Word: diem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Diem considered resignation, decided to fight, and likewise persuaded his Foreign Minister to stay on. Diem wanted time and a chance to wipe out the memory of the graft, inefficiency and indifference of the Bao Dai regime,* wanted time to spark an anti-Communist revolution based upon full independence and land reform...
...Diem could not gain his time easily. "Monsieur l'Ambassadeur," he told U.S. Ambassador Donald Heath, "our problems are immeasurable. We must consolidate our administration; we must detect Communist spies left behind by the Viet Minh. We have maybe one million people to evacuate from the North, 50,000 from Central Viet Nam, and 40,000 loyal tribesmen from the frontiers. We have to find all these people land, medical care, food, work and a place to live. We need help...
Despite the fine promises of Pierre Mendès-France, Diem was also half strangled by the albatross of French colonialism: if he asked the French army to withdraw, it would take about 80% of Viet Nam's military equipment in its train; if he asked the French army to stay, the Communists might easily convince the Vietnamese that Diem's new independence was a myth...
...greatest of Diem's immeasurable problems lay in the Asian truth that had already brought one-half of Indo-China crashing down into Communism: the Vietnamese who cared were less impressed by the brave intentions of powerless men, than by the ruthless success of the Communists in a faraway place called Geneva...
...churches, some of them converted Buddhist temples (see cut). It is divided into 18 vicariates with about 1,400 native priests and 18 bishops (eight of them Indo-Chinese). Among them are Msgr. Pham Ngoc Chi, Bishop of Bui Chu and Msgr. Thaddeus Le Huu Tu, Bishop of Phat Diem. Msgr. Tu is the only Roman Catholic bishop in the world (besides the Pope, with his 100-odd Swiss Guards) to maintain his own private army-two regular battalions of 1,700 men, plus a militia of 5,800. (The two bishops and thousands of their flock were reported recently...