LEXINGTON, April 19--In Lexington, where it all began, they do up Patriot's Day rather specially.

At 11:30 a.m. the British consul arrived from Boston and joined ranks at the head of a troop of Minute Men dressed in Revolutionary garb. "Odaaaah-HOO!" the leader cried; or at any rate, that was the gist of what he said. The consul snapped his heels together, standing tall, slim, wearing a proper bowler and a double-breasted navy pinstripe. British tailoring, you know, jacket rather shorter than American. Nipped in at the waist Righto.

They marched off, passed the Lexington Green, entered the Revolutionary graveyard. The minister in charge offered a blessing and announced that the consul would decorate the grave of a British redcoat in "memory" of Anglo-American relations.

The John Birch "Patriot"

A few blocks away, behind the barely-used depot, stood a John Birch bookmobile, selling for $8.00 plastic-bound, lithographed copies of Robert Welch's book The Patriot. Commonly known as the John Birch Society Black Book, it contains 3,000 facts about Eisenhower which tend to indicate that the general is either a hard-core Red or a witting tool of the Communists.

The Patriot began, Birchers claim, as a private letter circulated to Welch's friends. Now 300 pages long, it is the document from which (allegedly) the American press got the idea that Welch accused Eisenhower of being a Communist.

Speaking of the American press, the bookmobile's attendant, a pleasant, friendly fellow, confided that 90 per cent of the newspapers in this country are controlled by "one-worlders."

"As I see it," he said, "there are two groups in this country: those who want one world under the U.N., complete disarmament in the form of a single world army; and those who want America to remain sovereign. And as far as I know there's only one nation that has as its aim a single world government, and that's the Soviet Union."