Cold Christmas

Viet Nam is the great destroyer of hope. In the years when the conflict was mostly military, "the light at the end of the tunnel" became a ghastly cliche of hope aroused and dashed over and over again. Now that the conflict is largely diplomatic, is the light at the end of the conference table becoming equally elusive? The fever chart tracing U.S. expectations of success in Viet Nam, it has been said, has a recurrent sawtooth shape: an accelerating rise of optimism just before an abrupt decline.

The U.S. still has much to celebrate at this season: a recovering economy, a calming of the national temper, the beginnings, at least, of a global detente. Moreover, it is an axiom that, if the good news from Viet Nam is never as good as claimed, the bad news is never as bad as feared. The negotiations may yet be salvaged, but the Administration's severe setback in Paris, the persistent absence of peace, the inability to free the prisoners by Christmas--all these remain bitter blows. They are also reminders that the Viet Nam War seems to have the durability in American life of an evil spell: everyone who touches it sooner or later seems to fail.

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