CASE OF FRANK MUMME

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26512, 29 August 1951, Page 7

CASE OF FRANK MUMME

‘More Instructive Than

Ton Of Argument’ (Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, August 27. “The simple story of Frank Mumme is more instructive than a ton of argument.” comments the “Sydney Morning Herald” in a leading article. “The democratic world has become familiar with the disipusionment of famous men, and the army of lesser intellectuals who, in many countries, turned to Communism as offering the best hope of man's salvation. Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Sildne, Richard Wright, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender were among those who went to the promised land and learnt a bitter lesson. In place of equality they found privilege; in place of freedom thev found tyranny; in place of trust they found universal suspicion; and in blace of brotherly love they found a bitter, all-consuming hate.

“The experience of a naive believer like Frank Mumme from our own part of the great world helps to bring the truth more vividly home to us. It would have been different if thia humble worker had been heralded like the Red Dean of Canterbury or a Communist leader of an Australian union. Instead, in an excess of childish faith he put the Red comradeship to an unrehearsed test and found the affectionate understanding of a cobra.”

Mrs Maclean Returns to Villa.—A Foreign Office spokesman said in London yesterday that Mrs Melinda Maclean, wife of the missing British diplomat, Mr Donald Maclean, has returned to the villa at St. Maxime, in the south of France, from which she disappeared last week.—London, August 28.