PRESS COMMENT IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27151, 22 September 1953, Page 9

PRESS COMMENT IN BRITAIN

LONDON, September 20. The “Daily Express” in a front page story says that the disappearance of Mrs Melinda Maclean has greatly disturbed Britain’s defence chiefs. "They think that its timing may be linked with the atom bomb test due to take place in Australia within a fortnight,” the newspaper says. “Mrs Maclean knows no atom secrets. If she had joined her husband behind the Iron Curtain there is every reason to believe that her motives for going are simply those of a loyal wife. Yet the defence men fear she may be serving a cleverly organised Communist plot. Her disappearance may be part of a long-sustained drive to B revent an atomic partnership between ritain and America, thereby forcing both countries to squander their resources in duplicating costly experiments.

“If British secret service men could not keep adequate tabs on the wife of a man they were anxious to trace, what chance have they of coping with professional spies?” asks the newspaper. “That is the kind of question which doubting American Senators are now asking.”