house and building was destroyed. Only 40 were killed and wounded because many people had left town and because an excellent manhole-shelter system was available.

The community had no industry, but lay astride a highway and a railroad line running from Hanoi, which had a couple of sidings in town. Presumably, planes were attacking the railroad. But in the process they destroyed another residential community.

Since bombing is far from an accurate process, at best, and since people in Vietnam work, live, study and amuse themselves in the same streets as those on which military targets are situated or on adjacent blocks, the outlook is for more destruction to life, residential quarters, schools and every other variety of nonmilitary facility. The same rule applies whether the target is so-called Hanoi vicinity, a crossroads, a village or a hamlet.

DAMAGE TO CHURCHES CHARGED

TOKYO, Dec. 26 (Reuters).—United States aircraft have "deliberately" bombed and strafed more than 200 parish districts and nearly 100 churches in North Vietnam in the last two years, the North Vietnamese press agency reported today. It said United States bombs had killed two ministers in Hatinh Province and hundreds of Catholics in North Vietnam.

FOE'S TRANSPORT LITTLE AFFECTED BY RAIDS ON KEY SUPPLY ROUTE HANOI, NORTH VIETNAM, Dec. 26.-Viewed from air reconnaissance or on photographic maps, National Route 1, the old French-built highway that runs south from Hanoi to Saigon, must look like a bombardier's dream target.

The highway and a railroad run parallel only a few feet apart, mile after mile, straight across the table-flat delta of the Red River. The highway is marked by lovely, regularly planted shade trees, and camouflage, disguise or concealment is utterly impossible.

This is no jungle country. This is no tricky mountain terrain. This is rich, flat ricelands, crisscrossed by irrigation flows and paddy fields. The railroad and highway could not be a plainer target if they were picked out by continuously flashing beacon lights.

It is easy to imagine Air Force strategists inspecting a map and concurring that Hanoi's southward supply services can easily be interdicted by a few easily placed bombs.

But appearances can be remarkably deceiving, as ground level inspection of Route 1 quickly discloses. Viewed on the ground, it is obvious that the "dream target" is in reality a snare and a delusion.

The railroad and highway have been bombed again and again and again, but it is doubtful that rail traffic has ever been held up more than a few hours, and the highway seems capable of operating almost continuously regardless of how many bombs are dropped.

The secret of the railroad is simple and it lies beyond the ability of air power to interdict.

If the track uses small, light equipment when a bomb smashes the rails or overturns a car, removal and repair problems are simple. Gangs of workmen can easily clear the line. Moreover, repair materials probably sufficient to construct two or three additional railroads are kept on hand, seldom more than a few hundred yards from any possible break.

The same thing, only more so, is true of the highway, which can be repaired and restored even more rapidly by the use of readily available manpower and repair materials similarly stockpiled in advance, apparently along the whole expanse of Route 1.

The results of American bombing of the route are readily visible-particularly in small villages and hamlets along the route. They have suffered severely, often being almost obliterated. But the effect on transportation has been minimal.

Another factor in this situation is not visible to reconnaissance planes. This is that almost everything movable in North Vietnam can be moved equally well either by train or by truck, and the truck routes are virtually noninterdictable.

There is a third major alternative-human backs, bicycles and carts. As the Korean War demonstrated, where trucks and human carrying power are available as alternatives, it is impossible to interdict supply movements.

Even in the region of the Seventeenth Parallel, which divides North and South Vietnam, where United States bombs have leveled the whole countryside, movement continues by night with little impediment.

A basic flaw in the bombing policy from a military viewpoint would seem to be its failure to take into account the nature of the country and the people to which it being applied. If the Pennsylvania Railroad and the major highway to Washington were bombed out, the disruption of United States supplies and services would be enormous and the military consequences in wartime would be grave.

Here it is hardly felt. Traffic and supplies simply flow around and past the point of interruption and the damage to rail or highway is quickly made good. The principal sufferers are the people who have the misfortune to live along the railroad and highway and on whose homes far more bombs rain down.

Another example of the ground-level reality of United States bombing compared with the communiqué version relates to air attacks carried out Dec. 13 and 14 in Hanoi. One of the United States targets was specified by the communiqué as a “truck park at Vandien."

