"The Menace to Freedom"

Outside the white-brick colonial inn in Williamsburg, Va., Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King stood in the April sunshine, lightheartedly swinging his walking stick. The lawns, trees and trim hedges of the former Virginia Colony capital were bright with the fresh greens of spring, but a raw wind was blowing through the town. A small boy and two little girls stopped to eye the man in the grey Hamburg and blue. overcoat and he struck up a conversation.

Where were they from, he asked. From Washington. And where was he from? From Canada. "Isn't it cold up there?" asked the boy. "Yes," answered the P.M., "but I imagine that today it's just about like this."

For six days last week the Prime Minister relaxed in the well-groomed surroundings of restored Williamsburg. Much of the time he spent in his room catching up on correspondence. Sometimes he went motoring with the Governor General, Viscount Alexander of Tunis. Mackenzie King, a frequent visitor to Williamsburg, got a lot of pleasure pointing out the sights to the Governor General, who had never been there before.

High point of the week was the special convocation at the College of William and Mary in Mackenzie King's honor. For Canadian-American Day, President Truman (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) had come down from Washington to sit with Mackenzie King, Viscount Alexander and others on the platform erected before the Christopher Wren building that dates back to 1695. In the gown and floppy hat of his Oxford doctorate of civil law, the P.M. received an honorary LL.D.

In his speech of acceptance, Mackenzie King put aside his vacation mood to speak seriously on Russian aggression and Communist infiltration. Said he: "The menace to freedom has never been graver or more insidious. . . . That menace arises no longer merely from armed aggression aimed at territorial expansion. While this is an ever-present danger, the menace to freedom comes as well from sinister plans to undermine the structure of government within the border of individual nations. ... In a word, freedom is threatened not only by military force but by an organized conspiracy to establish a tyranny over the human mind, to thwart the wills and destroy the souls of nations as well as of men. ... A way must be found, and that speedily, to ensure that nations which are still free will not be suborned, defeated or destroyed one by one."

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