Gratitude for Services

The heavy teak door of Rangoon's central jail swung open. Out stepped a lean, spectacled man looking cool, fresh and fit. Medical Missionary Gordon S. (Burma Surgeon) Seagrave, sentenced to six years for giving aid & comfort to Kachin Rebel Leader Naw Seng, and to one year for supplying medicine and surgical instruments to the rebels (TIME, Jan. 29), was free. His release had been ordered by the Burmese court of appeals, which had acquitted him on the first charge and, in view of his age (53) and in gratitude for the services he has rendered Burma, had reduced the one-year sentence to the 6 1/2 months he had already spent in jail.

Dr. Seagrave was met by his sister Rachel, who exclaimed: "Oh, Gordon, I just got the good news while I was making a moklaksaung [a gelatinous rice dish topped with iced sugar water] to bring over to you tomorrow." Smiling contentedly, Seagrave said: "This is wonderful." Asked whether he had been permitted to do medical work in jail since last August, he said: "Nary a thing did they let me do. If they had, that would have taken the salt out of the sentence. All I did was sit around and read."

Seagrave was impatient to get back to his hospital in the north Burma hills. Said he: "If I'm permitted, I shall board the first plane to Bhamo, then on to Namh-kam and back to work. That's all I wish for." In Baltimore, his wife said: "I think it would be best for him if he could come back to this country for at least a while."

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