An Anthology of Pros

Priests and kings, commissars and parliaments have all tried to put the world's oldest profession out of business. None succeeded. Some sociologists, however, have gamely predicted that any nation that could eliminate unemployment would also eliminate prostitution. Girls only sold their bodies, the argument went, because there was no market for their other skills.

The Mobile Squad. But as prosperous, labor-short Western Europe last week prepared for the summer flood of tourists, it was glaringly apparent that the sociologists had, as usual, guessed wrong. Instead of vanishing, or even declining in numbers, prostitutes swarmed in every European capital, from Copenhagen to Rome and from Budapest to London. The European economic miracle did in fact take some prostitutes off the streets--but only to put them in cars. The "klaxon girls'' of Milan cruise Cathedral Square in Lancias and Dauphines, discreetly tooting horns and flashing their headlights to attract men's attention. The latest fashion in Copenhagen has been created by "van-prostitutes," who cruise the streets in small trucks equipped with beds.

In Rome, the first green leaves last week peeped along the Lungotevere, and flowers sprouted behind sidewalk tables on the Via Veneto. Spring had come, and the ladies could not be far behind. As early as 9 a.m., tight-skirted hustlers prowl the square before Rome's modernistic railway station; by noon, they are ensconced on the benches of the Pincio Garden, casting provocative glances over the tops of sunglasses at passersby; by dinnertime, they begin congregating near Rome's biggest supermarket alongside Olympic Village and beside the vast ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. At 9 o'clock, on the corner of Via Sistina near the Piazza di Spagna. the prettiest prostitutes appear, dressed not as professional hookers but as sweet little schoolgirls.

In Paris, the police have succeeded in driving most brothels underground, but an estimated 20,000 prostitutes are still available to tourists and domestic males. The most expensive (around $20) work the Champs-Elysees, and in a declining order of price and pulchritude come the girls of the Madeleine, the Gare Montparnasse. Place Pigalle and Les Halles. Britain's Street Offenses Act, passed in 1959, has ended the processions of undulating whores that used to fill up Piccadilly Circus, Bayswater Road and Hyde Park. Borrowing a trick from their sisters in Amsterdam, many London prostitutes now sit at the upper windows of scruffy Soho flats for which they pay as much as $150 per week.

Upstairs Bar. Even the Communist bloc has its problems with prostitution, while indignantly denying that it exists. In Hungary, Budapest's few whores are often booked up nights in advance by visiting Austrian and West German businessmen. "Elisabeth of the Duna," a witty little Magyar who adorns the upstairs bar of the Hotel Duna, is so famous that guards on the Austrian border ask travelers, "Have you anything to declare? Did you see Elisabeth?"

Though flourishing as never before in Western Europe, the world's oldest profession is also continuing to take its accustomed toll. In Italy, the number of reported cases of venereal disease jumped from 1,679 in 1958 to 16,395 last year. In France, during five years of prosperity, venereal disease skyrocketed by 385%. The pros put the blame on the semipros. the growing number of young women who work days as secretaries or salesclerks (at wages ranging from $120 to $150 per month) and take to the streets at night and remain largely unknown even to the police. At week's end in Paris, women were flocking to movie theaters to watch absorbedly a new documentary film on prostitution and, perhaps, pick up a few pointers.

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