PETROL
CHURCHILA WINS
FLER
"But, Vera, surely we're being a little premature burning the family
ration books."
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1951.
Why Britain
Britain [Russia lies third in
The race
THE RUSSIANS
KNEW THROUGH
explodes Dr.PONTECORVO
second
WHAT GENERAL
A-bomb MORGAN FOUND
OUT
for That Big Bang
EFORE someone starts
up
the legend that Professor Bruno Pon- tecorvo built Russia's new
atom bomb, let me point out
by
CHAPMAN PINCHER
that Soviet scientists staged nearly two years ago
Who he
of proved mand.
efficiency in com-
U.S. alom bosses can fire fools and pay big money to ge: big men. In the British profet fools cannot be fired. Civi Service procedure makes it almos.
An atom explosion a year saw there—or Ta.her did not possible for extra money to be before the ex-Italian profes- ste must have shaken him. Sir offered to tempt men from in-
Frederick now knows why no dustry sor fled from Britain.
plant has yet been installed.
secret
Lord Cherwell Jells me h Pontecorvo my have
The Supply Ministry planners the Government seems to have although given the Russians some of have not yet even decided what ignored his waming,
the House of Lords supported Britain's
"know
making uranium Pieds for
his mation of censure Mr how." But he is more likely 235 will be used there.
Attlee seems satisfied that thr have delighted them with
The outlook Le not much British project cannot be better his disclosures of the brighter at Sellafield, the run
of Government's other atom ex- The extent astonishing Eritain's "don't know-how." plosive plant in West Cumber-
years' effort. 4. li cost £38,000,000. Britain is lying a bad third.
how
land.
Russia's latest bomb lest Two big uranium furnaces underlines the fact that have been built there But they after five
intensive cannot be put into production until a plant to extract the ex- plosive from them is cumple ec
A hint as to how Jong this will take is given by the fuc: that the atom bomi tes.ing ground now being bulli in Aus- tralia will not be ready for about 18 months.
Shaken?
XACTLY how tac We
So by the time we test aur we first atomic bomb we shall be behind How being tä- about three and a half years plained to the new boss of the behind Russia atom project, D-Day plaunc General Sir Frederick Murgan who is taking his flat tour of The Government's six huge a'em stations.
The other day he visited the eranduma 235 plent at Copen- Iniest, Cheshire, which was begun.
The astonishing story
R
Casa
of the 'Lost' Soviet war brides
USSIA'S Secret Police are now ready
oľ
to eloer their thick
dossiers
ן,
the The Soviet Wor Brides pe of the mort shameful episodes in history
Anglo-Sevins
post war relations.
th
by RICHARD JONES
Former Editor of British Aly, the magazine the Foreign Office published in Moscow.
Reenuse they married foreigners anel Branly re- their
were their OWB
renounce
they
That is the meaning be rand
the hind
werk's bizarre leashands
the draised by
happeninges outside
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, families,
when Mrs Iraida Rickill
<1 the
British
of their Some were turned nu harist some lourd sanctuary the Soviet-born wife of ILT! e-it basement of the Pres official ai the Science Department Museum, London, was
kid. Boba sy.
Two were permittee napped and later The to stay en wih
me thers. leased."
No Russian wald dare th...
bang They to them. from employment by any Safe agency and deprived of all evid rights although they were 10. garded as Soviet crizeus by he law.
a
Only ene fride is AS free, aut she is virtually prisoner in the British Em bassy where she lives with her six-year-old son.
There were five of the original 15 war brides stil!
at liberty in Moscow when of the Press Department ensured A 34-hour guard on the gates I arrived there in October that they did not leave the 1949 to take over the premises unnoticed.
editorship of the Foreign
When they went outside with a member of the diplomatic saff
Theroes firms the Ameninas and Sembassies revived them.
Tine and agam the M V 12 ausfied the offer is break
Sometimes the girls moale. was a request to ince Outside They did not walk to the trap
storic
For more than five years the Sursive in fear They ha
vanish over- see other wives light, some sent to Siberia.
I was here when the first of the live brides was kidnapped in June last year. Mrs Burke ad gone to spend the night at the home of Mrs Bolton's mother.
She left the house unperom-
paned the following morning, and was bundled into a car and
aken to the Lublanka Prison
Alemp's by embassy officials
Nobody could find out on what and her mother to see her falled.
had been taken in.) charge she Nobody has heard of her since.
The four remaining bride. raren moved outside their quarters for
Office's Russian magazine. they were tailed by plain-clothes were terrified. They
British Ally.
men
If they received callers the six months. visitors had to show their identity documens to the militiaman on duty,
bassy whe diplumalle status.
Tict enje.
It was the moment for which the M. V. D's agens had been walling.
