THE NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The open letter published by several newspapers--e.g., by the Washington Post on March 13--and urging President Kennedy to 'halt U.S. military intervention in South Vietnam' paints a picture in black and white, colors more compatible with the 'socialist realism' of Communist propaganda than with the objectivity of a free press.

According to that picture there are two sides to the conflict in South Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem and the selfstyled National Liberation Front.' Since everybody knows that Diem is a dictator, and a not very benevolent one either, that makes the Front a band of 'freedom fighters,' at least On as Fidel Castro calls them 'Vietmese patriots.'

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The front is indeed a 'front'--in its literal sense, that is, a facade behind which the Communists conceal their designs from well-meaning and ill-informed people like most (if not all) of those 62 distinguished Americans who signed the letter (including 2 Harvard professors).

If they really care about freedom, they ought to learn of another side to the tragedy of South Vietnam: the plight of those nationalists caught between Diem and the Communists, of men who oppose dictatorship from either Right or Left. There are at least 25,000 of them in his concentration camps and many more in hiding or in exile.

And, lest we forget, there are the South Vietnamese masses. On their behalf, it may not be too rash to assume that they desire and deserve something better than the right to trade one tyrant for another, a privilege the sponsors of the letter seem to confer upon them implicitly.

Those Americans are justified in thinking that no amount of American aid could ever help Diem win the war. But to go on from there and suggest that the United States should withdraw all assistance from South Vietnam is a non sequitur equating 12 million people with one man. It is like saying that they must now pay for his mistakes, mistakes which the United States government itself has helped to perpetuate by giving him blind, all-out support.

It is American diplomacy, money, and arms that have kept Diem in power and so far prevented the emergence of an alternative capable of turning the tide against the Communists. To call it quits now before democratic forces in South Vietnam have had a chance to rally and fight would be to betray them once more, and this time irretrievably. The South Vietnamese people would be left defenseless, without any prospect for self-determination--unless we believe as the letter implies that, unlike Diem, the Communists will 'allow normal democratic procedures for political opposition and an orderly change of government.'

* * * Nguyen Ton Hoan   Secretary-General   The Dal-Viet Nationalist Party