"Idealist" on "Bloodsuckers"

"Idealist" on "Bloodsuckers"

The spy's baby which recently enlivened France's great spy gang trial by biting a lawyer (TIME, April 22) snoozed last week as its mother got three years. The other baby, when red-robed Chief Justice Etienne Revol hunched forward to sentence its mother also to three years, let out throat-splitting yells. Thirteen spies received sentences totaling 41 years and ten months.

In the grim tradition of European espionage, "Master Spy" Mme Lydia Stahl, 45, had kept her mouth shut during 16 months in jail and the three weeks of the trial. Last week she sobbed but said nothing when she got five years, almost escaped press notice.

Meanwhile convicted spies Mr. & Mrs. Robert Gordon Switz of East Orange, N. J. were "exempted from punishment" by the French Government in return for their voluble peaching on the other spies. Promptly Mr. Switz started writing for Hearst's Universal Service and the London Daily Express.

"I am not, and never was, a Communist," declared Gordon Switz. "I was interested in the Soviet experiment as an idealist. My first contacts with the Soviet spy organization were in New York and in Washington. They saw how keen I was and arranged for me to go to Moscow in the guise of an aviation instructor. When I returned to America I met my wife, Marjory Tilley. She was a student at Vassar. She was only 19. We got married and she agreed to come to Europe and help me.

"I was tired of leading the life of a young man of easy money. But I suffered a great shock. I was disappointed to learn the contemptible character of the men who were at work with me. Instead of idealists, I found men who thought of nothing but of what they could get out of it. I found the same thing both in Russia and in its spying organization. It was riddled with disillusion, self-interest and graft. These people were grabbing big sums for doing practically nothing.* At first I tried to reform them. I still burned with ideals. When Marjory and I were arrested we realized that by telling everything we would be ridding Moscow of men who were nothing but bloodsuckers." Aided by the French Surete, peaching Mr. & Mrs. Switz this week "disappeared," the Surete advising them that unless they lie extremely low some of Moscow's disillusioned spies will murderously shut them up.

*Mrs. Marjory Tilley Switz was revealed at the trial to have received 90,000 francs ($5,900), thus ending reports that she "spied for pure excitement and thrill."

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