All Quiet on the 17th Parallel

"People are talking too much about July 20," said South Viet Nam's doughty little President Ngo Dinh Diem. "Dates aren't important, but action is." Last week in Diem's resurgent country, July 20 came and went. There was no disorder, no rioting, no sudden blow by sneaker-wearing Communists from the North, nothing to mark the fact that July 20, 1956 was in effect the date accepted after the Geneva Conference of 1954 for elections to unite North and South Viet Nam.

The election device was a deadly one, marking something of a moral low for the British and French who signed the treaty, and only less so for the U.S., which did not sign the treaty but nonetheless consented to "respect" it. The Communist North, numbering 12 million and under full Communist regimentation, would inevitably outvote the free South, numbering 10.5 million. The interim two-year period was primarily designed as a breathing space in which the French were able to pull their troops out gracefully with a minimum loss of face and a maximum chance of later trade with the future all Communist Viet Nam.

But in the South, Diem, first falteringly and then fully backed by the U.S., set out to consolidate his country. He had not signed Geneva, and he would not be bound by the elections. In any event, said Diem, the conditions for free elections simply did not exist in the Communist North. Last April the British reversed their Geneva policy and aligned themselves with the U.S. and Diem. Last May the French pulled out their troops and lost their power to influence events. India, authorized by the Geneva powers to supervise the military details of the truce, also agreed to let July 20 pass by and to keep on maintaining the peace.

In the beginning the discomfited French had feared that should the deadline pass the Communists would start up the Indo-China war again. But three weeks ago North Viet Nam's Vice President Vo Nguyen Giap, the Communist victor of Dienbienphu, swallowed the new soft line: "The competition between North and South," he said, "will be on the same basis as the world competition now existing between socialism and capitalism."

And as the saffron and scarlet banner of South Viet Nam continued to fly beside the all-quiet dividing line of the 17th parallel, Nikita Khrushchev begrudgingly admitted the new fact: "In South Viet Nam time has passed," said Khrushchev, "but no elections have been held. Why? Because a so-called democratic state has firmly entrenched itself."

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