Trouble for Ho

Out of Communist North Viet Nam (pop. 12 million) came unmistakable signs that the austere autocracy of Ho Chi Minh is having trouble with its housekeeping. The rice crop of the devastated Red River Delta is down by 30% to 40%. The worst floods in 70 years have washed out irrigation dikes and dams, endangering the spring planting. Some 700,000 refugees have moved off to the rice-rich south, leaving for Ho their burned farmhouses and untilled land. An additional 10,000 refugees are fleeing the north every week. Refugees from Red Viet Nam reaching the French-held port city of Haiphong are suffering from beriberi.

North Viet Nam, one of the world's most densely populated regions and never selfsupporting, once imported 300,000 tons of rice a year from the south. It paid with its coal, textiles and cement. Thanks to the Communists, however, trade in the north is now at a standstill, and there is heavy industrial unemployment. French and neutralist Indian businessmen are moving out. All but Communist official cars have disappeared. Ironically, Ho's own picture is becoming the symbol of Ho's economic distress: Viet Minh currency, which bears Ho's picture, is worth less than half what it used to be.

In cities like Hanoi (pop. 300,000), the Communists have instituted a monthly ration of 17 lbs. of rice for children, 33 lbs. for adults, 55 lbs. for their new privileged elite, the Communist party workers. "Rebels eat last" is the rule in the sections where Roman Catholics resist the regime. The Hanoi press extols the "selfless help" of Red China, but Red China (itself in economic trouble) has only sent Ho one shipment of 10,000 tons of rice. "We may have to accept as many as 2,000,000 deaths this year from starvation," a senior Communist admitted.

Last week, Ho's propagandists publicly recognized their difficulties by calling for "a resumption of normal . . . economic relations" with the South Viet Nam government of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem--in plainer terms, for some of Diem's 400,000 tons of surplus rice.

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