REACTION TO HANOI

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31118, 22 July 1966, Page 11

REACTION TO HANOI

(From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. Special correspondent) WASHINGTON, July 21. Nothing can for long take public interest away from those prisoner-of-war aviators in the hands of Ho Chi Minh.

People had hoped for help from Moscow to save the lives of men who had done no more than Moscow expects from its uniformed forces—complete obedience to military authority. When Hanoi first talked of trying these men as war criminals the reaction was of the order that they would not really dare. Now people are not so sure.

They got a pinch of comfort from the fact that Ho Chi Minh did not mention the matter in his recent broadcast only to have that hope erased by the statement of the Hanoi Ambassador tn Peking that indeed the men would be so tried.

Because of the threatened trial the war has suddenly become a grave matter for all thinking Americans. Writer after writer has commented on the gravity of the situa-i tion that would result from' the trial and conviction of ; these men. The reaction in the United States would be explosive. President Johnson has been running this war and running it as he thinks it ought to be run but the question does arise as to whether he would

be so completely in charge if the “fever for reprisals” rose to a dangerous height Could he, people are asking, control public opinion in the manner he controls the war? It is a good question and some people are not anxious

to voice the answer that comes to their minds. There is no longer any doubt in anyone’s mind, it seems, that Ho Chi Minh is using these captured airmen as hostages to try and prevent the continued bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong area and it is recognised that from his point of view it is a powerful card to hold.

As James Reston pointed out a day or two ago, the official line in Washington is that as long as military aggression from the north goes on there is no answer but superior military power directed from Washington. Walter Lippman in discussing the threatened trial of airmen by Hanoi says that those who predict dire reprisals if the trials are carried out are speaking accurately. He adds that if the escalation that such reprisals would cause takes place the nation is approaching the point of no return, the point where war becomes inexpiable and incapable of rational solution, a war of endless killing, a suicidal war of extermination. “The war is not yet at that point but the war will pass that point of no return if the prisoners are executed and North Vietnamese cities are destroyed in retaliation.”

Invitation To Ho.—Cambodia’s chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, has invited President Ho, of North Vietnam, to Cambodia during the September visit of President de Gaulle.—Paris, July 21.