Lee Says Vietnam Victory Is Worth U.S. Sacrifices

The American sacrifice in Vietnam will be worthwhile only if the United States holds out for "at least a partial victory," Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minster of Singapore, told a crowd of about 125 last night.

The speech given in Lowell Lecture Hall, will be Lee's only major public address during his present two-month sabbatical at Harvard. He analyzed the problems South Asia has encountered as it has emerged from colonialism.

Peace among South Asian ethnic groups was shattered when the colonial rulers handed power to corrupt and elitist native bureaucracies, Lee said. "Free enterprise was stifled because of ideology, or because the entrepreneurs belonged to minority groups," he added, and many of the area's best minds migrated to the West.

The generally glum outlook is brightened, Lee said, by the possibility that the United States effort in South Vietnam will convince all the powers in Southeast Asia that wars of national liberation can enlarge into dangerously wide conflicts.

"Subversion and economic and political pressures result in frittering away of energies," he said. He added that the United States is buying time in Vietnam to permit second generation leaders in other Southeast Asian countries to put their nations back on a constructive track.

"I've put in ten years of pretty hard work in Singapore," Lee said. He said he feels safe in leaving his country for two months because there are no personality conflicts in the government, and his colleagues are well qualified to conduct the nation's affairs. "We haven't forgotten how we defeated the Communists, so we're still committed to socialism," he said.