AN ASIAN BATTLEFIELD
Meanwhile the nearest the French have been able to come to seizing the initiative in Laos was to drop a parachute battalion as reinforcements for the garrison of Muong Sai, a strong but isolated post some 60 miles north of Luang Prabang. This seems to have been a purely defensive move, well illustrating the recurrent dilemma which confronts the French High Command. They cannot be strong everywhere, and are constantly having to give up outpost without firing a shot; yet when they make themselves strong and decide to ruold a place, the enemy avoids it and they reap only a negative reward. They are fighting the war on,lines which oblige the t_ cloPs to do far more digging than shooting; and though armies may sometimes have to fight wars in this way, they reinforced win them. The French air force, rather apprehensively stalls by twelve American bombers with American ground 'wtahlls behind them, is working as hard as many of the soldiers. lessen their power to wage war. They are in this respect even less vulnerable than the North Koreans, who stood up well to three years intensive hammering from the air; and the most the air force has been able to do so far is to lessen the risk that a sort of fluid general stalemate might be turned, locally, into checkmate. The military outlook appears almost equally sterile fqr. the French and for their opponents; the political outlook is discussed at length in an article on a later page.
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