The Vanished Diplomatists
Among the mass of possibilities surrounding the disappearance of the two Foreign Office officials is the possibility that the incident is of no great importance. Mr. Burgess was not a senior official and there was a doubt whether he would continue in the Foreign Service. Mr. Maclean was head of the Anferican Department, but in the House of Commons on Monday the Foreign Secretary said that that position was not quite as important as Mr. Eden had made it sound. But neither these facts nor Mr. Morrison's dislike of the publicity that the case has received can alter the fact that the news of the two men's dis- appearance has stirred up a fever of speculation which is an important phenomenon in its own right. It has shown just how sensitive to such events the public had been rendered by the long series of cases of treachery, by such individuals as Fuchs and Nunn May and Pontecorvo, of disappearances through the Iron Curtain and of American spy hunts. The excitement, once released, has easily been sustained by the almost complete absence of certainty concerning the movements of the two men after they left St. Malo on May 26th. The statement by a Foreign Office spokesman that no theory is being excluded means that the public at large is in respectable company in its search for a hypothesis which fits all the facts. Unfortunately each of the most popular theories fails to fit at some point. That the two men were making for the other side of the Iron Curtain, that they were being blackmailed for some indiscretions in their private lives (a form of pressure not unknown to Communists), that they had been kidnapped, or that they were merely two overwrought men trying to get away from all their cares—all the theories are imperfect at some point. Only one conclusion seems to be .reasonably safe, and that is that the longer they remain .untraced the stronger will become the suspicion that Communist influences are at work. It is becoming increasingly difficult for them to remain under cover unless they are on the other side of the Iron Curtain or are receiving a great jeal of assistance in keeping their whereabouts hidden.
