In the Soviet Union there are strict laws against prostitution. Nevertheless, if a man is interested in picking up a girl for sexual purposes, he knows where to go find one. Take Canton. Do men know where to find such a girl? I've had no personal experience, but 1 did learn something about this from others in 1971. It happened that I was sent on an errand by the large brigade. I had to get some wire cable, but there was none to be had in Canton, so my job was to procure it through the speculators' organizations.

The Conference on International Economic Cooperation has all the appearances of a floating crap game: After the windup of this eighteenmonth Paris conference it moves over to UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This points up the need for the U.N. to sponsor a permanent international clearinghouse on the exchange of data and the pricing of world goods and commodities. It would function as a sort of securities and commodities exchange commission that remains sensitive to the varieties of economic systems and mixtures, but is somehow able to establish guidelines on the relative values of goods, services, and commodities. Such an institutionbuilding process was a major recommendation of the Second International Conference on Environment and Society.

One of the foremost analysts of contemporary religion recently gave vent to his exasperation with people who criticize ecumenical organizations such as the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. "Why do you even waste time commenting on those groups? Don't you know that nobody cares about what those relics do? Certainly their pronouncements have nothing to do with what's really happening in the churches." This private expression, it should be noted, comes from one solidly located in the "liberal mainstream" of American Protestantism. Let the record show that he supports these ecumenical agencies wholeheartedly. It is just that he is totally indifferent to them. The simple truth, he says, is that they no longer matter very much.

The main problem in Southeast Asia is economic development, a problem the United States and Japan are largely responsible for. Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Japan are all involved, therefore, in determining how to achieve economic viability in Southeast Asia—where a new era of peaceful coexistence has begun after decades of war.

Leaders in Southeast Asian countries, including the Socialist states in Indochina, agree that the most pressing problem is how to overcoihe extreme hardships and difficulties in order to achieve economic and social development.

Speaking before the United Nations, President Jimmy Carter declared that "The basic thrust of human affairs points toward a universal demand for fundamental human rights. The United States has a historic birthright to be associated with this process." He was reiterating his inaugural day commitment: "Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere."

As a journalist whose job it is to check facts against politicians' promises and public servants' continuing prejudices, I doubt whether modern history is moved much by slogans. Interdependence versus self-reliance, the supposed conflicts of the Chinese Way (egalitarianism, autarchy, underconsumption) versus the Japanese Way (growth, trade, investment)— all give way, I suspect, to changing precepts that bring successes.