Alsops' Fable

Columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop played a parlor game with their readers. Like many another occasional reader of history, they had been struck by the ominous political parallels between the war of two ancient states and today's struggle between the U.S. and Russia. To drive this gloomy point home, their column last week carried excerpts from a history book, substituting the U.S. and Russia for the ancient contenders, air power for sea power. The Alsops offered $100 to the first reader who guessed book, author and war.

Alsops' fable: "From a financial point of view, the United States held in every respect the first place among the states . . . The rich resources of the country perhaps excelled at that time all other lands.

"Soviet policy had a steady course. They never receded a step in times of misfortune and never threw away the favors of fortune by negligence and indifference. The Americans desisted from the struggle when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and weary or forgetful of their great duties, allowed the half-completed building to fall to pieces only to begin it in a few years anew.

"The Soviet Union excelled in the number of men capable of bearing arms . . . The main bulwark of the U.S. was their air force . . . it was in the United States that very long-range bombers first were built. No doubt the Americans had peace for the present but the United States could only regard the peace in the light of a truce, and . . . employ it in preparations for war . . . But when a war of annihilation is impending over a state, the more wise, more resolute and more devoted men always find themselves hampered by the indolent and cowardly mass of money worshippers, of the feeble, and of the thoughtless who wish merely . . . to live and die in peace, and to postpone at any price the final struggle. So there was in America a party for isolation and a party for strength."

By week's end, close to 2,000 readers had swamped the Alsops with answers (most of them wrong). The winner: Theodore Geiger, 38, National Planning Assoc. research chief, who was first to guess that the quote was from Theodor Mommsen's History of Rome, the opponents Rome (Russia) and Carthage (the U.S.). The victor: Rome.

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