Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 46

Perspective 6 Section 2 Chicago Tribune, Sunday. March 10, 1974 James Reslon Stayskal Frank Starr Politics of fantasy persists in France U. S. China policy holding together WASHINGTON In the rush to criticize a beleaguered President or to defend one, for that matter selectivity sometimes falls by the board. Specifically, it can be heard these days that among President Nixon's myriad sins, in addition to the domestic ones, he has pursued a rash foreign policy for reasons of personal aggrandizement, a foreign policy that now seems to be coming unglued, at least as regards China.

Fascinated by this new charge of irresponsibility on the part of the President, I inquired among the China experts whether there was anything to such reports. THE SOURCE of them was a series of odd developments inside China, such as the denunciation of Beethoven, Confucius, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which led some to conclude that a new cultural revolution was brewing and the foreign devils and all that represented them would again be thrown out, including Henry Kissinger. Bad news indeed for Nixon foreign policy. Now to be totally honest, it must be said that China-watching is an infant discipline in such a crude stage of development as to make Kremlin-watching seem a science as precise as math- "John, what should we do? A. Deny the whole thing? B.

Cool It? C. Run to dad? D. None of the above?" Wayne Stayskal's cartoons appear weekdays In Chicago Today. ematics itself. It is an exercise only slightly more hopeful of success than a blind man trying to make out the content of a television program with the sound turned off.

Thus the very serious and prestigious British newsmagazine, The Economist, opened a recent analysis of the China scene this way: "Like a compass gone berserk, China's political indicators are pointing all ways at once," an apparent admission it hadn't the faintest notion what was really happening inside that cryptic land. It's a science very much akin to reading tea leaves, and for the first few months of the current campaign many, especially the colony of foreign China watchers in Hong Kong, held that what was really going on was an attack by the radical Left on the moderate Right. Translated, that means that the more fervent among China's radical revolutionaries were launching an attack on the development of normal contacts with the West and especially the United States, and therefore the chief engineer Of this policy, Premier Chou En-lai, was in trouble. A new cultural revolution was brewing, foreign contacts were to be reduced again, and possibly the moderate line toward the United States was in danger of being reversed. HOWEVER, THERE is a serious school of thought both inside and side of government which says, "Not so!" On the contrary, when reports of that kind came out, Chinese officials were quietly letting it be known that this was a domestic affair and that foreign contacts were not affected.

These analysts say that precisely the opposite is happening, that is, the current attack is one launched from the moderate Right Chou En-lai and company at the Left Chiang Ching, who is Chairman Mao's wife and her associate, Yao Wen-yuan. The reasoning goes this way. Chairman Mao and Chou are concerned about securing a line of policy that will be maintained after Mao is gone and to do that certain radicals must be politically neutralized. There is far more to the story than that, but that is enough to suggest that it Is far too early to fear the Nixon China policy Is coming down around his ears. Europe policy, maybe and more about that at another time.

JARIS There has always been an air 1 -fantasy about Paris, but somehow iha unreality seems more real now than eVer, and is affecting everything from prices politics. The city itself is changing, with long-armed cranes wheeling over the lovely old stone facades. Whole areas are being devoted to clusters of glass skyscrapers, so that occasionally you turn a corner and find yourself in downtown Chicago. The stores, of course, are recklessly beautiful and the prices recklessly extravagant. The French have found a simple way to keep up with inflation: Occasionally, they pimply add a lero to that $30 raincoat, making it $300.

MAKE-BELIEVE politics, too: -Illusions of power and independence, illusions of European unity. At first, the arguments between Washington and Paris over oil, the NATO and trans-Atlantic relations seem serious and even ominous, but after a while in this artificial atmosphere, they, too, seem inflated and Take the negotiations over the supply and price of oil. Big fuss about that. Big conference in Washington. But the delegations with their experts and their statistics didn't talk about oil but merely talked about how to talk about oil.

Together, said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Separately, said Michel Jo-bert, France's foreign minister. And the substance gotilost in the procedure. The arguments, over th. wording of declarations on future of.

the alliance and trans-Atlantic relations seem equally unreal. They have been going on for months. There, was. nonpublic demand for a restatement of principles binding Europe and America together. It was a shotgun marriage from the start, essential to both sides.

