Letting Go

The author of the Administration's infelicitous phrase "benign neglect" ought to know when to leave well enough alone, and that is exactly what U.S. Ambassador to India Daniel P. Moynihan counseled from New Delhi not long ago in a wry cable to the State Department. The Agency for International Development had made a promise to the Indian government in April that an AID apartment-dining complex would be turned over to India. Two weeks ago Moynihan made good on the promise. Later the same day the State Department cabled him to hold up the gift, hoping to retain at least part of the complex for the use of American officials.

"I quite understand that it might appear that we are off our rocker out here," tweaked Moynihan, "but it comes down to a simple matter of good faith." He and his family, Moynihan vowed, had tried to take advantage of the increasingly unused facility, even dining now and again--all alone--in its restaurant ("best Chinese cuisine in town"). Continued the Ambassador: "If we could turn it over to the Smithsonian it would make a marvelous memorial to a certain kind of mentality. But that isn't really practical, is it? I don't need it so I have got rid of it like we agreed to do. Let this sad ending be a lesson to the next U.S. Administration tempted by an edifice complex."

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