And Meanwhile What's Happening up North?

North Viet Nam has long served with impunity as a base for war and subversion against the rest of Southeast Asia. It is under Hanoi's direction that the Communist Viet Cong wage their guerrilla war in South Viet Nam, aided by men and materiel smuggled from the North down the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is named for North Viet Nam's longtime Red ruler. But despite its aggressive stance, the Red North is beset by serious internal troubles. Last week, amid streamers and red lanterns, wispy-chinned President Ho Chi Minh himself strode into polling station No. 24 in his dismal capital of Hanoi. Officially described as "solid, nimble and in high spirits" despite his 74 years, Ho delivered a speech praising his "free and democratic" regime, then elaborately marked his ballot.

The election was to renew the rubber-stamp National Assembly--which, according to Hanoi, also represents South Viet Nam--and the vote was of course neither free nor democratic. The slate of candidates had been care fully chosen beforehand. But the West, which gets precious little news out of the tightly closed country north of the 17th Parallel, watched the election carefully. The real outcome might not be clear for months, but which candidates were picked, and the margins by which they were allowed to win, might provide clues to the power struggle obviously going on inside North Viet Nam.

Forced Choice. Sorely in need of Russian aid but living next door to Red China, Ho Chi Minh had long managed an agile course between Moscow and Peking. But last year, faced with lining up behind Moscow and signing the nuclear test-ban or following Peking in rejecting it, Ho reluctantly fell in with the Chinese--whereupon the Russians chopped off most of his aid. The decision made Ho's own pro-Chinese faction more aggressive.

The clash between Hanoi's Sinophiles and old-guard pro-Muscovites reached a showdown at a stormy session of the Lao Dong Central Committee last December. The Peking partisans evidently were in control of the meeting--Ho did not even speak. They put out a communique denouncing the "rightist ideologies that exist among a number of our cadres," meaning such pro-Moscow Ho Chi Minh followers as Premier Pham Van Dong. During Ho's 23 years at the head of Vietnamese Communism, he has weathered many storms and is such a father figure that he may never be toppled by anything short of death. But "Uncle Ho" is believed to have lost much control over his party and looks increasingly like a figurehead.

Eggshell Candidate. In last week's vote, Ho, standing for re-election to the Assembly, rolled up a Marxist-style 99.92% majority. Finishing close behind him were two top functionaries of North Viet Nam's Communist movement, known as Lao Dong, or Workers'Party: First Secretary Le Duan, who won 99.83% and Politburo Member Truong Chinh with 99.81%. Duan, 57, and Chinh, 55, are leaders of the party's pro-Peking wing, and their margins are a measure of the growing challenge by the Peking men to Uncle Ho.

But the Peking patron faces a potential pro-Moscow challenger in Ho's old comrade-in-arms, tough little General Vo Nguyen Giap, 51, victor of Dienbienphu, author of a celebrated book on guerrilla warfare that is studied from Havana to Algiers, and military overseer of the war in the South. Recruited largely from the peasantry, Giap's 400,000-man, Russian-equipped army is closer to the people than the party. His 27 divisions, decked out in eggshell-white uniforms with green badges, help build public works, even bake bricks and construct their own barracks. Naturally, the army also has the guns.

Last week came another indication that perhaps the pro-Soviets still had some say: Hanoi mysteriously announced that a "protocol on an exchange of experts" had been signed with Russia, indicating that Moscow might be preparing to resume some aid. To Cao Bang. North Viet Nam could use it. Thanks to inefficiency and "natural calamities," the rice crop fell to below 5,000,000 tons last year (down from 9,700,000 in 1962), cutting the minimum ration to less than 26 Ibs. per person per month. To expand arable land, the regime has ordered the crash-digging of irrigation canals and the migration of 300,000 peasants from the overcrowded Red River Delta, were two-thirds of the 17 million North Vietnamese live.

Last week in the Delta, among fields of tender spring-rice shoots, cadres of women peasants--many of whom had never performed farm labor before the Communists took over--hacked at ditches with picks and hoes, hauling off the heavy clay in baskets. To dramatize the pathos of the forced migration, Red River peasants had made up a song: Carrying a sack of rice, a wife says goodbye to her husband, And sadly cries: "I love you very much, You who have to go far to the mountain region Of Cao Bang."

As for North Viet Nam's rickety industry, even its traditional anthracite production is down. Describing the deadening bureaucracy, a French correspondent reported: "No one in a factory moves as much as a stool without asking the advice of an entire ministry." On Hanoi's broad avenues, which under the French were abustle with Renaults and Citroens, traffic consists mostly of bicycles and pedicabs, and shop windows are bare. The principal diversions are 5:30 a.m. exercises, reading propaganda posters, and endless indoctrination sessions.

The U.S. last week announced plans to build a 50-kw. Voice of America radio transmitter in South Viet Nam near the 17th Parallel to beam some propaganda of its own into the miserable North. Harassing raids into North Viet Nam by South Vietnamese Rangers, which have been quietly going on for more than a year, are being slightly stepped up; Hanoi itself has announced 14 trials of "spy commandos" since last June, denouncing the "plot of the U.S. imperialists to intensify sabotage against our North." The sabotage, such as it is, is of course not seriously harming the Northern regime or coming even close to blocking the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But it is undeniably making Hanoi nervous and demonstrating just how vulnerable an aggressor North Viet Nam really is.

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