# By Joseph Alsop

Matter of Fact

They Still Come

THE PRESIDENT’S policy
of “sustained pressure” on
North Viet-Nam is primar¬
ily, indeed solely, designed

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Alsop

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the Commu¬
nist rulers of
Hanoi to let
their neigh¬
bors alone.

It is well and
wisely de¬
signed. No
one should
expect re¬
sults over¬
night, either,
for part of the wisdom of
the policy is the careful dos¬
ing of the pressure.

None the less, it is impor¬
tant to note that instead of
beginning to let their neigh¬
bors alone, the North Viet¬
namese are increasing the
scale of their infiltration-
invasion of South Viet-Nam.

The dimensions of the in¬
crease are by no means easy
to gauge. The North Viet¬
namese soldiers who are as¬
signed to duty in the South
come through Laos by the
Ho Chi Minh Trail. They
move partly by foot but now
quite largely by truck,
down the jungle road as far
as Tchepone.

Thence they cross the bor¬
der on foot and in small
units, over devious and ob¬
scure \ trails, into the South
Vietnamese highlands. And
from the highlands, they
work their way onward to
their assigned operational
provinces.

SUCH TROOP movement
is bound to be shadowy, at
best. What is really happen¬
ing now will not be absolute¬
ly known until a somewhat
later time, when some of the
North Vietnamese troops
now engaged in this infiltra¬
tion-invasion have reached
the fighting front, and have
been captured and inter¬
rogated. Until then, the an¬
alysts have to use guess¬
work-measures.

There is at least one im¬
portant sign, however, that
the infiltration-invasion has
j increased fairly massively.
| In brief, there are good rea¬
sons to believe that a North
Vietnamese divisional head¬
quarters, or at any rate some
sort of new higher head¬
quarters, has lately been
established on South Viet¬
namese soil, in a mountain
hideout close to the Laotian
border.

The increase in scale of
the infiltration-invasion is a
matter for serious concern,
because of the extremely
narrow military balance that
now exists in the First and
Second Corps areas — the
provinces of North and Cen¬
tral South Viet-Nam. Very
large numbers of additional
North Vietnamese troops, as¬
signed to one of these pre¬
cariously balanced provinc¬
es, could in theory upset the
local balance in a dramatic
manner.

A DRAMATIC victory,
not militarily decisive but
politically decisive because
of its grave psychological
repercussions, is in fact the
specialty of the brilliant
North Vietnamese command¬
er, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
That was what he pulled off
at Dien Bien Phu. That, per¬
haps, is what he is now aim¬
ing for again.

The additional bodies
provided by the increased
infiltration - invasion may
well be intended by Giap as
the human raw material for
a Dien Bien Phu-like effort
in some such province as
Quang Ngai. This does not
mean, however, that the
President’s policy of “sus¬
tained pressure” is not
working.

The contrary is probably
the case. Most probably, in
fact, the adoption of the
policy of “sustained pres¬
sure” has driven Giap and
his fellow policy-makers in
Hanoi to accelerate their

timetables, and to make a
desperate effort to adminis¬
ter the coup de grace before
the moment is quite ripe.

As long as the sustained
pressure on North Viet-Nam
is also to be carefully dosed
pressure—for which they
are many good reasons—a
last desperate North Viet¬
namese effort to administer
a coup de grace in the South
must of course be expected.
Dosed pressure will only get
results when such an effort
has failed, or when the
doses become unbearably
heavy.

THE QUESTION is, quite
simply, whether Gen. Giap
has much chance of success
in his apparent aim. The
answer comes in two parts.
On the one hand, South Viet¬
namese morale is undoubt¬
edly immeasurably higher
since the direct American
attacks on the North began.
Above all, intrigue-spon¬
sored defections or neutral¬
ist postures are much less
likely in the army, now that
there is a little light show¬
ing at the end of the tun¬
nel.

On the other hand, the
central reserve of the South
Vietnamese is alarmingly
slender. In province after
province, in all the corps
areas, the defending forces
are already committed to
the hilt. A larger central
reserve may well be need¬
ed to deal with the kind of
local emergencies that Giap
specializes in creating.

The need is reduced, to
be sure, but it may not be
absolutely eliminated by the
constantly increasing mobil¬
ity American aid is provid¬
ing. With 600,000 men un¬
der arms already, the North
Vietnamese can hardly meet
the need themselves. Such
is the case (as yet not ad¬
judicated) for a modest ad¬
ditional commitment of U.S.
ground forces, to assure base
security but above all to
beef up the ^central re¬
serve.

© 1965, The Washington Post C*o.

Inside Report.. .

Partnership , Communist Style

By Rowland Evans and Robert Novak

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