It didn't need a new certificate, and if it did, the certificate wouldn't help. Still, officials' on' both sides have been fiddling with words ever since Kissinger launched his "Year of Europe" speech at the Waldorf -Astoria Hotel in New York last April. Should they use the word "partnership" to describe the relationship, and was it to be an "equal" partnership? The result was the oppo- site of the intention, Kissinger wanted a declaration sym-. holizing the unity of the Western nations and ended with a debate dramatizing the disunity and compromise language designed to cover up the disagreements. Unlike the gowns in the best Paris boutiques, it is not what is exposed in communiques but what is concealed that counts.

There will, however, be a big propaganda splash about this next month. French President Georges Pompidou agreed this week that President Nixon Bhould be invited to come to Europe during the last week of April to sign the proclamations. They will do no harm. They may even do Nixon some good, for the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on a bill of impeachment about that time, and voting to impeach the President while he is in Europe signing declarations of friendship via satellite television would obviously be awkward. There is fantasy on both sides, of course.

The French keep talking about the "unity" of Europe when there is no unity. The nine cannot agree among themselves on most internal European questions, and therefore cannot speak with "one voice" to the United States. On defense, as one American official put it with customary American delicacy, "Europe is as impotent as a capon," but it is resented when President Nixon tells them that they cannot expect cooperation on defense if they won't cooperate on money, trade, and oil. What is odd about all this is why, given the fantasies of the French, Washington keeps dramatizing the divisions by suggesting that the alliance will break up if Europe keeps on excluding the United States from conferences between the Europeans and the Arab states. This is regarded here as Kissinger's fantasy, for the alliance won't break up if he doesn't attend the Arab-European conference, and besides nobody here expects that conference to do anything except reassure the Arabs that they are now talking prominently with the big boys.

IT WOULD obviously be helpful if the great industrial powers In America, Europe, and Japan could agree on common policies to meet their common problems. This would give their technicians some guidance on how to negotiate the difficult and complex problems of monetary reform, trade reform, and the price and supply of oil. But that is not in the cards at this stage. The Europeans have been living quite well, even quite high. They know they are in trouble and that they will have to change and maybe even sacrifice, but they haven't suffered enough from the consequences of division.

"Don't look now, but the boat is sinking." Kissinger has tried to persuade them, even, they say here, tried to bully them into agreement, but it hasn't worked. So the fantasies of nationalism persist, and like the prices in the Paris stores, the glitter won't last. But this will take time, and declarations of common goals without common policies obviously won't help. New York Times Newt Service James Reston's column appears regularly in Chicago Today. Between the lines p' 'i TtV 1 In every natlon' naUve wines are judged not only on their merits but I Al "ga1" French wines.

To protect this prestige and the profits it brings I LljjjSL France gocs to to preserve winemaking standards. So, last Ih'x when ring making counterfeit Bordeaux was exposed, the threat was CJ considered so grave the affair came to be called "wlnegate." Now, just 4. 4 fi as that srdid affair has faded, comes a new scandal, this time involving I I ii Corsican wine. What's worse, the new counterfeit really isn't wine. Its 'l ingredients: sulfuric acid, sugar, water, glycerine, coloring, wine dregs, I and unfermented ItaUa wine.

Adding insult to injury, experts laid the U.mfcV..Vfcliy 13 tag" Uslei and looked better than average Corsican wine. 7Z1 Nature and this winter's energy crisis have frozen the hot snowmobile HV NfaT industry. In 1972, enthusiasts paid $750 to $1,400 for each of the 587,000 V-2y snowmobiles sold. But glum industry spokesmen expect sales of the cur-rent season's models will total about 400,000, a whopping 32 per cent drop. (-' The leaS0I go of to a stumbling start when snowfall was below average, i vW Then gasoline shortages delivered the knockout punch.

If the crisis wasn't to linger, say Industry experts, the 2.5 million snowmobiles in use A 7 14 soon would double. Three years ago, there were 130 snowmobile makers -ZIJ but the ranks are thinning fast. When Armco Recreational ProdncU. quit last month It Identified the industry's problem as overproduction. Nick Thimmesch i li I iTMiiiiiiii'ii km Vernon Jarrett Nixon's men face trial in a hanging town Pageantry won't benefit convention WASHINGTON Every courtroom trial takes place in an environment, an atmosphere of attitudes and influences.

Years ago, the environment of many locales in the South made it difficult for blacks to get justice, especially in cases involving the passions and roots of the Old South. Today, somewhat the same situation faces the seven men indicted here in the Watergate case and the six individuals indicted in the 1971 Ellsberg break-in. This town is ready to hang Nixon's men. There are differences. The Southern black often had no financial or legal resources and, being a second-class citizen, was victimized.

