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TO MANY MORE GOOD LIVES It was not the start of the third millenium but the first day of a new year when frivolity took a time-out. Almost 70 years into the revolution, a faded but steadfast dream anchored to the past by an immense bureaucracy, breached the missile gap with a tentative message to the people of the other side. The steward of this dream, a balding man in his late 50s with a discolored spot on his forehead glanced occasionally to the prompter on his left as he delivered stiff greetings to the enemy. Hours earlier, on the other side of the world, the snow was interrupted first by a flicker, then a picture of a man who nodded his head as he spoke. The man calmly delivered his speech, looking directly out from the television as if he could see each viewer. The words came forth, separated by the distance between two markedly divergent national cultures; separated by mutual distrust; separated by the technology which transmitted them. The words came forth, so similar in context that style of delivery became the only rule by which measure of their impact could be taken. In America, Mikhail Gorbachev's appearance was a last-minute side show in a carnival of sport. Across the vast expanse of the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan's appearance caromed like a billiard ball. The only tangible results of the November Summit meetings in Geneva, these New Year's greetings were heard and forgotten by publics which had long since relinquished their title to the arsenals; rather, they sought the pleasures and trials of daily living, electing the continuity of family and clan. "Plus ca change, c'est la meme chose." Peasants, the politically powerless, know war will come some day. Peasants are the continuity of the civilized world; they have survived horrors; they have survived governments. Many generations of good lives have been lived in the grey shadow of Armageddon. A toast: "To many more good lives."