In Humanitarian Spirit

One day last week Red Cross stretcher-bearers picked up their load and headed across the railroad bridge linking Red China with Hong Kong. Loudspeakers on the Chinese side opened up with martial airs. But on the stretcher, Robert Ezra McCann appeared to hear neither the music nor his wife's whisper, "Now we are out." He stared blankly into the China skies. After ten years in Red China's jails, McCann was free.

Born 60 years ago of U.S. missionary parents in the Chinese coastal city of Chefoo, Robert McCann considered China his home. When the Japanese overran the country in the late 19305, he lingered on, clinging to his auto business in Tientsin. Interned after Pearl Harbor, he was repatriated in an exchange of U.S. and Japanese internees in 1943. But at war's end. he hurried back to his business in Tien tsin. His wife Flora remained behind in California with their three children. Mc Cann prospered even through the Chinese civil war. And when the Communists took Tientsin in 1949, McCann again elected to linger on. Confidently he told friends that his business know-how and his line of cars and tractors made him indispensable. But in 1951 he was arrested, "tried" by the Tientsin High People's Court, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment "for carrying out espionage activities."

Last month Flora McCann received notification from the Red Chinese that her husband had fallen critically ill. Permission to visit was given. Fortnight ago Mrs. McCann was finally reunited with her husband in the Tientsin Red Cross hospital. For ten days she stayed on, drafting appeals for his release. Finally she was informed that the High People's Court of Hopeh province had granted her request "in the spirit of humanitarian-ism." The Air Force made a plane available to fly McCann back to the U.S. But doctors told his wife that he was dying of lung cancer, gave the old China hand only "a few months" to live.

McCann's release leaves four Americans in Red Chinese jails. They are: P:Roman Catholic Bishop James Edward Walsh, 69, who, after 28 years of missionary work in China, elected to stay on in spite of Communist harassment, was arrested in 1958, subsequently sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for "espionage and conspiracy." He is in a Shanghai jail. P:John Thomas Downey, 31, and Richard George Fecteau, 33, Department of the Army civilians captured when the U.S.A.F. plane in which they were passengers was shot down in 1952 over North Korea (according to the U.S.), over Red China (according to the Red Chinese). Downey is serving a life sentence, Fecteau 20 years, both on a charge of espionage, in Peking's Tsao Lan-tzu prison. P:Businessman Hugh Francis Redmond Jr., 41, arrested in 1951 in Shanghai, subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, also on an espionage charge. He is in a Shanghai jail.

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