◆ SpookStack

: WJ the case of Otto John, the 2 Ger- man intelligence chief who disap- peared eastward last summer. The connecting link is Guy Burgess, who worked on “highly confidential as- ‘ gignments” on the BBC foreign. propagdinda desk as well ag for the Foreign and War Offices between 1944 and 1946, when Otle John held jobs with the same organizations in ihe same departments. Four other seein under Burgess, left the’ West ta ac- cept high positions behind the lroa Curtain--Baron von und zu Putlitz, Karl von Schnitzler, Eberhard Knoe- ‘bel, Doctor Honigmann. The people who might be able to tell us more _ about the connections hetween Mr. Burgess, Dr. Jolin and the other members of the British propaganda team evidently choose fo remain ~ silent. ». Me be ee . “ At any raté> the details of Mac- Lean’s and. John’s digappearance are strikingly alike. Both men held high + and confidential Government posi- tions. Both niade no secret of their opposition to the policies of their governments, Both were highly in- telligent and emotionally uristable, ~ with tendencies toward homosexual- _ ity and frequent public intoxication, ' Both left with a casual farewell to thei¢ wives. MacLean said: “1 am not going far; I shall be back soon.” John said: “I am just going down for a quick beer.” Both took no docu- ments with them but their passports. Both were accompanied by men now known as Communist agents: Mae- cen Lean by Burgess, John by Dr. Wolf- gang Woblgemut. Both bought return-tickets before their departure. The list of such parallels could be ‘extended. s The tentative explanation of the 4 MacLean case offered hy Mr. Hoare is appatently identical with that of ‘the Johg case at which this reporter arrived while covering the case, Both men, it would seem, had heen in- volved in Communist underground activities, but in the course of a nervous breakdown (which happened % ‘ 4 F April 4, 1955 German refugees besides Jolin, who / oe \ worked at the time in the sarne leam to both with the same symplor , threatened to be useless, if not dan- gerous, to the Communists. At this moment, 28 Commuatst agent. ace queinted with each. pressured or INackmailed: him inte going east. There reviding another nvystery which hes not been solved, and. which Mr. Hoare hardly seems to explore: What happened io MI 5, the famed . British Intelligence Service? Accord- ing to Mr. Hoare’s report, Mr. Mac- Lean’s paat and present Jeanings, actions and associalions of a-personal and political” nature- would have made hint a security and loyalty risk in this country; in England, there was apparently ‘not the slightest sus- picion against the man. The inystery ‘is: Has the British Intelligence Serv- ica also disappeared? The long list of disappearing experte—from Bruno Pontecorvo down to Burgess and ean—makes one wonder. or Teal Stendhal’s Self-Portrait | The Private Diaries of Stendhal. Ed, and trans. by Rolbsprt- Sage. Doubleday. 570 pp, $4.50. THERE 18 something’ so artless ard engaging about Stemplbal’s diaries that ane reads them glmost without drawing a breath Begun in 101, when Marie-Henri Reyle was only 18 (and Jong before he had completed the metantorphosis which was. to bring forth the novelist Stendhal), they are an odyssey of self-discovery by a youth who grasped at life with eaver hands. For fourteen years, these notebooks traveled with him everywhere, and he poured into them his impressions of evetything he did, his conunents on thea countries he vised, his designs gn the women he desired of loved. lis eriticisiis of the books he read, thd plays he saw. adding every now ahd agai: pet- spicacious critical evaluations of his own successes and blunders. It is _all there, down to the last, most_inti- mate detail, The self-partrail wHfich emerges Is cerlainly not a flattering ore, but, here is the man as he was and saw himself: thick-set, impeccably dressed, living on eredit, intelligent, analytical, but also impetuous, self- ish, conceited, insecure, grasping, frivolous, and often downright silly. Young Beyle wrote his journal for hunself alone: “It isan anatomical work... solely for’ ny enlighten- ment. | was born violent; in order Reviewed by - Heéléne Cantarella lo mend my ways, T have been coun- seled to know myself.” Through this analysis of his own.“intimate eons sciousness,” he haped alse io gather the data on the hunian heart which he felt he needed to become a comic hard. and “successor to Molitre”—an ambition he was never to realize. Never above pulling strings to gain advancement, Beyle used his friends and relatives to obtain cozy little sinecures in the Napoleonic ad- ministration. The impact of Tualy on the naive Henri, fresh from the constricted provincial life af his native Greioble where he had long chafed under the regime. of “that bastard” his father, was permanent. Italy gave him what he had always sought: new sensations in love and att, a new awareness of music. Wherever he traveled—and he served in various official capacities in many of the major cities of Eur repe--he observed intently the pen: ple ahaut him, drew portraits in acid of those who disliked him, yoraciously aud widely, discussed endlessly, spent almost every eve- ning in some theater or opera house. courted, seduced and lost innumer- able women, and evolved “heylism.” his personal system of philosophy. based on the “pursuit of happiness” through love, work and energelic read COMTINVER ON NEWT PALE Ff