Vietnam Sir: Richard West (1 May) finds it `more than
ever difficult to understand why the Americans sent an army of 600,000 men to defend an unpopular right-wing regime against the Communists'. The `domino theory' may be mistaken—it seems a little early for self-congratulation on that score— but it was an idea for which Americans Were prepared to die. That such eccentricity should be evidently beyond the comprehension of Mr West, sheds more light on Mr VVest than his article does on the present state of affairs in South Vietnam. As to the latter, it seems unfair of Mr West to accuse Bernard Levin of writing a. bout Cambodia on the basis of insufficient information when the sources of his own article appear to be: (1) `An English nurse who stayed in Saigon six months after tnbe, end of the war' ; (2) `From all reports so tar (source unspecified); (3) Newsweek.
Which brings us to another odd and interesting point, that when the foreign press corps was booted out at a moment's notice by the victorious Vietcong—rather a poor return, one feels, for some of them who had done such yeoman service for the cause—there was not one peep of protest.
Let us just suppose that the Americans had suddenly given all journalists twentyfour hours' notice to clear out of South Vietnam, and the seat of war. Would we then have had this deafening silence from the press ?
1.0. M. Martin Hayfield, Pangbourne, Berkshire
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