Prophet Honored (Sort Of)

"Thank you, thank you," said John Stewart Service, 63, as he received an ovation from 300 fellow diplomats at a luncheon of the American Foreign Service Association. The ceremony, honoring a number of old China hands, was a little like one of those "rehabilitations" that mysteriously occur when policies change behind the Iron Curtain, for Service had been dismissed from the State Department in 1951 because of "reasonable doubt" as to his loyalty. Among other things, he was guilty of predicting that the Communists would defeat Chiang's Nationalists. Service went to court and won reinstatement in 1957 but never again served in an important post (he now works at Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies).

Historian Barbara Tuchman offered the appropriate judgment: "Could anyone, remembering past attitudes, look at that picture of President Nixon and Chairman Mao in twin armchairs, with slightly queasy smiles bravely worn to conceal their mutual discomfort, and not feel a stunned sense that truth is indeed weirder than fiction?" The title of her address: "Why Policymakers Do

Not Listen." Both Secretary of State William Rogers and Presidential Assistant Henry Kissinger, who might well have agreed with Mrs. Tuchman's observation, were too busy to attend.

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