"What of those who do not suffer my anxieties because they were never offered the chance? How can I explain to them what my choice will be? In old times they paid those who took the place of someone else. But now the rich get off for free.

" What of this poor land which I was raised to love and cannot now forget? Who should mend its ways and return it to the path which it ought to tread? "

Also that same day the Defense Department announced that a new low had been hit: 64 Americans had been killed in fighting that week. The headlines did not feature the number of South Vietnamese who were killed, nor the number of bodies that our troops had counted as Viet Cong killed. But if you added up the numbers in the story ...

The same week Las Vegas had to call up the Nevada National Guard to quell a racial disturbance and the bureaucracy announced that unemployment had jumped to 4 per cent.

She fielded the question aboutprotests being relevant as best she could. But the argument with the wife seemed to forebode ill for her question to the husband.

"Sir," she said with a degree of hopelessness, "will you close your store to help observe the Vietnam Moratorium?"

"Well I had been thinking about it." His reply did nothing to give her confidence. Her mood turned a little bitter.

"Would you like to close your store for an hour at noon?"

"Well I had been thinking about closing the store all afternoon," replied the man.

There was a moment of total silence.

The young girl gave the old man a poster to put in his window. She printed at the bottom of the sign: closed from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

When she walked out the door the war had not ended, but another beginning had been made.