◆ SpookStack

Sob aakende teh dea kd TOT Wad ~~ mever that to anyone, not even to his wife —a fact { 7p which night ge-unmnotited only in a secret service where amicable disengagement is also good security. But one had a drink with Philby at the house of friends. Be- cause he was the personification of the alliance, Her Majesty's representative on matters “most secret,” one greeted him in the offif of the boss rather more cheerily than one might greet a fellow member of “the firm.” One was guarded of course. The boss would raise the subject about which the representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service had a “need to know.” Still, one thought that Philby was on friendly terms with all the senior partners, that he had more access to the care- fully compartmentalized secrets of the various divisions ad es ae of the firm than any of the firm’s junior executives. So where does the mind come out? It is at last forced to face an abasing truth: that it is possible for a man to accept from those with whom he walks all that they can give in affection, well-being, education, trust and honor, and in return lie to them, steal from them, betray them, even murder them, Now, in 1968, efter Hiss, after Nunn May, after Fuchs and Blake, after Burgess and Maclean — who play secondary roles in The Philby Conspiracy — the case of H. A. R. (Kim) Philby is stilt shocking. It is shocking because Philby had none of the weak- nesses or oddities which might cause acquaintance to pause on the brink of confidence. He was not a drunk (Maclean) or homosexual (Burgess and Biake). He was not an adolescent egomaniac (Nunn May and Fuchs), He was not even passionate about austerity as Colonel Penkovskiy seemed passionate about luxury. Nor did Philby have any of the exouses by which the Thomas ¥. Braden worked for the C1.A. from 1950 to 1934, He is now editor and publisher of the Oceanside, ufo fornia Blade-Tribune, oe pociologist or the psychologist will explain our mis- behavior. He was not poor, not deformed, not » mem- ber of any group which other groups look upon as | Fo we. upyerw teal inferior. But Philby is shocking for a more important reason. He is shocking because he grew up in a society which tolerates rebellion, even io some degree respects it. He betrayed this society to another which punishes re- bellion with death. It is tempting to compare Philby with Penkovskiy. Both were intelligence officers, though on opposite sides. Both were traitors to their govern- ments. But the temptation must be put aside. Penkovskiy rebelled in favor of conscience; Philby turned over his conscience to anti-conscience. Philby grew to manhoed at Cambridge as a student of economics and history during a time — the Thirties — when economics was not working very well and his- tory seemed (as perhaps it does to the current college . generation) to grow gloomier as it came closer. The authors of The Philby Conspiracy quote John Maynard Keynes, whose lectures the young Philby most have attended. Keynes deplored the tendency towards Com- munism among the young of that Cambridge era and attributed it to a “recrudescence of the strain of Puritan- ism in our blood, the zest to adopt a painful solution bée- cause of its painfulness.” But ene can find little of the Puritan rebel in any other aspect of Philby’s career, at Cambridge or later. Surely this university student who campaigned for ‘Labour with a speech about “the heart of England” beating “not in stately homes but in the factories and on the farms” would also have given thought to the place of the rebel in his society. He would have con- sidered the challenge rebellion creates, or the changes it frequently brings. There is a place for the rebel i free society. Philby cannot be granted that status. was a traitor to conscience as weil as to state. So much for the shock imposed by the wan. There are two more shocks presented by The Philby Con- spiracy. Let us take them not in order of importance, but as they come. The first is the shock of seeing the society of Great Britain as it took Philby and his co-conspirators to its bosom, nartured them, protected them, drew them closer and refused to repel them in the face of obvious warn- ings that they were sucking its life blood. Maclean, let it be repeated, was a drunk. Not merely a map who had one too many too often, but a gutter drunk, an angry, brawling drunk, a drank found in the morning on the floor of other people's apartments. Burgess, as i remember him in Washington, wore fur on his shoes and talked about his “boy friends.” But he was not just effeminate. He was a police-blotter homé"™ sexual who had an openly avowed fancy for collecti whips. And Philby? Well, Philby was a model of the circum- spect intelligence officer. But he had told a few people at Cambridge and later that (Continued on page 3) op Me . . a ee ee ee re ee a ners a a ee