Correspondents' Correspondence
SCHWARTZ, ROBERT LEKACHMAN \ ARNOLD ABRAMS \ PAUL WALDO
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Hubris and the Dollar NEW YORK—So, now the Germans...
...Later in the month Chaban expounded on his phrase in a speech before the National Assembly, handily defeating an opposition motion of censure...
...We know the terrain and how to position ourselves...
...Not enough that de Gaulle in his days of glory repatriated French gold, apparently fearing for its safety in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...
...It was one of those remarks a statesman is likely to regret...
...A world once hungry for American currency, a Western Europe rescued by the Marshall Plan, above all our resurgent former enemies can hardly be blamed if they must repress a grin or two at our plight...
...For more than a generation American presidents, burning with a sense of special mission, have scattered troops to hundreds of bases in dozens of countries...
...We didn't need any North Vietnamese help...
...Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas assessed the state of the nation and announced, "We have a certain moroseness to conquer...
...A bombing halt is the enemy price for prisoner negotiations in Laos...
...Some segments of the press responded sympathetically: "Many Frenchmen will understand that [the Premier] paid them a most handsome homage...
...Then he will get the prisoners back...
...Yesterday's whisper has swelled to today's roar: The American dollar is an overvalued currency...
...Jean Reilly, all from Fort Walton Beach, Florida...
...The war won't end if we return these prisoners," Pethrasi explained...
...He optimistically concluded that at the moment "France is in the process of winning...
...How could it have happened...
...Not enough that the Japanese outsell us in our own domestic markets over a range of items including electronics, appliances, steel, textiles, and autos...
...But since devaluation is beneath our national dignity—what a confession of common frailty it would be if the Germans did the job for us by allowing the dollar price of the mark to float upward...
...lavished billions of dollars upon seedy tyrants and corrupt politicians in Taiwan, Spain, Greece, South Korea, South Vietnam, and Latin America...
...Then came the news of Peking Ping-Pong...
...Such statements arc old hat to Pethrasi, who has been making them since 1963, when the Communists left the coalition government created in Vientiane by the 1962 Geneva Accords...
...and bought up a good deal of Europe with American dollars...
...That is why they have responded to American appeals...
...he stuffs them into a shoebox crammed with such correspondence...
...Nancy Bannon...
...Does it only take a rise in prices," the Premier asked, "a difficult negotiation or the unruliness of a few agitated fists for the French to be disoriented, for their courage to vacillate...
...This is where the long-distance runner draws his breath...
...Other American pilots will come, we will capture some of them, and things will be back to where they were...
...After traveling halfway around the world seeking hard information about their missing husbands, they had ended up grasping at the straw of a Communist official's casual remark about prayer...
...Western Europeans have grown increasingly annoyed at the propensity of giant American corporations to buy up industry on the Continent with borrowed European dollars...
...They thought that significant...
...bombing of "liberated" Laotian territory continues, he added, "we are too busy, and it is too difficult, to concern ourselves with this matter...
...American exports will be cheaper in Germany, German imports will be more expensive in the United States, and American tourists will find European travel a bit more costly...
...This happens often now in Vientiane...
...Others grumbled that when prices are rising, it provides little consolation to have the world's second highest growth rate in Gross National Product (after Japan...
...It is quite a spectacle, this giant (dare one call him pitiful or helpless...
...Now the women had returned to see if the Communist official had kept his word...
...If markets were free, dollars would be cheaper and Swiss francs, Dutch guilders and German marks more expensive (supply and demand, you know...
...American planes are bombing our territory day and night...
...The 50-year-old Pathet Lao official is a veteran debater whose consistently firm tone and tough stance make it hard to determine where sincerity stops and posturing starts...
...Pethrasi shows no signs of being intimidated by President Nixon's oft-repeated threat about maintaining a military presence in Indochina as long as American prisoners are kept captive...
...The consequences were utterly predictable: Foreigners now own roughly twice as many dollars as we possess gold to redeem them...
