THE WEEK

• Ho hum. A few weeks ago U Thant announced that he would not seek another term as #1 Boy at the United Nations. Oh, so sad it was! The weeping and wailing could be heard all the way to Second Avenue. Now U see um, now U don’t. Last week the world’s greatest Thant announced that he would serve the UN until a suitable successor is found. Who, hum, is suitabler than U? Will the 117 Nations Of The World allow their Organization to be decapitated? Can U take the U out of UN? The Perils of Pauline were as nothing to this awful suspense. The ho-ing and the humming can be heard all over town.

• The Republican Party has evidently decided to play straight partisan politics with the Vietnam issue. A GOP policy paper—issued September 18 over the signatures of Rep. Gerald Ford, House minority leader; Rep. Melvin Laird, chairman of the Republican conference; and Mr. Charles Goodell, chairman of the GOP Committee on Planning and Research— self-righteously washes from Republican hands the stains of “Johnson’s war.” Everyone with an objection, doubt, query or sorrow over the fighting in Vietnam will find it smugly echoed in a demagogic sentence or two of this banal document. What no one will discover, even if he reads the entire text under a microscope, is the smallest hint of any specific alternative to the President’s policy.

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• Ho hum. A few weeks ago U Thant announced that he would not seek another term as #1 Boy at the United Nations. Oh, so sad it was! The weeping and wailing could be heard all the way to Second Avenue. Now U see um, now U don’t. Last week the world’s greatest Thant announced that he would serve the UN until a suitable successor is found. Who, hum, is suitabler than U? Will the 117 Nations Of The World allow their Organization to be decapitated? Can U take the U out of UN? The Perils of Pauline were as nothing to this awful suspense. The ho-ing and the humming can be heard all over town.

• The Republican Party has evidently decided to play straight partisan politics with the Vietnam issue. A GOP policy paper—issued September 18 over the signatures of Rep. Gerald Ford, House minority leader; Rep. Melvin Laird, chairman of the Republican conference; and Mr. Charles Goodell, chairman of the GOP Committee on Planning and Research— self-righteously washes from Republican hands the stains of “Johnson’s war.” Everyone with an objection, doubt, query or sorrow over the fighting in Vietnam will find it smugly echoed in a demagogic sentence or two of this banal document. What no one will discover, even if he reads the entire text under a microscope, is the smallest hint of any specific alternative to the President’s policy.