The War: Fatigue in Paris

A weary Henry Cabot Lodge received his first cheering news in many days last week: President Nixon called him home from the Paris peace talks for a new round of consultations in Washington. That, at least, enables Lodge to escape for a few days from the dispiriting sense of tedium and pessimism that envelops the talks and the American delegation. Lodge would like to return permanently if he could do so without embarrassing Nixon. As the 37th session of repetitious dialogue ended on the same note of stalemate in the Hotel Majestic, one thing was plain: Lodge, 67, longs to retire from public service.

Absent Deputy. While the entire U.S. delegation maintains a pose of patience and persistence, the dreariness of it all is having a demoralizing effect. The No. 2 negotiator, New York Attorney Lawrence E. Walsh, 57, has not even taken part in the talks since June. Although on call if needed in Paris, he has spent much of his time attending to private business and American Bar Association affairs back home. The only genuine smile among the Americans seemed to belong to the always ebullient Harold Kaplan, the chief press officer. After years of graciously answering reporters’ post-midnight queries in both Saigon and Paris, Kaplan, 51, is retiring from government service early. He will become an officer of Investors Overseas Service, a mutual fund and investment complex based in Geneva.

Washington’s feeling that the strength of the U.S. negotiating team is a matter of no great moment seemed to be reflected in the announcement that Kaplan will not be replaced by a senior foreign-service officer “for the foreseeable future.” The steadiest hand in the delegation thus remains that of the No. 3 negotiator, Philip Charles Habib, 49, a career diplomat from Brooklyn who has been with the talks since they started. He bridges the shift from Averell Harriman to Lodge as head of the delegation and seems to have the right temperament for staying with the dull proceedings. “I am a bureaucrat,” he says without apology. “I am supposed to implement directives.”

Elusive Signal. Such an attitude doubtless helps to preserve a man’s balance amidst the futility. As viewed from Paris, the talks now promise little progress for the next 12 or 13 months. Hanoi, this theory goes, will be content to do nothing until it sees how many more troops Nixon withdraws, how the South Vietnamese fare in replacing American forces, how much more antiwar sentiment develops in the U.S. The Communists may even be willing to await the outcome of next fall’s congressional election. If that estimate proves correct, it will mean that the Nixon Administration has made a miscalculation. Its policy so far has been predicated on the assumption that conciliatory steps by the U.S. would induce concessions by the Communists. “Sure the Paris talks may be a drag,” concedes one senior official in Washington. “But everyone seems to agree that they must be kept going.” The most optimistic view of the negotiations is that, however unproductive they have been so far, they still give each side a chance to gauge the intent of the other and to search for the elusive signal that could point the way toward peace.