"So?" demanded the President, spreading his hands. "They don't like us anyhow, do they? Or the competition—or each other, for that matter."
"That's not the point. We have to feel as though our dollars are buying friends, whether or not it's true."
"Well, then, what can we do?" said the President. "No leaflets, no aggression. We couldn't maybe seed their clouds and make it rain on them?"
"And get sued by other countries for artificially creating low-pressure conditions that, they could claim, robbed them of their rightful rainfall? We've had it happen right here between our own states."
"Maybe we should just forget about it, then?"
"Never! It must be demonstrated to the world that—"
"We could take a full-page ad in the New York Times."
"It just isn't done that way," the Secretary protested.
"Why not? It'd save money, wouldn't it? A simple ad like, 'Hey, there, Certain Powers! Lookie what we got!' What'd be wrong with that?"
"They'd accuse us of Capitalistic Propaganda, that's what! And to get the egg off our face, we'd have to demonstrate the plane and—"