Vandien is in the southern part of Hanoi along Route 1. Administratively it is separate from Hanoi, but actually it is a continuous part of the urban center. United States maps show the truck park as situated just east of Route 1.

In fact, there is a large, open area with light buildings and compounds that may or may not have been a truck park, lying possibly a quarter-mile east of Route 1, which has been badly smashed by bombs.

But the bomb damage does not halt at the compound line. It extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway, and among the structures destroyed in the attack was the Vietnam-Polish Friendship senior high school, lying on the west side of the highway, probably three-quarters of a mile from the presumed United States target.

It is the conviction of the North Vietnamese that the United States is deliberately directing bombs against the civilian population although ostensibly contending that “military objectives" are the target.

HANOI DURING AN AIR ALERT: WAITRESSES TAKE UP RIFLES

(By Harrison E. Salisbury)

HANOI, NORTH VIETNAM, Dec. 27.-Just before 2:25 P.M. yesterday, there was a muffled distant roar, 10-foot windows in this old French-built hotel rattled and heavy gray curtains gently swayed inward.

At the count of three there was another tremendous distant rumble and again the windows shook and the curtains swayed. Moments later came a third. The wail of a siren then sounded the alert, and the hotel's defense staff scrambled for tin hats and rifles.

Guests emerged from their rooms and hurried down the great marble stairease, through the long lounge with its slightly bedraggled tropical Christmas tree, its bar with a remarkable collection of liquors of all lands-including Stolichnaya vodka from Moscow, rice wine from Peking and Gordon's gin from London--and out across the interior courtyard, where shelters are situated.

By the time the guests had begun to descend into the sturdy concrete bunker, little waitresses in their black sateen trousers and white blouses stood ready with rifles to fire at any low-flying planes.

Inside the shelter, by curious coincidence, Americans found themselves in the majority. Four members of an American peace delegation, Mrs. Grace Newman of New York; Mrs. Joe Griffith, whose husband is a Cornell instructor; Mrs. Diane Bevel, associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Miss Barbara Deming of Liberation magazine, and this correspondent.

But it was a widely international group, including the deputy director of Tass, Aleksandra A. Vishnevsky, who chanced to be in town; a correspondent of the Italian Communist newspaper L'Unita, members of a Soviet trade-union delegation, two Cubans and an East German. There were no Chinese.

The foreigners chatted a little excitedly about what was to most a new thrill. But to the Vietnamese air alerts and air raids are no novelty and no thrill; they are deadly serious business.

The pretty waitresses with rifles are part of this serious business. It is unlikely that United States planes are brought down by rifle fire, but the population is trained to man posts and throw up a hurricane of small-arms fire in support of conventional antiaircraft and missile defenses.

The small-arms fire has two purposes.

First, it is designed to make United States low-level attacks increasingly hazardous. According to Hanoi residents, low-level bombing is frequently employed by United States planes in an effort to circumvent the radar and missile system.

Second, the firing of rifles gives the populace a feeling of participation and of fighting back-important in maintaining morale and counteracting the feelings of helplessness and defenselessness that civilian populations often experience. The alert yesterday was only six or seven minutes long. It was caused, the authorities said, by the appearance of a pilotless American reconnaissance craft near the city. The three tremendous blasts presumably were SAM surface-toair missiles. The same kind of robot plane, it was disclosed, caused Hanoi's Christmas alert at almost the same hour.

Today the foreign press corps was taken to see where the drone that appeared on Christmas was shot down. They went in a convoy of half a dozen cars, most of them covered with camouflage fishnet, which quickly slides over the roof and hood and into which leaves and greenery can be slipped.

Hardly a car or truck moves outside Hanoi without camouflage, and most cars in the city are permanently bedecked. So, for that matter, are many people, who wear sprays of leaves and branches in their helmets or strawhats. This too is part of an organized, well-designed effort to reduce bombing hazards.

The caravan made its way northeast across the Paul Doumer Bridge. It appeared, from this trip across the bridge, that bombing on Dec. 14 was directed at its approaches and fell short in each case, striking residential quarters. The bombs dropped in the Hoan Kiem and Gialem and Yenvien quarters.

