north Vietnam, where there has been severe and heavy bombing by the Americans, showed clearly in what manner and for what purposes the Americans are bombing. The hospital was destroyed by several explosive bombs of which we could see their craters. We could see in the damaged sections of the roof of the hospital, the large red cross which had been painted on the roof as well as marks left by machine-gun fire from the airplanes. After destroying the buildings the American planes strafed the patients, who were trying to flee.
Another example of this same aspect of the war is the bombing of the dikes. How systematically they are bombing these dikes and the purpose of this bombing is very clear.
Concentrated bombing of the dikes took place in July, August and September. From February to June 5, 1966, there were 55 such air raids. In July the figure was 69. In August and September 136 occurred.
As you know, Vietnam is a part of the monsoon area. The rainy season is in July, August and September and these are the months when the water level is the highest.
For example, Sontay province has a flow in the rivers of 3,400 cubic meters per second on a yearly average and 13,400 cubic meters per second during the rainy season. One who remembers the great disaster when the dike of the Red River broke in August 1945, which brought death and famine to millions of people in eight provinces, can understand just how serious is the bombing of the dikes during the rainy season. The purpose of such bombing can only be to cause flooding which destroys towns and villages, killing many people and causing terrible famine.
This aspect, I think, was described clearly in the words of the chairman of the executive committee of Thanh Hoa province. As he is from a national minority which lives in the highlands, we asked him what the effects of the bombings have been on the lives of wild beasts and animals. He said, "Elephants are going and tigers are coming."
The foliage which the elephants eat has been gravely destroyed, and the elephants, which are lovely and peaceful animals, have been frightened by the bombing and are fleeing Vietnam, while the tigers are coming in to eat corpses and helpless animals. American bombing, therefore, is succeeding in driving out all the peaceful animals and in bringing in the more vicious wild beasts.
However, human beings are much more creative. They can change wild jungle areas into fertile fields. The struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialist aggression is resulting in yet another aspect of the Vietnamese war.
We could see the Vietnamese working day and night, harvesting sweet potatoes, planting rice paddies, repairing the roads and dikes which American planes had bombed.
I could realize that the productivity of paddy fields has increased tremendously since Independence. Before the world war, the productivity of paddy fields in north Vietnam was less than two tons per hectare each year, but now they are producing more than four tons of rice per hectare each year. Their goal is five tons per hectare, and in some areas they are already harvesting more than five tons per hectare.
Keeping in mind the enlargement of the cultivated area, one can easily understand how wonderful is the development of the agriculture which is so important to Vietnam.
And changing rice growing from extensive to intensive techniques as a result of the evacuation of the population from the big cities to the countryside is promising an even greater increase in agricultural productivity.
Much more important than that, however, is this: Peasants are organized more tightly in the cooperative system because they cannot repair the roads, dikes and even their houses destroyed by the bombings without cooperative methods. Medical. networks are established on the basis of a cooperative system; every hamlet has an: assistant doctor, every village has some medical facility which is connected.to the medical center of the district, and medical doctors are living together with workers and peasants. Teachers are also living together with peasants because school can be held only in the early morning and in the evening. Under the pressure of the war, the Vietnamese people are establishing socialism in the classical form of communes, or the soviet system.
But what I would like to draw your attention to is an examination of how the American imperialists are causing wild beasts to come into Vietnam, and how the Vietnamese people are staging their struggle from the international point of view. >... ;
-:-The American imperialists are mobilizing troops not only from the U.5., but also from South Korea, Thailand, Australia, etc.; the Japanese capitalists are supplying chemical products, etc.; and the British imperialists are keeping some troops to serve at the military bases in Thailand. On the other hand, what about the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people? It is true that this is the first time since the Spanish Civil War that the workers and youth in the capitalist countries are staging can-
WELSH NATIONALIST