Correspondents' Correspondence

...As a going-away present for French travelers, the national statistics agency last month published its fatality records for the past decade...

...The complexities of the relationship between Whitehall and Stormont must be baffling to Americans: It is roughly akin to that between Washington and Puerto Rico...

...DENNIS PRAGER French Dog Days PARIS—Cholera notwithstanding, thousands of French tourists descended upon the Spanish beaches this summer...

...In either case, the end would undoubtedly be a new partition along strictly apartheid lines, with considerable forced shifting of population (as happened when the British withdrew from India...

...The August 1968 bullet holes in the walls of the National Museum overlooking Wenceslaus Square are being filled, and the once ubiquitous anti-Soviet scrawlings are covered by immense signs celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Czech Communist party or posters hailing Soviet-Czech friendship...

...I do not wish to sing the praises of the British Army unduly: It was, after all, England that created the problem in the first place by "planting" Ulster with Scotch and English Protestant settlers in the early 17th century, and then by the partition of 1922...

...While these matters are still very much alive in Ireland, in England they are about as relevant to contemporary politics as the Opium Wars of the 1840s...

...One cannot be sure, but things have come to such a pass that it is not improbable that a Labor government would likewise have given Faulkner his head...

...The British Army, when it was first summoned in 1969, was welcomed by almost all as a peacemaker...

...I have one purpose here now—to combat the growing apathy and counteract the Big Lie with truth...

...As for the schools, they are of course at the root of the problem: Catholic schools get grants, and Protestant schools get grants...

...During that time better than 3 million were injured on the roads —exceeding the present population of Paris—and well over 200,000 died...

...I asked him why...

...But as pessimists predicted, a moderate, nondenominational, social-democratic movement was not well suited to Ulster...

...One particularly bright young man I met was in the West when the Soviets invaded, but returned home despite his parents' pleas that he stay abroad...

...Thus, what recalls to an Irish Catholic the Battle of the Boyne (lost to Protestant Dutch William by Catholic James II), or to an Irish Protestant the glorious deliverance from the Papish yoke at the siege of Londonderry, must seem to the average American simply a savage backstreet killing or the senseless destruction of the livelihood of a people that has long had the highest unemployment rate in Britain...

...most intellectuals who did not emigrate in 1968-69 have been consigned to menial jobs in factories...

...Contrary to Anglo-Saxon legal practice as the practice may be, nobody denies that it did put a stop to terrorism in the '50s...

...Democracy offers little hope—the ratio is about two to one against the Catholics...

...But the Czechs know where their bases are located—the largest one is at Mlada Boleslav, not far from here—and believe the number of Soviet troops in the country to be 80,000...

...Welfare arrangements are already much superior to those in the Irish Republic (Stormont normally takes over Whitehall legislation in these matters...

...Indeed, since the first riots two years ago, civil disturbance has got more and more out of hand, bitterness has mounted, and the new Ulster Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, has had to resort to "internment" without trial of suspected terrorists of the Irish Republican Army (IRA...

...and it is precisely this kind of cradle-to-grave segregation that has prolonged sectarian bitterness, Housing, admittedly, is a different matter, since real discrimination against Catholics does exist, as it does in many Protestant-run businesses and the Civil Service...

...The American, and no doubt the Englishman, will at this point bring out his "rational solutions": attract more industry, improve housing, build more schools...

...What were you doing during these periods...

...And that, unquestionably, is the first and most pressing necessity.?JOHN MANDER Three Years Later PRAGUE—Tram rides are quiet here now...

...of the Soviet assistance of August 21, 1968...

...Many have bought Rude Pravo, the Party newspaper, but few read it...

...There was a time when the island was a Cause in England, with Liberal Home Rulers and Conservative Unionists...

...Much of their discussion, as usual, revolved around where and how they would spend the Christmas holidays...

...And British withdrawal, which the ira may not in fact really want, would lead either to a massacre of the Irish Protestants (in all Ireland, Catholics outnumber them about three to one) or to a civil war in Ulster, which the Catholics would inevitably lose...

