VISAS CANCELLED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 7

VISAS CANCELLED

BRITISH AND FRENCH DELEGATES AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE ACTION BY USA EMBASSY LONDON, Mar. 22. The American Embassy in London to-day granted a visa to Mr Will Olaf Stapledon, British philosopher and psychologist, to enter the United States for the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, beginning in New York on Friday. The conference is sponsored by the United States National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions. The Embassy yesterday revoked the visas issued earlier to Dr Stapledon and three other British delegates to the conference. Those whose visas have been withdrawn are Professor J. D, Bernal, Dr J. G. Crowther, and the novelist, Louis Golding. Dr Crowther, a scientist and the author of many books on history and the social relations of science, had lectured on scientific subjects in several'countries. and during the war he was director of the science department of the British Council. The only one of the British delegates who has been allowed a visa, Dr Will Olaf Stapledon, is a 62-year-old doctor of philosophy. In a letter to the Manchester Guardian after he attended the Wraclaw conference Dr Stapledon wrote: “Even allowing that our press is prejudiced against Russia, I am reluctantly forced to believe that there is a grave evil in the Russian State.” Simultaneously, the United States Embassy in Paris confirmed that visas had been denied three French delegates, including a Roman Catholic priest. The French delegates concerned are: Abbe Jean Boulier Madame Eugene Cotton, president of the pro-Commu-nist Women’s International Democratic Federation, and Paul Eluard, a Communist poet. The only foreign delegates of whose arrival the conference sponsors now feel certain are, with one exception, 23 delegates from Iron Curtain countries. The exception is Dr R. E. Armattoe, of the Lomeshire Research Centre for anthropology and race biology in West Africa. Protests Voiced Professor Bernal, Dr Crowther, and Louis Golding held a press conference to protest against the cancellation of their visas. Golding, who wrote “ Magnolia Street” and several other successful books, said: “We can only assume that the revocation has something to do with the Wraclaw Conference in Poland last autumn.” He said they were asked at the United States Embassy if they had attended, and when they said they had their visas were cancelled. “ I am completely nonpolitical, and am entirely a creative artist interested in peace,” he said. “ I had received my visa only two hours before it was cancelled.” The film actress, Patricia Burke, daughter of Marie Burke, whose visa was also cancelled, said: “ I am not a Communist. I have no political feelings whatsoever, but I have a passionate love and desire for peace.” Reuter points out that one of the scholars who had his visa cancelled, Professor Bernal, Cambridge crystallographer, was the scientific brain behind D Day. Julian Huxley once called Bernal the “ wisest man in the world.” Forty-eight-year-old Bernal, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society, said last year: “The slowness of sharing atomic energy is the major cause for the continued and dangerously increasing tension in the world.” Found “ Inadmissible ” In Washington the State Department said the three British delegates had been found to be “inadmissible,” according to the immigration laws of the United States. A State Department spokesman declined to say whether the British delegates were regarded as Communists, but he added that the department had similarly denied entry to delegates from France, Italy, and Latin America because they were known or believed to be Communists. He said delegates from Russia and other Iron Curtain countries were being admitted to the United States because they were official delegates of their respective Governments. Those from Britain, France, Italy and Latin America were not official Government delegates. Many Communists and Communist sympathisers were invited to New York for the conference on peace, and the United States State Department says it “entertains no illusions about the way Communists will try to manipulate the congress.” It was learned in London, says Reuter, that the United States State Department has revoked the visas issued to the four Italians, including a son of the Italian Prime Minister, who were to have attended the conference.