Describing the Yenvien attack, and American communiqué said the target was rail yards. Some bombs certainly fell along the railroad. But there are large numbers of apartment houses close by, and one after another was blasted out. Because of the highly organized repair facilities, rail traffic is moving normally, but residents who were not casualties have been compelled to leave their destroyed homes.

The drone downed on Christmas Day fell 12 or 13 miles northeast of the city in the Tienson district of Habac Province. It proved to be a Ryan model with a wingspread of about 18 feet that the Americans call the Firebee.

The wing and fuselage, somewhat crumpled, lay in a pile. Eight or nine girls dug in muck about seven feet deep for the engine, which was gradually being recovered.

The robot plane, which was shot down adjacent to the main rail line linking Hanoi to China, presumably had been dispatched to transmit photographic intelligence on rail conditions and traffic movements. According to the girls digging out the engine, the drone was at an altitude of only about a mile when downed.

The seriousness with which the North Vietnamese take the air threat has undoubtedly kept civilian casualties lower than might be expected in comparison with the vast damage said to have been done to ordinary living quarters and the destruction reported in small towns and villages.

The key to this is the manhole concrete shelter, which seems to be a North Vietnamese invention. There are hundreds of thousands of them along every highway and every city street, and they are still being put in place by the thousands.

At 5 o'clock the other morning I saw one lonely man patiently digging one in. They are made with concrete exteriors like drain pipes, largely by hand. With their two-inch-thick concrete covers they are impervious to anything but a direct or very close hit.

The other factor reducing casualties and loss is dispersion. Everything dispersible has been dispersed. The countryside is strewn with dispersed goods and supplies. The same is true of the people.

Two-thirds of the machinery and workers at the big textile plant near Gialem have been sent to the countryside. The wisdom of the precaution was demonstrated, it was said, when the plant suffered damage from United States rocket fire Dec. 13 and 14.

NEW CAPITAL CITY PLANNED BY HANOI-NORTH VIETNAMESE ASSUME WAR WILL RUIN PRESENT ONE

(By Harrison E. Salisbury)

HANOI, NORTH VIETNAM, Dec. 28.-Hanoi officials say they have blueprints for a complete new capital to be built after the war on a site already selected not far from the present capital. The new capital is being planned on the assumption that sooner or later Hanoi will be destroyed in the war.

President Ho Chi Minh has warned the country that it must be prepared to face the destruction of both Hanoi and its port, Haiphong, as well as all other cities or towns of any size.

The new capital will probably be built in any case, since the present city is small, shabby and incredibly run down after more than 20 years of almost continuous warfare involving the French, the Japanese and now the Americans. Unlike most capitals of Communist countries, Hanoi has no massive new government buildings, no grandiose sports palaces, no glittering opera house. The old French-built opera house is still the city's biggest assembly hall, and it is closed now because the authorities forbid large gatherings for fear of airraid casualties.

Such funds as have been available to North Vietnam in the war-torn years since it came into existence in 1954 have gone largely into factories and the construction of housing.

A visitor finds that shops are generally open for only a few hours early in the morning-Hanoi still rises at 5 or 6 A.M.—and again early in the evening. Bicycles are almost the universal form of transport, and in late afternoon and early evening the streets are jammed eight abreast with whirring cycles, most of them carrying two persons or one person and a burden of some kind.

A consensus of officials suggests that about one-third of the city's population has been evacuated or dispersed to the nearby countryside. Many institutions have been evacuated. Most of the Polytechnic University's departments have been sent to the provinces. The Museum of Fine Arts was sent to out-of-town caves for the safekeeping of most of its more valuable collections, including 14th-century Buddhas.

CHILDREN ARE EVACUATED

About half the walls of the museum, which is a relic of French days, is occupied by full-size photographic reproductions of the objects, which were sent away last year and early this year.

An intense effort has been made to send schoolchildren away from Hanoi, although not necessarily far. A visit to a high school at Xuandinh, about seven miles outside the capital, found 300 pupils from Hanoi in a body of 710. The evacuated youngsters include many whose parents are officials and workers in Hanoi.

The school provided an example of the intensive precautions against air attack. The school is dispersed throughout the village, with not more than one class in any building and no classes less than 150 yards apart.