I was her bro her who be Frayed her. As she was leaving a performance of the ballet at the Bolshoi he pointed her out 1c #squad plain-clothes men They pushed or into the tax: a nich her escort had called and
trove off
Mrs Rickitis's brother did n meet her there by chance, He was there by arrangement with the police-it was the penal y he had to pay for his five year's failure to make her agree to
vorce her British husband. Nobody who has me Iraida Rickitis, and I knew her wet can doubt 1hali
was und dire threats that she denied sh was ever kidnapped
Her friends, and they wer many in the foreign community in Moscow, know that the sory she told at an obviously arranged interview with the Western errespondents does.'t ring true.
But the M. V. D. have wo. She half their battle with her. will no longer have any contact with the world outside her mother's home. Her brother, Sa ardent Communist, is ber guard.
She will not be allowed any foreign vistiors. She is under close bouse arrest, though that is i got the way the M. V. D. describe
I knew them all, shared
Then one night in March this their fears and their hopes, Inside they were spied on by year Mrs Henderson weat out-
the Russian staff. Two of them side. Mrs Bolton disappeared a it and occasionally acted E
were employed as telephonists, few days later. Neither has She can easily be transferred, their escort. Only with often, after mysterious telephone been heard of since.
as other Sovie: brides have, to a someone enjoying diploma- calls, I would find them in
Embassy officials were snubbed concentration camp without any- tic privileges could they tears. They would never divulge by the police authorities; told it one being the wiser.
was no their business.
The other night I spoke on the move outside the gates of the identy of the caller or the
messages.
After these three disappear d. telephone to a fricna in Moscow their homes.
Occasionally plain-clothes de- Mrs Hall and Mrs Rickliis were who gave this rcassuring Now that there is little, lectives called on them. It was given quarters in an annexe in message: "Nobody will break
Ira's
She's tough and Epirit, if any, hope left for their after one of these visits that two the Brkish Embassy grounds.
Outside the embassy of the brides. Mrs Lola Burke reprieve it is possible to tell wite of an Ealing bank emcial, uniformed guards reinforced by all the time,
gates will stand up, as she has done to any brow- the full story of their grim and Mrs Rosa Henderson, whose plain-clothes men also kept a beating." ordeal at the hands of the husband is now in Canada, at- constant watch on their move Then came this ominous" re- M.V.D. the Secret Police tempted suicide.
minder from behind the fron ments. of Bo'h took an overdose
Recently Mrg Rickitts made Curtain: "Don't forget this is aspirin and were found un the falal mistake of visiting the being recorded." and the subjec: conscious by another wife, then re wih a member of the changed to the weather.
-- an ordeal which they bore for six years.
NANCY.
BALL PARK
Knot So Smart
?
BUSHMILL
WHY ARE
You WATCHING THE GAME LIKE THAT?
By Ernie Bushmiller
I'M
NOT TALL ENOUGH. TO"}} LOOK THROUGH
THIS KNOT- HOLE FROM THE GROUND
Lords know
FTER visiting U.S. atom
plants gauge that we are seven to ten years behind the Americans.
Americans are not su sny They believe that with more freedom for enterprise and with more competition they could move even faster,
Their idea
bold plan to fncrease com petition s being put into action.....
Privale firms propuse to build. own, and perale atom plants designed to proditve usable heal or electric power They hope
to sell this power to moustry and homes.
Cust of producing atom power would probably 12 higher Than The cost uf generating electricity from coal. firms have a brillian offset this.
But the
idea to
Their plants would be designed to produce atom explosive as a Why has Britain jogged on by-product to the generation of to slowly?
power. By selling this explosive to the Government for use in Lord Cherwell, Winston weapons they will recoup thein- Churchill's wartime adviser, selves for any loss made ርጎ pinpointed the cause in the selling cheap power.
House of Lords four months ago The Americans have not got Speaking for hundreds of other better scientific brains than the scientists he urged the Govern- British. It is American methods ment to take the atom project which have sui the United out of the hands of the civ. States so far ahead servants.
We should rooy these methods without a day's delay it we are Bureaucrats may be able to
not to remain also runs in jhe move qulekly when under the "big bongs" race. results-or-else compulsion that
vxists in Russia, but not in democracy.
This has been fully recognised in America
"I 1ke U.S. alun project free-enterprisers outnumber civi servants by 16 to 1," said Mrj Gordon Dean, dapper chief of the U.S.
Atom Commission when we talked in Washington.
In Britain the Government's grip is so tight that the atom factories are not only controlled by desk-bound civil servants, but operated by scientists
and en- gineers forced into the Service strait-jacket.
Go-getters
CAVA
A MERICA'S giant bomb plants are operated for the Govern- ment by private firms working on go-getting business principles. Even the research labora- tories, like the Argonne labora- tory near Chicago which I wured. have been kept out of the Civil Service They are Tun by universities with business men
"Still only Bob a Job.
that's tantamount to a irage' freeze !"
London Exress Service,
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V.V.O.P.
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