RUSSIA: No. 1 Germ Spreader

In the spring of 1919, Albert Cohen, onetime clerk, was a man of power. Under the name of Béla Kun, squat and bristling Clerk Cohen was the Communist dictator of Hungary. After four months he was overthrown by Admiral Nicholas Horthy, present Hungarian strong man, finally ended up in Moscow, became a Soviet citizen. Since then, he has built up a reputation as the world's "No. 1 Communist Germ Spreader." He has been accused of fomenting Red intrigues in Hungary, organizing the extreme left wing of Loyalist support in Spain, encouraging the growth of French Communism. Brazil got skitterish when he was reported trying to land at Rio de Janeiro. London had a scare last February, and once Denmark heard that the Communist bogeyman had crept in, disguised as a woman. When Moscow correspondents chased about to verify these rumors they generally found the "terrible" Béla Kun resting harmlessly at a sanatorium not far from the Datcha of Stalin. He occupied an unimportant non-political post as head of the Social Economic Publishing House at Moscow.

Last week the melodramatic Kun saga took a new turn when unofficial reports had it that far from skittering hither & yon plotting the world revolution, the veteran bogeyman had incurred the displeasure of Soviet officials, who arrested him, charged him with communicating with Trotskyists during his recent rumored journeys to Spain, locked him up in jail.