September 28, 1992

"I will fight, we will fight, France and Germany will fight," vowed Michel Sapin, France's Finance Minister, as he declared war last week on speculators who were betting that a French franc would soon buy fewer German marks. If Mr. Sapin seemed overwrought, it was understandable. The stability of the exchange rate between the franc and the mark had, for better or worse, come to symbolize the stability of the French-German alliance. And those who expected the franc to crack under pressure as easily as the British pound or the Italian lira did were clearly mistaken.

Reflecting a debate about the use of United States forces in regional conflicts, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is questioning even the most limited forms of military intervention to protect the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina or to try to stop the fighting. In a lengthy and sometimes emotional interview, the Chairman, Gen. Colin L. Powell, offered a strong defense of his philosophy that military force is best used to achieve a decisive victory and for the first time publicly explained his reluctance to intervene in Bosnia.

The hunt for a new manager was supposed to be an executive search of the most elaborate and sophisticated sort. There wasn't room for another mistake, and so the process, the Mets pledged, would leave no margin for error. The search ended after one interview.

This old Army post resembles a ghost town these days. No more raw Army recruits are getting their hair shorn, or doing push-ups for snarling drill sergeants, or struggling to tell their left foot from their right. Streets once filled with marching columns and throaty cadence calls are silent and empty. Seventy-five years of tradition as the biggest Army boot camp in the Northeast formally ends here Wednesday, and Dix begins a new life as a summer and weekend training camp for reservists and National Guard members.

In the 21 weeks from when his unorthodox campaign for President blasted off until it exploded, Ross Perot basically offered voters only himself and an outlet for their anger. Now, as he flirts with reviving his candidacy, he is proffering something else: a bold, and some say drastic, plan to eliminate the Federal budget deficit in five years and reinvigorate the nation's economy.