Fairbank Wants Cong's Approach

The South Vietnamese government must Viet Cong police methods in order to regain and maintain control of the Vietnamese villages, John K. Fairbank '29, Director of the East Asian Research Center, told an Americans for Re-appraisal of Far Eastern Policy meeting last night.

He said he especially favored the policy of charging villagers with responsibility for the conduct of their neighbors and imposing mutual penalties if one villager does something wrong.

"It's going to be a dirty business of police organization," Fairbank told the audience of 300, "People will call it Fascist and other things." But he noted the policy's usefulness to the Viet Cong and emphasized the government could not do without it.

Missionary Level

"You cannot have a reconstruction on the purely missionary level--digging wells and producing more fertile chickens," Fairbank said. Policy makers must also learn to manipulate the village power system.

Later Fairbank pointed to infant at attempts by the South Vietnamese government to use Viet Cong police methods said: "They must have self-confident they must have an ideology, and must have cadres. This takes time, the present government has only been in a few months."