The Week

■ Ah, those sophisticated Parisians! Sexual jealousy is now so infra dig in France, reports Hearst correspondent Bernard D. Kaplan, that French private detectives are going broke. “One consequence is that the crime passionel, that most traditional of all French crimes, is on the downgrade,” Kaplan writes. “Few French men or women now think that it is worth the time, inconvenience, or legal expense to shoot an unfaithful lover.” One detective recalls a client who said “he didn’t plan to use my report to win a divorce. He said that if he did that, he would be laughed out of his bridge club.”

■ Why bother with a SALT-II treaty if the Soviets aren’t observing SALT-I? At a Washington news conference that has gone virtually unnoticed, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird charged the Soviets with flagrantly violating existing SALT agreements. Laird accused the Soviets of interfering with U.S. satellite detection of treaty violations, building a rocket that could be secretly converted into an intercontinental weapon, and testing ballistic missile defenses, each one of which is in violation of SALT-I. Ironically, Laird spoke to reporters on the same day that the State Department issued a communiqué saying that the five-year- old treaty restricting U.S. and Soviet antiballistic missile systems is operating effectively and “requires no amendment at this time.”

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William F. Buckley Jr.

■ Ah, those sophisticated Parisians! Sexual jealousy is now so infra dig in France, reports Hearst correspondent Bernard D. Kaplan, that French private detectives are going broke. “One consequence is that the crime passionel, that most traditional of all French crimes, is on the downgrade,” Kaplan writes. “Few French men or women now think that it is worth the time, inconvenience, or legal expense to shoot an unfaithful lover.” One detective recalls a client who said “he didn’t plan to use my report to win a divorce. He said that if he did that, he would be laughed out of his bridge club.”

■ Why bother with a SALT-II treaty if the Soviets aren’t observing SALT-I? At a Washington news conference that has gone virtually unnoticed, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird charged the Soviets with flagrantly violating existing SALT agreements. Laird accused the Soviets of interfering with U.S. satellite detection of treaty violations, building a rocket that could be secretly converted into an intercontinental weapon, and testing ballistic missile defenses, each one of which is in violation of SALT-I. Ironically, Laird spoke to reporters on the same day that the State Department issued a communiqué saying that the five-year- old treaty restricting U.S. and Soviet antiballistic missile systems is operating effectively and “requires no amendment at this time.”