*Note: the first page of this entry is missing
Mar. 31st (Con’t)
The fighting in Mindanao and Sulu may delay our economic and social development plans.
But it is probably providential that it happened this early and the Maoists (Nur Misuari, Jassmi Salamat and others) took over the leadership.
It could have been a messy, tedious dirty long series of small attritional skirmishes. But instead they have massed and sought to overrun our detachments and units succeeding in some.
We have been able to mark out fallen [illegible], pin them down and inflict casualties comparatively impossible in the Luzon campaign.
Rather cold-blooded –but this will [illegible] the conflict specially if we can push them to the negotiating table as we have in Sulu.