The Nixon men complain it is difficult to raise legal defense money, but I believe they'll manage. By now, they know their way around the law business and will be served. THE LOCAL atmosphere is hardly encouraging for them, however. For 20 months now, the citizenry of Washington has been bombarded by newspaper, radio, and television accounts of Watergate, to the point that this city is marinated in Watergate. The 69 men and women who form the three grand juries occupying themselves with Watergate surely were conditioned by the overwhelming press attention to this story and the overwhelming characterization that the men named in Watergate were, ipso facto, guilty.

Had the Nixon administration carefully cultivated goodwill, as previous administrations had, the press probably wouldn't have gone to such extraordinary lengths, obsessive in nature, to get Nixon's errant lieutenants. Anyway, the Watergate grand jurors, and the jurors yet to be selected to hear the cases of those indicted in the Watergate coverup, in their heart of hearts, can have small affection for these gents. Besides being conditioned by the press, these jurors selected from the District of Columbia are hardly what one would call Middle Americans in their political views. Nixon lost overwhelmingly in D. C.

in 1968 and 1972, getting less than 20 per cent of the vote in 1972. The District of Columbia's population is 70 per cent black, and few blacks are of a mind to be impartial about Nixon or his men. Indeed, this fact of life caused attorneys for Dwight L. Chapin, accused of perjury, to ask for a change of venue moving his trial to a federal court, away from Washington. The argument was that black jurors would be "particularly offended" by charges that Chapin tried to introduce racism into the 1972 primaries.

Federal District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell ruled that he found no basis for pretrial publicity being prejudicial to Chapin's case. Hah. The other Watergate defendants might also ask for a change of venue, but it is highly unlikely they'll get it. Federal District Judge John J.

Sirica, who will preside over their cases, isn't about to give up his great hour of glory, especially on the eve of his retirement. Someday, scholars will go over the tons of newsprint and hours of broadcast emanating here from Watergate and determine that it included a massive amount of hearsay, vague attribution, distortion, malicious leaks, and error. But Nixon and his men asked for It, I guess. THE SENATE Watergate committee must be nicknamed the "sieve," for that's what it turned out to be. Rep.

Peter Rodino's N. J. Judiciary Committee, considering the impeachment moves, has had no more leaks than can be expected from a congressional body. And until recently, Leon Jaworski's special prosecutor's office has been quite good in keeping confi-dences. In the past two weeks, however, even Jaworski's operation sprang leaks and he is very disturbed about it.

There have been front-page stories here strongly suggesting that the sealed material Jaworski had the grand jury turn over to Judge Sirica implicates the President in the coverup. No such implication was alluded to in any way by Jaworski. Now Judge Sirica das instituted a "gag" rule on everyone involved in the Watergate situation, but we'll see how long anyone remains gagged in this loquacious town especially among those who sniff Nixon's blood. Los Angeles Times Syndicate Michael Kilian Wait till politicians turn on to streaking HERE ARE a few more pieces of unsolicited advice for the planners of the second National Black Political Convention which will convene Friday in Little Rock, Ark. Please don't concentrate on grandiose performance for white media at the expense of mobilizing the black masses.

It could happen deliberately or unwittingly. Recent spectacular triumphs plus the psychological needs of a powerless people could easily and imperceptibly transform a working convention into a sort of victory pageant-based on the "monumental political" gains registered by blacks over the past five years. OVER THE past 12 months blacks have scored some rather amazing mayoralty victories in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Detroit, bringing the national total of black mayors up to an unbelievable A parade of black mayors would cause long and ecstatic cheers from the expected 8,000 observers and delegates and it would make for terrific television coverage. Joining the pageantry could be the 16 blacks currently in Congress, including Andrew J. Young Ga.

and Barbara C. Jordan Tex. first blacks from their states to sit in the halls of Congress since George H. White, of North Carolina made his farewell address in 1901. Mixed in with the presentation of great orations very.

black and, very threatening could be another parade of the near 2,800 black elected officials from thruout the nation. Inspiring? Yes. From 1969 to 1973 the number of black elected officials jumped from 1,187 to a 121 per cent leap within four years, according to the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington, D. C. Progress? Absolutely.

