Cue for a Communist

An ancient, leaky, 1,814-ton Chesapeake Bay excursion boat, once known as the President Warfield but now grimly called Exodus 1947, last week unsteadily approached the Palestine coast. The Zionist flag flew at her mast, and 4,554 refugees--the largest number that ever tried to run the British blockade at one time--jammed her holds. The refugees knew that the British Navy's destroyers patrolled the coast; but perhaps they hoped that the presence of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) would embarrass the British sufficiently to let the Exodus slip by.

The British Navy was not embarrassed. Two sleek destroyers closed in on the refugee ship. The Exodus' captain, Bernard Marks of Cincinnati, refused to take aboard a landing party and headed his ship out to sea again. The refugees--half of them women & children--screamed their defiance. About the funnel they draped a banner: "England, this is your enemy."

The destroyers rammed the Exodus on both sides; boarding parties armed with truncheons, small arms and tear-gas bombs jumped aboard, rushed the bridge. The refugees fought back by throwing tins of corned beef and potatoes. By sheer weight of numbers, they pushed British sailors into cabins, down corridors, in a struggle that most of the refugees knew was hopeless.

The fight lasted three hours. Escorted by three more destroyers and a cruiser which had rushed to the scene, the Exodus limped into Haifa harbor. As they were transferred to another ship which was to return them to France, where they had embarked, the refugees doggedly sang the Zionist anthem Hatikvah ("Our hope is still not lost . . .").

On the pier watching the proceedings were two UNSCOP members, Chairman Emil Sandstroem of Sweden and Yugoslavia's Vladimir Simic, a Communist statesman who has an eye for drama and knows a cue when he sees one. "What can I think of all this?" asked Simic, pointedly pious. "It is the best possible evidence that we can have."

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