The Half-Closed Door

Mme. Joliot-Curie, daughter of famed Physicist Marie Curie, is a distinguished nuclear physicist in her own right, a Nobel prizewinner and the wife of a Communist. Like her husband, Frederic, she is also a member of France's Atomic Research Commission. Late one afternoon last week, Mme. Curie stepped off an Air France plane at La Guardia Field. Waiting to meet her was Dr. Edward Barsky, chairman of the Communist-front Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, under whose auspices Mme. Curie was to lecture in the U.S.

Before Dr. Barsky could greet his distinguished guest, immigration officials hustled Mme. Curie out of sight. Four hours later reporters caught a glimpse of her, looking ruffled and harassed, as she was bundled into a car and whisked off into the night.

Mme. Curie's reception provoked an angry international uproar. Alexandre Parodi, France's delegate to the United Nations, pronounced the incident "regrettable." In Washington, the State Department got urgent calls from the French Embassy. Next day Attorney General Tom C. Clark ordered Mme. Joliot-Curie released--but not before she had spent a night under detention at Ellis Island. Mme. Curie, who says she is not a Communist but agrees with Communists on many things, said she was not surprised at her treatment.

Cried Roger N. Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union: "Such confused action as this creates justified criticism both here and abroad. The U.S. is on shaky ground in protesting the exclusion of U.S. journalists and others from foreign countries behind the Iron Curtain when we follow such methods here."

Was Libertarian Baldwin right? Many a U.S. citizen wished he were surer.*By now the U.S. was pretty well convinced, on the evidence, that all Communists in a democracy are potential spies and traitors; but the U.S. was still doggedly determined not to treat even a known Communist as a spy or a traitor until he was caught redhanded. That frame of mind was doubtless a source of grim amusement to Communists, who are logical people.

* For a British answer to the question, see Foreign News.

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