Tit for Tat

If the Kremlin were awarding prizes to the satellite with the crudest, orneriest manners toward the West, the Order of Lenin with quadruple clusters would go to the Communist bosses of Rumania. For months the Rumanians had been subjecting U.S. diplomats to insolent treatment, harassment and name calling, as well as imposing severe travel limitations on the U.S. embassy staff.

The State Department, which used to give the impression that it wouldn't stoop to retaliation, has since developed the habit. Last week it struck back at Rumania. With undisguised relish, State notified the seven-member Rumanian diplomatic staff in Washington that henceforth they were to stay within a 35-mile radius of the capital, leave the area only by specific permission from the State Department's Chief of Protocol. Short of living in Red Rumania, there were few diplomatic punishments as bad as spending an unrelieved summer in the jungle heat of Washington, D.C.

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