PRESS PUBLICITY DEPLORED

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27150, 21 September 1953, Page 9

PRESS PUBLICITY DEPLORED

“Citizens Still Free To Go Abroad”

LONDON, September 18. “The Times,” in a leading article today, said that it was unpardonable to place Mrs Maclean again in the heartless and unrelenting glare of public curiosity. Mrs Maclean had committed no crime, “The Times” said. She would have committed none even if she had, in fact, gone with her children to join her husband should he still be alive. British citizens were still free privately to go abroad, even if they should cross the Iron Curtain.

It was the duty of the Foreign Office, no doubt, to pursue any clues to the earlier disappearances. It was the right of nobody, on the facts so far, to present the chase that was now going on officially and unofficially as a criminal pursuit. “The Times” said Mrs Maclean had a powerful claim to general sympathy. For long, harassing months after her husband went away she was pitilessly dogged by would-be detectives. That alone was sufficient reason for her to resolve to live with her three young childrerf abroad. If she had now, by some means, made contact with her husband, it would be altogether understandable. There was, of course, the possibility that she, too, had been snatched away by trickery. “The British Government has a responsibility, which they cannot shirk, for the safety of British citizens abroad, and the anxiety for this young woman and her children is real and widespread. Even so, Mrs Maclean’s private life is wholly her own affair. As the Foreign Office has publicly said, she is a free agent. She has done no wrong and she has been sorely abused. To help her is one thing; to place her again in the heartless and unrelenting glare of public curiosity is another and is unpardonable.”