Word: indo-china
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...then the Fourth Republic faced no such testing time as it now faces. The anguished question of Algeria-the possibility that it may become another Indo-China, closer to home-is the one unknowable in all comfortable calculations about the future of parliamentary democracy in France. In such a crisis, Pierre Poujade, who now waves an uncertain banner before his followers, may lose them to a leader of hardier intent, or discover his own opportunity for power...
...Algeria 300 were killed in one of the bloodiest weeks in the 16 months of crisis. In theory, if it comes to war in Algeria, the odds should favor the government, which has 200,000 French soldiers pitted against perhaps 15,000 armed rebels. But as in Indo-China, the rebels can count on the encouragement, tacit support or at least the silence of 8,000,000 Algerians...
...swallow up the heritage of France." Turning on the Americans present, he reproached the U.S. for backing the government of Ngo Dinh Diem against the French: "Each time you Americans do something wrong, you do it with the best of intentions. If there had been full cooperation on Indo-China, we would not have arrived where we are today...
...writes of individuals who stand for worlds and nations-the U.S., Britain, Asia-struggling amid blood-and-opium enormities between relative degrees of misrule. Yet in a sense, the heart of the matter is still the same. Whatever uncozy corner Greene chooses for his settings, whether West Africa, Mexico, Indo-China or England, the climate is always adultery and guilt. And the source of drama is always the fact that the damned cannot surely be told from the saved, that both are often driven side by side to the brink of hell...
Bertrand Russell, Britain's most astute rationalist, once wrote an essay called "The Harm that Good Men Do." In this book, that is also the theme of Roman Catholic Convert Greene. He saw the French debacle in Indo-China as correspondent for LIFE and the London Sunday Times. Out of Saigon, he wrote of the doomed Vietnamese, the touchy, defeatist French and their absurd allies like the Caodist "Pope," who had female cardinals and canonized Victor Hugo. Most significantly, he wrote in his diary: "Is there any solution here the West can offer? But the bar tonight was loud...