Word: tu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cheers for Father. Le Huu Tu has so far managed to protect his bishopric from the Communists. Phat Diem is too small to warrant full-scale Viet Minh attack and too determined in its self-defense to be taken without such an attack. Le Huu Tu chuckles at his own cunning. Phat Diem people are happy about it too, because the net effect so far has been favorable : while other towns in the delta region have been systematically destroyed by earth-scorching Viet Minhs, Phat Diem and Bui Chu are alone unscathed...
Among simple people of this region, Bishop Le Huu Tu is clearly a hero. When the sampan carrying him from steamer to shore was in danger of sticking on a mud-bank, crowds of men & women jumped into the river to their waists, virtually carried the whole sampan, including the bishop and his attendant priests, plus the American visitors. Along the road from the river to Phat Diem town, a group of young cyclists waited to greet the returning bishop. He had been away only four days, but the people seemed genuinely moved and excited in welcoming him back. Some...
...cheers of "Hoan Ho" (long life) swelled up along the road, Bishop Tu chuckled. "It's always like this," he said. "You see I am the government. I am their father. When I am away they feel lost. They don't quite know what to do. When I return, they feel happy again...
Taxation and justice are a mixture of old Indo-Chinese custom and Bishop Tu's improvisations. He names magistrates as well as every other important official in Phat Diem. "We are very human here," he explains. "If we catch a thief we just keep him in jail for a few months, and then if he is converted to the church or shows himself repentant we let him go. We have no capital punishment. We have no corporal punishment either. Of course, when we catch a spy we beat him. But that is not to punish him. It is only...
Though Bishop Tu is also commander in chief of the private army of Phat Diem and Bui Chu, operational control is in the hands of dapper Ngo Cao Tung, who looks ten years younger than his 40 years, claims to have served as a major on Chiang Kai-shek's staff and as military counselor to the Nationalist commander in chief in South China. He arrived in Phat Diem last May. Under him are two regular battalions of 1,700 men, known as Groupe Mobile Autonome. His uniform, a strange mixture of his own and the bishop...