March 5, 1992

Exactly 200 years after France's stirringly revolutionary national anthem was composed, "les enfants de la patrie" are once again being called to arms -- this time to defend "La Marseillaise" against an attack by political correctness. The offensive has taken the form of a campaign to replace the anthem's most bloodthirsty lyrics with more brotherly phrases to demonstrate that French patriots no longer dream of spilling the "tainted blood" of foreigners. Instead, the new message would be kinder and gentler.

Al-Waleed bin Talal, the Saudi Arabian prince who bought $590 million of Citicorp preferred stock early last year and was expected to dispose of Citicorp common that he already held, is now seeking permission from the Federal Reserve to keep the Citicorp common stock, which has risen smartly in two and a half months. The combination of preferred and common stock would give the prince 14.4 percent of all Citicorp's shares, putting him above the 10 percent level that requires approval of the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve received the prince's application last week and has not yet scheduled a meeting to consider it.

More than five years after undergoing an experimental treatment for cancer, Paul E. Tsongas is in good health and, if elected President, the Democratic candidate has a favorable prognosis for serving out his term, his doctors say. The doctors pronounced the 51-year-old Mr. Tsongas fit after he underwent an array of tests last December that showed no evidence of recurrence of the lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, that was detected in 1983 and for which he received experimental therapy in 1986.

Populist politicians, economists and ordinary citizens have long suspected that the rich have been getting richer. What is making people sit up now is recent evidence that the richest 1 percent of American families appears to have reaped most of the gains from the prosperity of the last decade and a half. An outsized 60 percent of the growth in the average after-tax income of all American families between 1977 and 1989 -- and an even heftier three-fourths of the gain in average pretax income -- went to the wealthiest 660,000 families, each of which had an annual income of at least $310,000 a year, for a household of four.

More than two years after the fall of Communism, it now seems clear that the early dreams of a gold rush to Eastern Europe were vastly overblown. While there has been a trickle of investors -- like General Motors, which announced last week that it was setting up a joint venture to make cars in Poland -- their numbers have remained small, and the sums of money much less than what is needed.