President, has done what both Eisenhower and Kennedy dared not do, I. F. Stone’s Weekly stressed in an article, on March 15, commenting on the landing of U.S. marines in South Vietnam. The article said: “In 1954, when Nixon, Radford and Dulles wanted U.S. intervention in Vietnam to prevent the negotiation of peace, Eisenhower ‘remarked’, according to to his memoirs, “Mandate For Change”, that “If the U.S. were, unilaterally, to permit its forces to be drawn into conflict in Indochina and in a succession of Asian wars, the end result would be to drain off our resources and to weaken our overall offensive position.” Kennedy, it was recently revealed, faced a similar demand and made a similar decision in his first year in office.” but, “what both Eisenhower and Kennedy refused to do Johnson has now done. He has landed U.S. combat troops in Asia.” The article ridiculed the allegation of the U.S. government that the landing of U.S. marines was not for combat purposes. It said: “Our general can be as subtle as Greek theologians . . . but the marines are not just going to sit there. They might even go out and do a little shooting on their own. For as the Baltimore Sun reported March 9, the two battalions are ‘more than infantry’.” The Weekly feared that sending troops to South Vietnam would not
help the US. to win a military victory there. On the contrary, it would wallow ever more in the mire in South Vietnam, “If two battalions of U.S. marines should be overwhelmed by guerrillas, this would be a loss of face for U.S. forces. We would be compelled to send in more troops and urged to do more retaliatory bombing in the north to restore our ‘prestige’. Once we begin committing combat troops, we are caught in what the French call the ‘engrenage’, in the ‘gears’ that will drag us in further and ever more painfully. The marines are landing at a time and a place that invites a Dunkirk if not a Dienbienphu,” it added. “Danang is set like Dienbienphu in a bowl of hills dominated by the Viet Cong. The only fortunate difference is that it offers a quick escape route by sea. The military situation is everywhere deteriorating . . . guerrillas overran a regional forces platoon only three miles south of Danang runway the night before the marines began arriving. To the south of Danang, guerrillas have cut the north-south railway and the one highway to Saigon,” it said. “Heavy U.S. bombings are exacting their toll of civilians, though they have not stopped the guerrillas. The rate of desertions from the South Vietnamese army is rising sharply, and if there is going to be war much longer we are going to have to wage ae
SPAIN Franco strikes out at Student Movement HE Ministry of Education, in answer to “unauthorised meetings of students,” has ordered the closing down of the central building (Philosophy and Sciences) of Barcelona University. Students will lose their right of matriculation in other sciences if by August 22 classes have not beén restored to normal, The same sanction will also be
applied without further warning to students participating in “any type of alteration of academic order” or collective abstention from class-room or lecture attendance. In Madrid some of the University buildings have been closed and reopened several times during the last ten days, but full attendance is now reported from almost all class-rooms.
Who stalls when the
world cries BOYCOTT
The South African Embassy pub-
lication, Report from South Africa,
contained the following items in its
March issue,
AST month, Sir William Lyons,
chairman of Jaguar - Daimler,
announced plans that will add Jaguars
to the list of South African manufac-
tured cars. These cars have been
assembled in East London (Cape
Province since 1960 and at present
have a local content of 23 per cent.
The new plans will push the level up
to 4§ per cent. by the end of this
year and 55 per cent. within three
years. Work on an engine assembly
plant has already started, and front
and rear axles will also be made
locally.
On January 30 the first all South
African General Motors engine was
made. It was a six-cylinder Chevrolet
engine and it came from the com-
pany’s £103m. engine plant at Port
Elizabeth.
The South African Ford company
some months ago announced the
completion of the r10,oooth engine
assembled at its new South African
engine factory, and the British
Motors Corporation plant at Black-
heath, near Cape Town, has an
engine assembly section for both its
Mini and 1100 ranges.
A Board of Trade report says
British exports to South Africa have
risen by 52 per cent. in the past two
years.
Talks between South African min-
ing interests and Belgian and Portu-
guese companies on a_ possible
participation in the Angolan oil
industry start in Lisbon this month.
It is not necessary to comment on
these reports — they speak for them-
selves in showing what forces lie
behind resistance to operating the
boycott of South Africa.
VERWOERD mourns
CHURCHILL
N his tribute to Churchill, Dr.
Verwoerd, Prime Minister of
South Africa, said: “In the history of |
South Africa he also left his mark—
not so much because of the adven-
tures of his youth but because of his
role in the two world wars, and also
because of his understanding and
sympathy with South Africa during
the past two decades.” ee ee a ne ee rls he