge. But nothing will add to the brutality and unpredictability of this war more than making these few airmen pay with their lives for carrying out the orders of their government There has been much stupidity, but very little jingoism in America’s conduct of this war. The American people have been troubled but calm.

Except for one or two instances, the President and his aides have avoided appeals to emotion and no effort has been made to arouse a spirit of hatred toward the political leaders or the soldiers of North Vietnam.

In fact—rightly or wrongly

—United States officials in Washington and in Saigon have pictured the enemy as brave but misguided men fighting for Peking or Moscow against their own national interests. But all this could easily be changed by howling mobs, drum-head courts and firing squads in Hanoi. The rules of war specifically forbid the retribution now being discussed in the Communist world. Article XIII of the Geneva Convention of 1949, signed by the Hanoi government on June 5, 1957, provides that prisoners of war should be protected against intimidation and reprisal for acts of war performed in the line of duty. This, however, Is not primarily a legal but a practical question, involving the psychology of the American people and the President of the United States. Nobody who knows anything about Lyndon Johnson can have much doubt about the severity of his reaction if the airmen he sent into North Vietnam are executed against the standards of international

law for carrying out his orders. The indications from Hanoi are that officials there intend to go through with the trials. Far from intimidating other Navy and Air Force airmen from attacking targets in North Vietnam, which apparently is the intention, far from restraining President Johnson, which is what they are believed to have in mind, far from encouraging opposition to the President’s bombing policy, the conviction and execution of the American airmen will almost certainly escalate the bombing and unite this country behind a much more punitive and aggressive policy. According to another “New York Times” correspondent, the number of prisoners hetd by North Vietnam is a military secret Defence Department rolls list 35 American servicemen as “detained” by the enemy, including 22 airmen, two marines and 11 soldiers. A total of 233 are listed as “missing,” and most of these, too, are thought to be prisoners of either the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese.

Famine Deaths. Some 3000 people have died in a famine caused by a six-month drought in the Lesser Sunda Islands, east of Java, a doctor said in Djakarta today.— Djakarta, July 13. ,