The trouble with the modern world,” a Brazilian college student in Pôrto Alegre told me, “is that respect for age and authority has gone. This new government of ours has given us back that respect. I respect my parents. As a lieutenant in the army I respect my captain. He respects the major, and soonupto the President, General Mèdici. Maybe your country is so unhappy these days because it has lost this respect for family, government, armed forces and country. Could it be the reason you are losing the war in Vietnam?”
His revealing peroration came at the end of an argument that had started when I asked him why he didn’t read poetry.
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