The classes are installed in simple structures, including huts with earth floors. Foxhole shelters are dug right under the children's desks. The schoolrooms are surrounded by great walls of earth and clay and the network of paths from one class to another is edged with slit trenches, concrete manhole shelters and earthpacked lean-to shelters.

The children-and many adults-wear heavy, woven straw hats about an inch thick, that are said to be highly effective against fragmentation bombs. They also carry first-aid kits along with their books.

Xuandinh has not suffered from air attacks, but the authorities said several youngsters were injured Aug. 13 when they were buried in a shelter in a nearby village.

BASIS OF CASUALTY ESTIMATES

It should be noted, incidentally, that all casualty estimates and statistics in these dispatches are those of North Vietnamese officials.

However, descriptions of bomb damage are based wholly on visual inspection. As far as this correspondent is aware, there has been no censorship of his dispatches although they are read by North Vietnamese officials before being transmitted. A number of photographs have been taken by this correspondent,

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and these must be cleared by officials before they can be mailed or otherwise transmitted.

Dispersion of population and enterprises has brought hardship and difficulty to individuals and to the economy. To ease supply problems, the distribution of foodstuffs and consumers goods has been decentralized and is controlled by provincial authorities. This is also designed to minimize the effect of any strikes on major depots in Hanoi and Haiphong.

The authorities contend that there has been little fluctuation in food prices although shortages have occurred. In the villages and in many places in Hanoi and vicinity, peasant women appear with their straw baskets of cabbages, cauliflower, lettuce, greens, leeks and other vegetables and squat beside them along the roadsides.

At this season there appears to be no shortages of vegetables. Restaurants, at least, have ample supplies of rice and all the ingredients of the spicy Vietnamese cookery-peppers, pork, chicken, turkey, beans, onions, bean sprouts, carrots, soy sauce, pepper sauce, delicate China tea, and thick French-style café noir made from a coffee that North Vietnam grows and exports.

HANOI PROPAGANDA STRESSES TRADITION: WAR AGAINST ODDS

(By Harrison E. Salisbury)

HANOI, NORTH VIETNAM, Dec. 20.-The Vietnamese fighting tradition, a tradition of struggle against long odds, of unyielding battle against powerful foreign enemies, is the focal point of North Vietnam's central internal propaganda. It is carried into every aspect of daily life.

At a concert presented in a chilly converted movie house last night, 12 of 14 song-and-dance numbers celebrated the heroic feats of individual Vietnamese against Americans. In each case the Vietnamese won against overwhelming odds. One ballet depicted a group of ferry men who pulled their craft across a stream despite United States air attacks. Several were killed but the ferryboat crossed the river and the plane was shot down.

There were songs celebrating Hanoi's antiaircraft defenders, South Vietnamese jungle troops and the defenders of Conco Island, which lies off the coast not far north of the demarcation line between North and South Vietnam and has been the scene of intense antiaircraft barrages.

BINDING UP THE WOUNDS

Another dance number dealt with a Red Cross worker whose husband had fallen in the war and who takes from her brow the traditional white mourning band and uses it to bind up the wounds of an antiaircraft gunner. Still another ballet shows Vietcong troops storming a United States strongpoint and unfurling a banner after capturing it with heavy casualties.

One note of satire was introduced: A Vietcong youngster captured a horrible appearing American captain and chased off ferocious G.I.'s with an imitation hand grenade made of a jungle nut.

By the end of the evening the United States Air Force had suffered heavy losses, but it was notable that Vietnamese casualties were not light. The audience was being conditioned to accept heavy sacrifices in the war.

The audience which included large numbers of youngsters wearing a variety of uniforms and semi-uniforms reacted with vociferrous applause. However, it did not seem to take too seriously a group of maidens in native costumes who sang, to the plucking of long-necked, three-stringed mandolins, that they were going to shoot down a United States plane and promptly announced that they had downed not one but two.

The theme of the Vietnamese David conquering the United States Goliath is struck constantly. The State Revolutionary Museum here is largely devoted to exposition of the Vietnamese military tradition.

TWO LEGENDARY QUEENS

The story begins in A.D. 40, when Vietnam's legendary Trung sisters raised an army against a Chinese garrison, slaughtered it and reigned as joint queens until a Chinese expeditionary force defeated them. The queens, who then took