West Germany: Play It Again, Mr. Chancellor

There was something distinctly odd about Chancellor Helmut Kohl's New Year's Eve speech on the publicly owned ARD television network. For a start, Kohl said he was looking forward to tax reforms, when in fact they had been in effect for a year. And why, at the end of his ten-minute address, did Kohl wish his countrymen a "peaceful and happy 1986"?

The network, apologizing for a "distressing foul-up," admitted that it had run last year's address by mistake. Red-faced officials said a copy of the old tape had been used a week earlier and had been "left lying" in the...