◆ SpookStack

(gmmuntsm theg offered the Gil iausgess he was without vanity. n. During the Sfnish War 1 saw nich Jess of Burgess. who had now honed the BB@ in Bristol. A vernbie thing happened—he had become & ist! Still sneer- ing at the bourgeois Intellectual, he sow vaunted the intensely modern vealism of the Nazi leaders: his admiration for economic ruthless- ness and the short cut to power lad swung him to the opposite extreme. He claimed. to have attended a Nuremberg Rally. Maclean, however, @ strong SUp- porter. of the Spanish Republic, -eemed suddenly to have acqui backbone. morally and physically. His appearance greatly improved, his fat disappeared, and he yecome a personage. In 1935 he had passed into the Foreign Office. an‘ from 1938 he was at the Embassy in Paris. I remember some arguments th him. I had felt a great svm- for the Spanish Anarchists, whom he was extremely evere, as with all the other non- Co:amunist factions. and I detected y his reproaches the famihar unggish tone of the Marxist, the sonance of the “Father Found. I che same time he could switch a magisterial defence of Cham- “clain's foreign policy and seemed Inle to hold she two self-righteous vuluts of View simultaneously. Tis evenings in| Paris were csuaily spent in the Left-Bank ates with a ttle group of hard- vorking painters and sculptors. daring the daytime he. tov, vorked very hard, and it was now hat he began to build up his eputation in the Foreign Office, ind we must remember that it crew very high indeed. Donald had many admirable ‘vottish qualities. He was respon: wie and painstaking. logical and esolute in argument, judicious snd even-tempered and. I should “nagine, an admirable son and vere severe and distinguished. One elt now that he was a rock, that if ane were in trouble he would help ind not just let one down with a eprimand. White Hope of the Foreign Office { REMEMBER, at the beginning of the war, mentioning to one of our most famous diplomatic cpresentatives Donald was a riend of mine @hd receiving a lance of incred@ity. Satisfed nat this indeed] was so, he -splained that + Maclean was \ white hope, a “puer aureus” 4’ the Service whose attain- anteeand responsibilities weres¢he anti-Russian bias “ell_beyond his_years. Unlike 1 think the simplest. distinction between them is that if you had iven Maclean @ letter, he would have sted it. Burgess woul probabl y hate forgotten * it ‘on opened it and then returned ta tell you what you should have said, Burgess and # great friend of his would sometimes stay with a alented and beautiful woman, jovelist Who. in those days,| ‘esembled an irreducible bastion of| he bourgeoisie entirely surround: yy Communists, like the Alcazar ol ‘oledo. ‘One day Burgess’s friend came to her shaken and yet impiessed. Guy naa connaeu to him that ne was not just a member but a secret agent of the Communist Party, and he had then invited him to join in this work. The friend had refused with concern: and for her part the novelist felt that urgess's Fascism was suddenly explained : ;} ase secret agent he must, have been told to investigate the British Fascists and hoped to pass as one. Even so. it was impossible to feel quite certain, for it would be in keeping with Burgess's neurotic power-drive that he should pretend to_be an under-cover man. Years afterwards the movellst was told that he had spent several days wrestling with his conscience at the time of the Soviet-German pact and had decided to give up ¢ whole business. This may well have been true. Mere we have to decide whether Burgess visited Germany es secret Communist, a Nazi sym- pathiser or as an rver for our own Intelligence Services, or—at various levels of his opportunism— as all three. one occasion he took some Boy Scouts over to a rally at Cologne. In_January, 1939, he left the B.B.C., and in the autumn of 1940 he was doing confidential work for the War Office. At this time he was arrested for being drunk in charge of a car and acquitted because he was working fourteen hours @ day and had just 7 been in an alr raid. By January, 1941, he was once more in the B.B.C., and there he remained for three years in European propa- ganda lepart- ments. His posi- tion became one that — greatly appealed to him, involving him eventually = in ti until he was able | to represent the Foreign Office. He helped. for instance, to remove whom we were training for - sabotag We now see the outline of the rsonalities of Burgess i Maclean. On the unstable found§- tions of their adolescence they we! erecting the selves whom would {ike to be, the father figure of their day-dreams, the finished magos. With his black hat and umbrella, his brief-case under, arm--O.H.M.S.—Donaid is “Sir Donald Maclean,” the Tyrrell, the | Eyre Crowe of the second world war, the last great Liberal diplo- matist, terror of the unjust and pope of the weak.“ it wasn't for you, Bir Donald,” ‘snarled Ribbentrop, “we might still have won the peace.” wer dier in . D8.0.. duties. With long stride and hunched shoulders, untidy. chain- smoking, he talks—walks and talksy —while the whote devilish simpli- city of his plan unfolds and the men from MI. this and M.I. that. S.1S. an O.E., listen dumb- founded. “My Ged, Brilliant, believe you're right—it could be done.” e Brigadier looked at his watch and a chilled blue eye fixed the chief of the Secret Service. “At this moment, sir,” and there was pack-lce in ‘his’ voice, “my chaps are doing it.” Burgess’s War-Time Life 'N 1940 Donald Mactean had mar- ried in Parls an American girl as delightful as her name, Melinda Marling, who bore him two, sons. She brought both sweetness and understanding into his life. Guy Burgess, however, as the war went on. led a more troubled existence. A new friend whom he had made was taken prisoner-of-war, and it was noted that he had become much more Insulting and destruc- tive when he drank-—he seemed to hit on the unforgivable thing to say to everyone. His mental sadism: which sometimes led to hts getting knocked out, did not exclude great kindness to those in trouble. Above all, he disliked anyone to get out of his clutches; he was an affectionate bully capable of acts of generosity, like & magnate of the Dark Ages. ‘At the same time he was drink- ing and living extravagantly. He was fond of luxury and display, of suites at Claridges and fast 's which he drove abominably. fe. belonged to the febrile war-tine café-society of the temporary Cig] faclean to e secre! liaison work with $Af@-soe! , or highly | Sectei-ihdel of we permanent.