◆ SpookStack

‘might have been only a “within his capacity.” ‘There 15] thing of hindsight ‘in tiis| apdlogia. Some hindsight also co Anyb the account of Mrs Maclean fin Mitzerland. Would it not be faifly true to say that British security was deceived? Tt thought that Mrs Maclean could not be sympathetie towards a husband who had not treated her over well ; and besides, she an tarstei cor) was no Watch on her, Call it “ola school. tie” or what. you will, there was great reluctance to believe the worst of these twa, Fer this most people who look at the evidence calmly will not be dis- posed to be highly censoricug of the Foybign Office. It was natural encugh if his. colleagues should be Joth to sugpect one of themselves, a man lof eréat personal attraction, bearing En honoured name, He had his defe¢ts of ,character, but he seemed to be overeoming them. What we do tot gel from the White Paper is any hint offthe evidence on which the security inquiry was based, It was. investigat- ing a leakage that. took place “some years” beforé 1949; this casual indiseretion, Clearly security had not the remotest idea that in the archives of Moscow was a whole Maclean-Burgess. sub-depart- met under the busy Kislytsin. the general question of-the treachedy of Wlaclean and Burgess there is not much new to say. That they had Communist leanings at Cambridge i thd early thirties means little, Those were the days of the Popular Frbnt, of Bpain, of the Left Book Club, Cbm-- munism was an epidemic disease and; with most of its sufferets.—and from all appearances with Maclean and Burgess—it quickly passed. We shall: never know why, lke Alger Hiss, these two men developed the strange Eiibeiieinded them in the late forties; fe feed documents to the Russians. We do not, for instance, know when. this spying is supposed to have begun ; we shall probably find that it was during | the war when the Grand“Alliance was in being and everybody was prepared to think so well of our Eastern ally. ich is net a case of a cere bt being on trial, but of two clever] but wrpng. The new security chbeks adopted by the Foreign Office in 1951 are all. very well in their way, but. if aréally clever man wants to be a spy a check on his antecedents and asso- ciates is not necessarily a sure means of discovery. (What, for instance, of Burgess, who played about with the, Anglo-German Club?) No doubt, there is much to be said in censure of the rather wild life in which Burgess| and Maclean sometimes indulged. It/ should be a warning to others in the Foreign Servite. But we must remember too that Alger Hiss was impeccably well-eonducted, There is ino clear moral to be drawn except that the Foreign Office must look anxiously to its standards of efficiency, conduct, and alertness. It witl take it a leng tone to recover fram the effects. of this terrible ekpo- sure, and the Government will do well not to ride off in fany ' camplacency, a Ce Cee