And it's more Impressive when we look at the black political scene prior to the 1965 voting rights legislation. Should this data be ignored or taken for granted? Absolutely not. However, there is a note of warning issued by the Joint Center last summer when it revealed the results of its survey that should be remembered at Little Rock: The number of black elected officials is only one criterion for assessing black politics and political participa tion," said the center's president, Eddie N. Williams. "One must also consider the effectiveness of elected officials, voter behavior, political organization, and perhaps most important, political results," he added.

With all due respect to our recent political gains, at some point during the convention it must be noted that black political power is still in the dream stage. The potential is certainly more than vision, but the actuality of it is hardly more than a remote reality. Yes, we have 107 black mayors, but this nation has 18,517 municipalities and 16,991 townships, as per the 1970 census. Admittedly 2,800 blacks in elective offices is encouraging, but no edgy citizen need fear "black takeover" soon. There are 521,760 elective offices in the United States.

I'm all for black use of white media -including television and radio. I happen to work in a modest way in all three. However, it should be understood that for many a score years black Ameri-cans managed to keep body and soul and mind intact and organize themselveswithout a reliance on powerful media. The truth is that white media coverage of black life Is a relatively new phenomenon. Exhibit in the present tense is the truly immense political victories scored in the Southland without much notice from television where more blacks won public office than in any other section of the country.

According to the Voter Education Project another little known but highly significant group, Southern blacks now hold 1,314 elective positions. In 1964 the total was 72. Mississippi, with 174, is third only to New York and Michigan. IT MAY not go big on television, but these unknown, unheralded foot soldiers should be placed in prominence at Little Rock, where for the first time they will have a chance to exchange experiences and techniques with workers from other places. Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, who is chairman of the convention's national council, sounded a promising note when he said last week: "We intend to move beyond rhetoric to reality by holding workshops on practical politics.

We're going to concern ourselves with the reality of Input into policy decisions that affect black people." 1 i 1 1 IF YOU haven't seen a naked young lady or jockless jock run across your lawn this week, fear not; next week you probably will. You might not if you live in the middle of a big city, as do I. The only naked people we get In our neighborhood are Academy Award-winning thes-pians who appear on the posters outside our neighborhood movie house. But if you live within running distance of a college campus, look out your window that Is, for it will soon be filled with whole gaggles of highly educated but unclad students. AS YOU should know by now, college students spend most of their time, not in the pursuit of learning, but in pursuit of amusing things to do while not learning.

Thus have we had marathon dancing, goldfish swallowing, telephone-booth cramming, R.O.T.C. building burning, McCarthy and McGovern campaign-button wearing, and Bob Dylan worshipping. Now, we have streaking. To streak, one merely removes one's clothing and gocs dashing thru some public place like a park, supermarket, country, and considering college youth's relentless quest for individuality, millions more are sure to follow, especially as the Weather gets warmer. If I frown on streaking, It is not because I fear it will undermine the vir-tues of American youth undermining the virtues of American youth these days is about the same as converting Russians to Communism.

Rather, it is because I fear It will spread to a much more vulnerable group American politicians. Streakers are gaining a great deal of publicity and national attention, and if there is one thing politicians like more than fact-finding junkets or rich lobbyists it Is publicity and attention. In their relentless quest for it, politicians have ridden bicycles backwards, walked the length and breadth of their slates in cowboy boots and safari suits, posed with farmers in manure-filled barnyards, stayed overnight In slums, and even honored George C. Wallace on "Honor America Day." If a country club-suburban corporation lawyer like Gov. Dan Walker Is willing to put on blue jeans and a ban danna and munch Mail Pouch chewing tobacco in the cornfields of Southern Illinois, none of them is going to pass up streaking.

But, you see, there are some inequities involved. A fleet-of-foot politician like Sen. William Proxmire Wis. or former New York Mayor John Lindsay might be able to streak to his heart's content, disappearing into the bushes long before the law arrived on the scene. But a politician of the not-so-fleet stature of a Mayor Daley or Rep.

Bella Abzug N. Y. would be at a great disadvantage. They'd be arrested after only a few toddles. BESIDES, STREAKING would lead to unfair comparisons.

I mean, whom would you vote for, a streaking Shirley MacLaine or a streaking Edmund Muskie? But there may be an advantage to political streaking. While running around in the buff, the candidates would be bereft of the shirts on their backs and all their worldly possessions. Th taxpayers would finally have someone to Identify with. 1 Streaker tries his luck with traffic. freeway interchange, or church picnic, giving the assemblage a big shock or thrill before jumping into one's waiting Volkswagen and making one's escape.

Hundreds of streakers have already popped up near campuses all across the.