Oh Hateful Love, Oh Loving Hate

It is not just governmental policy that has been swinging around in France’s turn to the East. In the newspapers, the dispatch from Moscow rather than from Washington or London gets the big headline (after the newest dismemberment of a former mistress in a hotel closet). Big posters all over town as well as display ads in the papers and magazines beckon M. Dupont to the sunny beaches of Black Sea Rivieras and the nightclubs of Warsaw and Budapest. Air France steps up its flights to the cities of eastern Europe, and Orly welcomes Ilyushins by the dozen. Musicians, dancers and savants from Russia, Poland, Rumania and Uzbekistan fill the halls. At concerts, applause stops the show after the dreary symphonies of Shostakovitch and Prokofiev (though let us confess that the delicate discriminations of Gallic taste have never extended to la musique). On Asian news much more is heard from Peking and Hanoi than from Saigon, Bangkok or New Delhi. On the French TV, shots of the flight of Gemini VIII were invariably more than balanced by loving camera on that pair of dear little Russian dogs in simultaneous orbit. A few years ago there were 26 Chinese restaurants in Paris. Today there are three hundred.

Burnham

JB

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James Burnham

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It is not just governmental policy that has been swinging around in France’s turn to the East. In the newspapers, the dispatch from Moscow rather than from Washington or London gets the big headline (after the newest dismemberment of a former mistress in a hotel closet). Big posters all over town as well as display ads in the papers and magazines beckon M. Dupont to the sunny beaches of Black Sea Rivieras and the nightclubs of Warsaw and Budapest. Air France steps up its flights to the cities of eastern Europe, and Orly welcomes Ilyushins by the dozen. Musicians, dancers and savants from Russia, Poland, Rumania and Uzbekistan fill the halls. At concerts, applause stops the show after the dreary symphonies of Shostakovitch and Prokofiev (though let us confess that the delicate discriminations of Gallic taste have never extended to la musique). On Asian news much more is heard from Peking and Hanoi than from Saigon, Bangkok or New Delhi. On the French TV, shots of the flight of Gemini VIII were invariably more than balanced by loving camera on that pair of dear little Russian dogs in simultaneous orbit. A few years ago there were 26 Chinese restaurants in Paris. Today there are three hundred.

Burnham