Strictly Business

Unlike the full-dress Viet Nam conferences that preceded it, this week's meeting on remote Guam was wreathed in an aura of almost spartan austerity. Absent were Honolulu's air of Sybaritic somnolence and Manila's mood of gaudy gaiety. Guam is strictly business--and the business is to accelerate the military and political progress in Viet Nam.

In selecting Guam as the site for his latest strategy session, Lyndon Johnson hoped to symbolize the fact that America is a Pacific nation in all senses of the word. Guam is not only the home of the B-52 bombers that daily hammer the Viet Cong; it is also the westernmost possession of the U.S. in the Pacific. The U.S. acquired the 210-sq.-mi. island after the Spanish-American War, lost it to Japan during the chaotic week following Pearl Harbor, and regained it by a bloody amphibious assault in 1944. Ringed by coral reefs, its jungles studded with wild orchids and rusting Japanese tanks, Guam (pop. 76,500) is a melange of Chamorro, Spanish and Japanese stock, yet fully American in its attitudes.

More than Routine. Ostensibly, the Guam conference was called to keep top U.S. and South Vietnamese officials in touch on a semiannual basis (they last met in Manila in October 1966). Accompanying the President on the 18-hour, 8,600-mile trip from Washington were Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, other top aides and two jetloads of reporters. In from Saigon flew U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, General William Westmoreland and South Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky and President Nguyen Van Thieu.

In briefing U.S. correspondents on the meeting, White House aides pointedly emphasized the word routine. Yet the President had a lot more than rou tine matters on his mind--as he proved before he left for Guam. In a speech to the Tennessee state legislature at Nashville, Johnson revealed a top-to-bottom shakeup of the Saigon embassy staff that reached from Lodge--who had long been anxious to end his second stint in Viet Nam--to Information Chief Barry ("Zorro") Zorthian, whose psywar techniques have doubled the number of Viet Cong defectors coming across the lines. As replacements, Johnson named an entire new team (see box next page).

Moral Double Bookkeeping. The Saigon shifts were evidence of Johnson's willingness to commit his very best advisers to Viet Nam. Much as he would like history to remember him for his far-reaching domestic achievements, he has increasingly resigned himself to the fact that the war will loom large in his record. And he is determined to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

In his Nashville speech, the President told of his visit earlier in the day to Andrew Jackson's historic Hermitage. "In our time, as in his, history conspires to test the American will," he said. "Two years ago, we were forced to choose between major commitments in defense of South Viet Nam or retreat in the face of subversion and external assault. Andrew Jackson would never have been surprised with the choice we made."

Moving from a defense of his war policies to an attack on his critics, Johnson pointed out that civilian casualties caused by U.S. operations "are inadvertent, in stark contrast to the calculated Viet Cong policy of systematic terror." Even so, he went on, "the deeds of the Viet Cong go largely unnoted in the public debate. And it is this moral double bookkeeping which makes us get sometimes very weary of our critics." As if to punctuate the President's point, a Viet Cong plastic bomb erupted at a Saigon bus stop the same day, killing an old woman and wounding a young girl.

Calm Determination. The President laid emphasis on the political stability --frail as it is--that U.S. diplomacy has encouraged in South Viet Nam over the past two years. "As I am talking to you here," he said, "a freely elected constituent assembly in Saigon is wrestling with the last details of a new constitution." Appropriately, Ky planned to take a copy of the new constitution with him to Guam for the President's perusal (see THE WORLD).

Johnson reiterated his willingness to negotiate with Hanoi--but he made it clear that he held out little hope for success. He told of one U.S. attempt to get peace talks started. It occurred during the first U.S. bombing pause in May 1965, when the Administration sent a letter proposing talks to Ho Chi

Minh's embassy in Moscow. It was "simply returned," said the President, "in a plain envelope."

Johnson's calm and determined mood reflected the tough new course in the war that he charted after last month's brief bombing pause ended in failure and frustration. He is convinced that Ho Chi Minh means business when he says that North Viet Nam is ready to continue guerrilla warfare in the South "for 20, even 30 years if need be." Were the U.S. to grow irresolute in the face of such perseverance, Johnson said, "the forces of chaos would scent vic tory, and decades of strife and aggression would stretch endlessly before us." For the U.S., declared the President, the choice is clear. "We shall stay the course."

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