FAR EAST: Guns on the Mekong

Guns popped on the Mekong River last week as the little brown men from Thailand and the little brown men from French Indo-China went to war. Thailand had demanded the return of a strip of territory along the Mekong River acquired by the French in 1893. To emphasize her claim she had mobilized her Army, said to number 100,000 men, her Air Force of 300-500 U. S. planes with inexperienced pilots, her Navy of four cruisers, one destroyer, four submarines and 21 torpedo boats. Vichy remained inactive. Elephant and bicycle forays into Cambodia went ignored. Last week Thailand’s Army supported by her Air Corps crossed the frontier.

Artillery on both sides of the Mekong poured shells into the mountains, jungle and straw-thatched villages on the other side. Thai planes raided the Indo-Chinese towns of Pak-sé, Suvarnakhet. French planes bombed the Thai towns of Prachinburi, Aranya. Military communiqués reported fierce engagements in the borderland forests, casualties mounting as high as 600 in a single clash. Both sides claimed victory, but after four days of fighting the French authorities admitted that their troops had retreated 50 miles, and Bangkok announced that the Thai flag had been raised over Cambodia.

A sea battle was fought in the Gulf of Siam. Thai claimed that three French warships and probably the 7,880-ton French cruiser Lamotte-Picquet were sunk. Thai losses: none. The French claimed the sinking of one or two 2,000-ton Thai coast-guard ships and two, perhaps three, torpedo boats. French losses: none.

Disintegration. Admitting that the French Minister in Bangkok Roger Garreau had taken the “diplomatic initiative” of proposing discussion rather than fighting, Vichy intimated at week’s end that France was willing to consider territorial readjustments. Fact is, France had her hands so full of little brown men last week that peace even at a considerable sacrifice was worth hoping for.

Japan, who had demanded temporary permission to quarter 6,000 men at specified bases in Tonkin Protectorate, was building permanent barracks for 25,000 near the capital, Hanoï. Three first-class airdromes, one with a concrete runway to handle the heaviest bombers, were being constructed. It was an open secret that once her northern base was completed, Japan intended to move south, probably in March or April. Japanese officers and merchants were securing houses in Hanoï on three-year leases “in the name of the Emperor” and forbidding Frenchmen to use the sidewalk in front of them. Even as Indo-China fought Thailand, Japanese commercial planes flew from Saïgon to Bangkok carrying agents and supplies. The Japanese fifth column which had worked effectively in the north had moved on to Saïgon in the south.

Within the territory still nominally under her rule, France saw the fabric of control disintegrating. Native uprisings, inspired partly by Japanese but mostly by bitter hatred of the French, were rampant in Tonkin, Cochin-China and Cambodia. Even among native troops bloody clashes occurred between Moroccan legionaries and Indo-Chinese. Native bands with equipment abandoned by fleeing Annamite soldiers had become a formidable menace as guerrillas. Upon growing chaos in Indo-China rested the blessing of Japan.