Protest: One Last Fling

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Fortunately for diplomacy, the State Department does not normally have to rely on the U.S. mails. Announcing that it aimed to revoke the travel privileges of the three leading Vietniks who journeyed illegally on a "peace mission" to Hanoi in December, the department last week sent the trio registered letters asking them to turn in their passports. At week's end, four days after reading the news stories, none of the three had yet received the department's request.

For Yale History Professor Staughton Lynd, 36, the most publicized of the Hanoi tourists, the delay was good for one last peace fling. When the BBC invited him to air his views on the war, New Leftist Lynd—to his own surprise —still had his passport, and flew off to London. There he denounced U.S. involvement in Viet Nam on a TV panel show, told a sparse peacenik rally in Trafalgar Square that American policy is "as ruthless to the truth as it is ruthless to human beings. I, for one, shall have nothing to do with that policy." Which, after all, is just what the State Department intends.