Socialists' Panel Hits U.S. Policy Toward Vietnam

Reverberations of Madame Nhu's visit echoed in 2 Divinity Ave. Last night as a panel of four leftists advocated complete withdrawal of U.S. aid and military forces from Vietnam.

Addressing the Harvard-Radcliffe Socialists, Miss Helen Lamb, who is presently writing an economic analysis titled Tragedy of Vietnam, charged that "United States policy in the area for the last 13 years has been a failure."

The United States has merely taken over the position that the French held in Vietnam for 94 years, Miss Lamb added. "They ousted the Chinese after 1000 years, the French after 94; it is only a question of time before they get rid of us," she said.

George Saunders '60, a staff writer for Militant, declared that the Nhus' land reform is primarily a duplication of the earlier French program. Neither the French nor the Diem regime have executed their reforms, be added, while the Viet-Cong have gained power by effectively carrying out their promises to the peasants.

Paul M. Sweezy '31, an editor of Monthly Review, concluded the forum, calling the present regime a "mere client" of the United States, which possesses the "largest neo-colonial empire in the world." Serious structural changes are necessary in the United States, the former Harvard professor added, "if the free world is to be prevented from becoming the exploitable world."