On the Line in Laos

The afternoon before he flew to Europe, President Eisenhower thoughtfully drew a State Department policy paper out of the ''urgent study" pile on his desk. Its contents: a report on the Communist guerrilla bands swarming antlike out of Red China's puppet state of North Viet Nam into the Utah-sized nation of Laos (see FOREIGN NEWS). This "very dangerous" situation signaled the revival of full-scale guerrilla warfare in Indo-China for the first time since Red China agreed at Geneva in 1954 to stop it. The President, approving State's recommendations, cranked up machinery for stronger counterpressures against the Red thrust.

The U.S. had begun to move against guerrilla activity in Laos last month, when it sent 25 U.S. officers to help the French train the 25,000-man Laotian army in the use of U.S.-supplied infantry weapons. In last week's decision, the President went much further. He approved outlays from his own presidential contingency fund and other military aid sources to raise the little nation's armed strength to 29.000, ordered Navy Admiral Harry D. Felt, U.S. commander in the Far East, to airlift arms and equipment to the scene of trouble. With those two orders, and with the publicizing of them at his press conference, President Eisenhower threw still another major force into the struggle: he laid U.S. prestige on the jungle line in Laos almost as surely as he once committed it along the rocky shores of Quemoy-Matsu and upon the hot sands of Lebanon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.