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Se ee ee eS a eae Sam edhe le oe tne Sette eee & A PENCHANT FOR “DOUBLE DEALING" “What does this have to do with espionage?” you will ask me. Simply this: Burgess and NacLean were certainly veritable, high-caliber spies, who were working almost openly, but they were spies all the same. England called them: the “diplomats who had vanished," the traitors, the renegades, but she never wanted to accept the fact that since 1931, the date of their arrival at Cambridge University, the two men had adhered to the Conmunist Party. . Ostensibly, they had left it one year later, but they had kept Constant, secret contacts with Soviet messengers through the intermediary of a "third wan." It wasmt a liking for money (they never touched a pound for the information that they supplied), nor the ideology of the Party (since they had left the Communist Party) which made then defect, but a penchant for a “double dealing,” and, their belief in their country's rapprochement with the USSR, since they advocated Great Britain's independence vis-a2-vig the United States As paradoxical as Se pe ee eee F oe & we Be See wee ros Se ees ae their attitude might seem, it is the attitude of men who were, first and foremost, British! Let's summarize the events: After more than 20 years in Her Majesty's Service as diplomats (in Cairo, Paris, London, Washington), having bad access to the most vital secrets of the Allies' foreign policy, Burgess and MacLean defected on May 25, 1951. MacLean left his wife, who was several montha pregnant, behind him: another source for scandal. What? A “gentleman” leaves his wife in a situation like that? The English press chased them all over Europe, and the English Government waited for five years before publishing a “white paper,” attempting to evaluate the importance of the whole affair. The disappearance of the two men was hasty: they knew that they had been under surveillance for a long time (their drinking bouts had shocked the Anglo-Saxon diplomatic circles), but it was the telephone call from a “third man" which made then decide to flee on the wery day that an order for the arrest of MacLean was issued. HE KNEW EVERYTHING While all the policemen of the kingdom were hunting for them in planes, they took the boat to Southampton, crossed the English Channel, made the Saint Malo-Rennes trip by taxi, and the Renses-Paris trip by train. From Paris, the train for Bern; there they obtained visas for Prague. “Contacts,” who had ac op