Will it work?

Mr Johnson has got the talks with North Vietnam for which he paid his price on Sunday. They are only talks about talks; no discussion of the issues of substance can be counted on yet. In Honolulu this weekend he may decide with the Americans from Saigon how far he can afford to go to encourage the North Vietnamese into a substantive negotiation. He knows that even then he will face the danger of another Panmunjom: of months-long talks that get nowhere while the soldiers go on being killed. Mr Johnson is trying an experiment almost as difficult as the war itself. It is important that he should be clear, at least in his own mind, what he is aiming to do.