"Canada's Spy Story Isn't Thrilling"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 360, 17 May 1946, Page 18

"Canada's Spy Story Isn't Thrilling"

The following comment on the recent spy scare in Canada was made in the ‘Talk of the Town" section of The New Yorker. T would appear that Russia has been spying on Canada-a bit of news which seemed to come as a surprise to everybody. We heard one commentator say that the spy story in Canada was "as good as a mystery thriller." We didn’t think it was anywhere near as good as a mystery thriller. If there is one thing which no longer should remain mysterious to anyone, or thrilling, it is that every nation must of necessity spy on every other nation. How else can a nation get information which it needs concerning the habits, plans, and secrets of other nations? Spying is not a mystery. To us it is far from thrilling; it is putrefactive. As a child we played a game called I Spy. As-a man, we are fully aware that we live in a*society which plays that game, for its life. It plays it because it has always played it and because it hasn’t worked out the rules of any other game. Every year the stakes grow higher, the game grows rougher.

Soon the barn will fall on the children, If Americans. and Canadians grow indignant at Russia for stealing atomic information, they are being innocent beyond belief. If the United States is not at this moment spying on fifty or sixty other nations, to find out what is going on inside their borders, then it is not only innocent, it is derelict. If fifty or sixty other nations are not operating inside the United States, then those other nations are derelict, too. A nation that doesn’t spy to-day is not giving its people an even break. If there is any sentiment among people generally to abandon the spy system and get on to something forthright, we recommend that they instruct their UNO delegates, to get busy on the project. At the moment we are headed not toward but away from it -' strengthening national lines and turning global problems over to commissions. Atomic energy will never be controlled by commission. Human rights will never be established by ,commission. A free press and the (continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) right to know will never become universal by commission. Peace is expensive, and so are human rights and civil liberties; they have a price, and we the peoples have not yet offered to pay it. Instead we are trying to furnish our globe with these precious ornaments the cheap way, holding our sovereignty cautiously in one fist while extending the other hand in a gesture of co-opera-tion. In the long run this will prove the hard way, the violent way. The United Nations Organisation, which in its present form is a league of disunited nations whose problems are on the table and whose spies are behind the arras, is our last chance to substitute order for disorder, government for anarchy, knowledge for espionage. We better make it good. r)