The Greatest Drama

Beaming avuncularly at the reporters wedged three and four deep around his White House desk, the President observed: "I would say we all ought to be commended for our good spirits and jolly frame of mind. I appreciate the good humor you are all in. I don't know how to account for it."

Lyndon Johnson, looking trim and tanned, is in pretty good humor himself these days, and he is only too happy to account for it. He is optimistic that by continued persuasion and pressure --"the jawbone technique," in Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler's phrase --he can keep the booming U.S. economy from spiraling out of control. On the international scene, he can only be reassured by the strident argy-bargy between Moscow and Peking, despite some pundits' predictions that the U.S. stand in Viet Nam could only induce harmony between the two great Communist powers (see THE WORLD). As for the war itself, the President is firmly convinced that the patient and sustained application of U.S. power will eventually carry the day.

Making It Right. Last week's military actions in South Viet Nam more than justified that view. In eight separate operations ranging from the northern uplands to jungled War Zone "D" near Saigon, U.S. troops and their allies killed more than 1,900 of the enemy. At week's end a battalion of U.S. Marines splashed ashore near the mouth of the Long Tao River, the main shipping channel to Saigon, to yet another foray, this one dubbed "Jack Stay."

The heaviest fighting occurred in the I Corps sector abutting the 17th parallel in the northernmost provinces, where the Reds, having apparently abandoned hopes of slicing South Viet Nam in two at the Central Highlands, are now concentrating their efforts. In Operation Texas, six battalions of allied forces dashed to the aid of a beleaguered outpost at An Hao, then found themselves tangling with four battalions of hardcore Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops. In five days they wiped out 485 of the attackers and crippled the unit as a fighting force.

Heartening as the military news has been, it is the progress of the other war in Viet Nam--the peaceful construction program--that appeals most deeply to the President. The Administration's efforts to help the Vietnamese people provide him, in addition, with an irrefutable answer to many of his critics. One leader of the anti-war movement, Saturday Review Editor Norman Cousins, wrote compassionately last week of the Vietnamese, "whose constant and unwanted companion has been violence and terror and whose only crime has been their geography." They have, he said, a kind of "moral claim on history." Yet, he asked, "How do we go about making it right with them?" Johnson is determined to meet that challenge. Said he: "We are trying to concentrate our energies and all of our expertise and knowledge to help these people help themselves and have a better way of life."

As the President sees it, this attempt to build a nation in the midst of war is not only one of the most ambitious and complex undertakings his Administration has attempted; it is also perhaps the most exciting drama of our times. He is impatient for results, though well aware that the program is barely gathering momentum. Accordingly, though Johnson originally told

South Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky after February's Honolulu conference that he wanted to meet him again in June and expected some solid results by then--some "coonskins nailed to the wall," as he put it--the President has now decided to defer the conference until around the fall elections.

Plumper Pigs. Meanwhile, teams of top-echelon American experts have been streaming into Saigon to assess the situation. Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman came back citing "evidence of progress in the face of the most difficult conditions imaginable," offered no fewer than 49 recommendations for helping the peasants. Among them: putting farm-bred U.S. soldiers to work in rural areas. "He's got a man who can grow twice as many sweet potatoes on a plant," said the President. "He's got another one who can make pigs weigh twice as much."

Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner, who returned last week from an eight-day survey trip, said he was "impressed" by "the extraordinary scope and intensity of the American effort." Though "optimistic that a great deal can be done," he warned of the obstacles ahead, notably political instability, inflation, and shortages--particularly the dearth of trained personnel. Officials estimate that the embattled nation needs at least 60,000 administrators, teachers, agricultural experts and other technicians, but has scarcely 20,000--thanks not only to colonial France's failure to train Vietnamese administrators but also to Viet Cong assassinations. As Vice President Hubert Humphrey told a labor conference in Washington last week, since 1958 there have been "61,000 mayors, leaders of villages and councilmen assassinated in cold blood."

Saigon Shuttle. A cautious, thorough man, Gardner does not plan to present his detailed recommendations to the President before April 10. Nonetheless, he is expected to urge expansion of Viet Nam's secondary school system, particularly technical schools to assure a steady supply of trained cadres. Another possibility, favored by HEW Assistant Secretary (Education) Francis Keppel, who toured Viet Nam with Gardner, is to expand a television network recently set up by U.S. aid officials and use it to teach millions of illiterate Vietnamese to read and write.

Whatever programs Gardner does recommend, he will be able to count on more U.S. technicians to help implement them. Under a $13.1 billion emergency Viet Nam appropriations bill that passed the Senate last week by an 87-to-2 vote after a 389-to-3 House vote, the U.S. will reinforce its 700-member aid mission with 300 more experts, mostly in the key fields of agriculture, health and education.

This week yet another group will join the Saigon shuttle to see what further steps the U.S. can take. Among its members: top Presidential Assistant Bill Moyers, who has never been there; Deputy Defense Secretary Cyrus Vance, who announced last week that the U.S. now has 220,000 fighting men in Viet Nam, and hopes to find out if more are needed; and White House Aide Robert Komer, McGeorge Bundy's ex-deputy, who has been given the title of Special Assistant to the President for peaceful construction in Viet Nam.

Worrisome Sacrifices. Where once the President described his Viet Nam policy as "two-fisted," now he calls it "a three-fisted affair." The first set of knuckles, of course, is the war. The second is the political and economic front, particularly the peaceful construction campaign. The third fist is continued American support for his Viet Nam policies. For though the din of protest has subsided somewhat, the President knows that it has by no means expired. In the Senate alone, he estimates, roughly 35 members disapprove of one feature of his policy or another, though without notable rancor.

Nonetheless, the President and his legmen in recent weeks have talked with 270 Democratic and Republican Congressmen--something the White House does regularly to keep in touch with Capitol Hill's thinking--and what the House members had to say about Viet Nam delighted Johnson. "They are all worried about the sacrifices our men are making there," said the President. "But there are not many of them who have any doubt about the justice of our cause or the wisdom of our course."

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