Lessons from Treachery
The German-born Klaus Fuchs having pleaded guilty to betraying atomic secrets to Russia, no one can suggest that the sentence of fourteen years' imprisonment passed on him was excessive. The case raises many questions which demand further consideration. The Lord Chief Justice certainly went unduly far in suggesting that the admission of political refugees to this country should be suspended altogether ; Dr. Alan Nunn May was not a political refugee or a foreigner. But whether there was not laxity in assigning a recently naturalised German to a post which gave him access to some of the most important secrets in the world is a matter which must be investigated to the depths ; the harm this case has done in America cannot yet be measured. In another category altogether is the examination of the problem of what it is in Communism which can so establish a hold on an intelligent and normally moral human being as to override every loyalty and principle by which he was once controlled. Is it abstract Marxism ? Is it Russia, with the labour camps, the secret police and all the apparatus of totalitarian tyranny ? There is an unsolved problem here.
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