NEWS OF THE WEEK
OF all the dangers inherent in the McCarran- Walter immigration and nationality Act there is only one that the British public can do something about. It can refuse to allow this extension into the outside world of one of the most stupid and repellent of the devices of present-day American politics to be accepted as a matter of course. Already the ostentatiously tactful behaviour of the official who was given free quarters on the 'Queen Mary' in order that he might interrogate the crew, and the efforts of the shipping companies to make the best of a bad job—with the obvious aim of reducing inter- ference with their business—have begun to dull the edge of the perfectly natural indignation which must be felt at this latest public expression of Senator McCarran's attitude to foreigners. The protests of a number of Governments, including the British, at the interference with their nationals that this American Act involves were completely justified. So are the criticisms levelled at it by the more sensible Americans, includ- ing most notably, Senator Lehman, the former Governor of New York. For besides being a nuisance, to non-Americans and a handicap to all believers in the ultimate capacity of the united Stater to exercise with responsibility the duties of a leader of the free world it is a rank bad law. Many of its auses are based on the assumption that a foreigner or an Immigrant American must be regarded as a danger to the State ntil he is proved otherwise; it ignores some of the essential rules of diplomatic immunity; and it will not work—for no Communist would hesitate to tell a lie in order to get past the inspectors and Communist ideas cannot be kept out of Americans' heads by Acts of Congress. No false delicacy thout criticising the laws of another country must be allowed :o prevent non-Americans from speaking their minds in this nterference with their liberty.
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