...They sat recently in the same room at his guarded villa, received the same sympathy, and left with the same fearful uncertainty...
...They still did not know if they were wives or widows...
...While the immediate crisis will soon pass, the underlying cause of our problem—described by some as "the arrogance of power"—remains with us...
...I do not propose to supply the nth technical explanation of world monetary institutions...
...The traditional remedy of course is devaluation, which under the peculiarities of American law must take the form of raising the price of gold...
...Spring had blossomed, with its warm sun, fragile foliage and vacationing Swedish girls...
...Et tu, Willy...
...While they continue, it is impossible to gather the information you are seeking...
...He labeled Nixon's stand "ridiculous...
...Pethrasi receives a steady flow of letters inquiring about missing Americans...
...Indeed, what is genuinely interesting about the current crisis is not the intricacies of foreign exchange, the machinations of international bankers, or the renowned cupidity of currency speculators, but the light it casts upon the role of the United States as universal meddler...
...Not enough that the innkeepers of Europe view with suspicion American Express travelers checks...
...What Mr...
...Many Frenchmen seemed persuaded that if this were possible, Chaban-Delmas might turn out to be right.—PAUL WALDO SCHWARTZ...
...exported millions of tourists each summer...
...entangled in the sort of currency crisis lesser nations have long been forced to endure...
...Linda Bog-iagcs and Mrs...
...We have been fighting in Laos for 25 years," he said...
...When the day is cold and wet, the phone bill is ridiculous and the Algerians have turned off the oil, one resents being told to let a smile serve as his umbrella...
...The three women, who have a total of 10 children, had hoped for better, yet expected as much...
...noting that his people and the North Vietnamese will fight "as long as necessary...
...Since Hanoi is no longer being bombed," Pethrasi said in an interview, "the North Vietnamese can turn their attention to the prisoner issue...
...and there is widespread doubt about the soundness of both American policy and money...
...To restore the health of our balance of payments, our global involvements simply must be more realistically proportioned to our resources...
...Colonel Soth Pethrasi, the Pathet Lao representative, took their husbands' names and promised he would try to ascertain the pilots' fate...
...When the bombing stops," he repeated, "it will be possible to pass them on to the proper authorities...
...But while U.S...
...Nixon must do is stop the bombing...
...By now, though, the government had the weather on its side...
...Increasing numbers of American wives are journeying here hoping to elicit some word about their husbands, who were downed on air missions over Laos...
...Public reaction was predictably wide ranging...
...But they and their interpreter (a priest) were struck by a suggestion Pethrasi made about praying for both sides to find a solution...
...Hubris and the Dollar NEW YORK—So, now the Germans sneer at our dollars...
...After a spell of turmoil, enabling the astute to enrich themselves and the naive to lose their shirts, the Germans will once again state an official mark-dollar ratio...
...1 am sorry," Pethrasi told Mrs...
...With a straight face and seeming conviction, he also spoke of how Pathet Lao forces, not North Vietnamese, repelled the recent South Vietnamese invasion of Laos...
...Secluded in a heavily-guarded compound with a 110-man Pathet Lao company, Pethrasi serves, nevertheless, as a useful liaison with the neutralist regime of Prince Souvanna Phouma...
...VIENTIANE—When they came here for the first time last fall, the wives of the three missing American airmen, were received cordially and with sympathy by the enemy...
...If it brings home that lesson, the dollar crisis may yet prove an exemplary episode in the reeducation of Americans about the limits of power.—ROBERT LEKACHMAN Wives or Widows...
...He also remains a convenient contact for the wives of missing American airmen, who continue coming to him with hope in their hearts—and always leave empty-handed.—ARNOLD ABRAMS Paris Springtime PARIS—Early in April, before spring had emerged...
...They invariably leave sadder but no wiser, for Pathet Lao leaders refuse to release any information about the more than 250 Americans missing in action over Laos since 1964...
Vol. 54 • May 1971 • No. 11
