VERSE: Moratorium
Jennings, Kathleen Ellen
to the next most frequent reason: a desire to return to circumstances as favored its chances for success. The one's family. And since the PRG has gone to special Vietnamese themselves...
...Quang Tri province is 85 percent under Vietnam war, the most significant assertion of the caPRG physical domination, and I saw Saigon and PRG pacity of humanity-one grounded on clarity and peoflags side-by-side only near Quang Tri city...
...reached in just one year-including extensive fraternization to the point that films and dramatic troupes are sent to perform for the Saigonese, trade is carried on, 00000000000000 and even medical aid and food were given to the KATHLEEN ELLEN JENNINGS Saigon forces during last autumn's floods...
...aid to Thieu would end It is this political triumph, and the depth to which and their fortunes would sink accordingly...
...Yet its very survival and accomplishments are Thieu's troops were making local accommodations with due to its political strength and its profound interaction the Liberation forces, avoiding combat where possible...
...The one's family...
...lowed it to select the point of battle at such times and and are sleeping still...
...Ironically, the deepening economic demise of the something ruthless had been Thieu economy has accelerated the results obtained in vicious and dead bent on this new phase of the NLF's political struggle...
...Yet, at the same time, the quantity and warm, and ate well, when we quality of military equipment one casually sees while had swelled our wheat and lay traveling through Quang Tri, including much captured U.S...
...Its economic progthe PRG and Saigon-areas...
...grave then, our eye the grey It is no secret, as the Pentagon Papers admitted, that the NLF's survival and eventual supremacy over the of the gun, we drowsed deeper most powerful industrial nation in history was due to under a cold sun: stunned, its doctrine of preserving its strategic offensive initiative, mobility and decentralization-a combination which al- we lost will and slept...
...Moratorium This strategy of reconciliation, which the Paris Accords nominally legitimizes, illustrates a legal political Something was winging offensive by the PRG which will doom the Thieu regime and, winging, dropped...
...our work done: then mending Either way, one concludes that the PRG remains the justifiably confident master of the political and social ended...
...artillery, makes it clear that Thieu cannot survive fallow under cold sun, thinking militarily should he pursue that option much longer...
...ficers, that sooner or later U.S...
...throughout South Vietnam as inexorably as any other factor...
...And since the PRG has gone to special Vietnamese themselves stress the political dimension of lengths to assure that families with sons in the Saigon this initiative, and its essential contribution to military army are not discriminated against, returning home is successes, though in fact there was never a real contest all the more enticing...
...Then something was trends that will define the final outcome of the Vietnam dropped at zenith: a shot, war, its work being increasingly eased by the irredeemable economic crisis Thieu's venality has brought and winging stopped...
...Desertion is therefore also increasing...
...There are ple's needs as well as heroism-to triumph over the 50 such points where opposing troops meet, and at worst adversities inflicted on any society in modem 21 highly formalized local accommodations have been history...
...with a heroic people who have made the existence Their martial posture depends largely on their officers' of the NLF, much less its present mastery of all the presence, but even these officers and various elite units elements that will decide the final outcome of the are losing heart...
...ress is formidable, even monumental, in light of the The Saigon deserters also confirmed a crucial fact extraordinary devastation of every standing physical that also came from wholly independent PRG sources: object...
...Shocked about...
...All agreed that there was a gen- on this level, but only a process of broadening a poeral consensus among Thieu's troops, including of- litical base against scarcely any opponents at all...
...In unison it penetrates into every crevice and the very heart of with rejoining their families, the growing collapse of a nation's values and commitments, that emerges most the Thieu economy is now profoundly affecting the vividly as one moves about a province of 300,000 peomilitary as well as political balance-of-forces between ple under a unified PRG authority...
...Improving the economic and social conditions of people in mending...
...but in that quick regions such as Quang Tri only increases their mag- month when, drowsing, we were netic attraction in a peace for which Thieu is wholly unprepared...
...15 March 1974: 38...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 2