...Nevertheless, many Czechs greeted news of the recent Soviet space tragedy with joy—not because the three cosmonauts had died, but because the Soviets had failed...

...The individual is asked: What do you think of Dubcek...

...of the 1969 anti-Soviet demonstrations...

...That is the most serious step yet taken by the Ulster government, and it is supported by the Tory government in London...

...My girlfriend was dismissed from the university for telling the Party commission what she really thought about 1968, and I have little chance of being admitted to the university, since neither I nor my parents are Party members or workers...

...I still feel that way, though if things continue as they are, I may soon regret having returned...

...Yet what is to be done now...

...Although Dubcek and his associates are invariably denounced as "Right opportunists," I could not find a single Czech who understood precisely what that term meant...

...The truth is, in dealing with Ireland one is confronted with an attitude to history, religion and politics quite different from that prevailing on this side of the Irish Channel...

...People stare a lot...

...Bloody Emerald Isle LONDON—If I have not written so far of Ulster in these columns, it is certainly not for lack of news...

...While Soviet propaganda and pressure are everywhere in evidence...

...University life remains disrupted...

...Vacations are sacred in France...

...But the ira soon saw to it, by judicious assassination of British soldiers, that the honeymoon between the Catholics and the Army came to an end...

...Soviet soldiers are not...

...The civil rights demonstrations and counterdemonstrations merely served to stir up hatred between the two communities, producing on the "Right" a kind of minor John Knox in the Reverend Ian Paisley, and on the "Left" the reemergence of the ira...

...In all fairness, it must be said that the Army has behaved with a moderation and discipline that probably only experience in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden and so on could bring (this is a professional army, of course, not a conscript one...

...To confuse the situation still further, there appear to be two conflicting groups within the ira—a conventional, more Left-wing and possibly peaceful group, and a bunch of "provisionals," urban guerrillas who have done most of the killing in Ulster...

...No student studied sociology, philosophy or political science last year, for these faculties have been decimated by the purge of their Dubcek-era members...

...And in Ireland, history is everything...

...So did the launderies and cleaning establishments, almost all of the chief restaurants, and many of the cafes...

...If all the good Czechs leave," he began, "I felt, what would happen to my country...

...Alas for rational solutions...

...All Czechoslovaks must undergo thorough examinations by Party commissions set up to root out residual "counterrevolutionism," a political malady currently linked to Zionism...

...the judge, after taking statements from all concerned, promptly closed shop until September...

...What has happened is all too painfully clear...

...A recent cause celebre was a scandal in the construction industry involving a noted Gaullist deputy...

...The ira clearly wants Whitehall to suspend the Stormont government, and thus destroy at a stroke the 50-year-long domination of Ulster by Anglo-Irish squires and fanatical Calvinists...

...it looks good tucked under your arm," one citizen explained...

...The British government has been trying to tempt industry to Northern Ireland by special incentives for a very long time...

...Far, geographically, from the horrors of Pakistan, Vietnam, or Northern Ireland, French motorists continue to make the headlines, with priority for newlyweds and families of eight.—PAUL WALDO SCHWARTZ...

...The news of the reintroduction of internment (used in the '50s both by Stormont and by Eamon de Valera in the South) caused a fresh wave of violence...

...And while most of the potential protesters were off on package tours, the government had a fleet of bulldozers rapidly leveling the abandoned markets of Les Halles?an unpopular move that brought threats of massive demonstrations when the decision was announced last spring...

...One of the cheering developments of the civil rights movement, usually identified with Bernadette Devlin, was that it aimed to bring about social and political changes by methods borrowed from the United States?and was, perhaps, on the brink of success...

...With John Lynch's cooperation in the Republic—and his role, though he is no second "Dev," is now crucial—it is possible that organized terrorism can be stamped out...

...Other intellectual and cultural activities are also at a standstill...