ARREST EFFECTED

Taranaki Daily News, 14 March 1935, Page 5

ARREST EFFECTED

YOUNG BRITISH AUTHOR VISIT TO UNITED STATES THREAT OF DEPORTATION QUESTION OF COMMUNISM By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Rec. 7.10 p.m. Washington, March 12. The Government has ordered and effected the arrest of Mr. Evelyn John Strachey, the British author, claiming that he entered the United States by means of false and misleading statements and that since he arrived he had declared himself to be a Communist. The Federal Bureau of Immigration announced that the circumstances it mentioned had rendered Mr. Strachey mandatorily deportable under the immigration laws. . Because of the prominence of Mr. Strachey many observers here considered that the projected action might grow into an international incident. Colonel D. W. Mac Cormack, Immigration Commissioner, announced that the warrant was issued by his Chicago agents, who planned to serve it on Mr. Strachey at Glencoe, Illinois, where the author was scheduled to lecture. Later advice from Chicago states that Mr. Strachey was arrested there. He was later released without bond to. appear before the immigration authorities on Wednesday. . ■ In a statement to the Associated Press at Chicago Mr. Strachey said: “The charge as read to me in the warrant is absurd. I am not a member of the Communist Party and therefore I will firmly deny that I entered the country through mis-statements. I have never advocated the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence. I never advocate anything. All the political talking 1 do I do in my own country, Britain. Here American citizens invite me to lecture on the politics and economics of the day from an informative standpoint, not from that of political beliefs.”

Mr. Strachey is a prominent member of the Socialist movement in Britain. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and early showed Socialist leanings. He edited several journals which supported the movement and unsuccessfully contested several elections as a Labour candidate.