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_——. web _ MOSCOW —_ (UPI) = Harold’ (Kim) Philby, the British d oOuble-a gent who served as a Soviet spy for 30 years before he defected to Russia, broke long months of silence last night and said he would do it again. Philby, 55. said the Depression and the split in British socialism in the 1950s led him to devote his life to “a fight for com- munism.” “THAT'S WHY I did it,” Philby said. “I would do it again tomorrow.” Philby arrived in the Soviet Union in 1963, touching off a security scandal that rocked British intelligence. He had been a respected member of M16 — the British Se- cret Intelligence Service — and had pene- trated every level of the British and Amer- ican intelligence networks over the years aS an undercover espionage agent for the Kremlin. The Cambridge-educated Rriton now holds an important post in the Soviet Intel- ligence Service in Moscow. , HE TOLD HIS story in the first inter- ' view he has granted te Western corre- eee spondents since January, 1963, when he disappeared from Beirut, Lebanon, where he was working as a newspaper corre- spondent and turned up in Moscow. Philby said he was ‘‘never happier, cer- tainly never healthier” and added: “I do miss the casual access to my children, al- though in fact I think I see as much of fhem as I would have had I remained a foreign correspondent." His 24-year old son recently visited him in Moscow. Philby was a correspondent jn Beirut for the London Observer in 1963 when he Jearned the British government had con- crete evidence identifying him as the “third man" in the 1951 defection to Rus- sia by Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess — ‘two other British intelligence agents. PHILBY SAID he is living well in Mos- cow in a large and comfortable apartment supplied by a grateful Kremlin. He ap- peared well, and was dressed neatly in a ussian-made suit. “I was a perfectly genuine socialist up * fo 4931," Philby said. “But after that I be- : Carne disaffected with British politics and set out on another fateful course. “I can’t say that my conversion (in nem muriem ba fixed point | : ‘Would Do It ‘Again’ £ - - Says Double Agent HAROLD (KIM) PHILBY Broke a long silence in time, ” he said. “I had two pretty hard years, from 1931 to 1933, “BUT 1 DO KNOW that after those two years of painful thought, I had made jp my mind by June, 1933. 1 was already a communist. “The background of my thinking wes - the economic crisis (the Depression) and ‘ Massive unemployment in the capitalist world, and the apparent helplessness of ex- isting forces to deal with it. “It was a dismal picture and it was the working man who was the sufferer. “The dilemma of the working class peo- ple was frightfut. “IT myself took part in demonstrations of workers, but it became clear to me thet mere drastic remedies were needed—rem- tdirs outside the framework of of Conver __tional bourgeoise thinking.”