The Press: The Bamboo Curtain Falls

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For foreign correspondents, Peiping was once one of the world's most comfortable beats. Life in the walled university city, the base for covering North China, was graceful, unhurried, and for a foreigner with U.S. dollars comparatively cheap. Newsmen came for brief visits and, taken by Peiping's ancient charms, often stayed on for months in Ta Tien Shui Ching Hutung (Big Sweet Water Well Alley), Peiping's correspondents' row.

Like many Peiping intellectuals, some of the 16 correspondents in residence there this winter viewed without alarm the prospect of Communist capture of Peiping. Boss Mao Tse-tung had promised complete press freedom, and correspondents hoped to get an on-the-spot picture of the Red army. But when Red troops marched in last month, newsmen got a rude surprise.

Instead of friendship, Communist organizations denounced the A.P.'s Spencer Moosa and the U.P.'s Michael Keon for "base insults" to the people of Peiping. Cried one Red committee: "We cannot tolerate frenzied barkings from the scum of the journalistic world."

Cabled the New York Herald Tribune's old China Hand A. T. ("Arch") Steele: "These [Communists] no longer are the same easily approachable people they were during the salad days at Yenan . . . No foreigner here has succeeded in meeting any [important] Communist . . . What is not clear is how much this [standoffishness] is a calculated policy . . ."

Last week Newsman Steele and his colleagues had an answer. The Communist bosses of Peiping dropped a bamboo curtain, cutting off Peiping from the world. All foreign newsmen were ordered to "cease . . . collection of news and dispatching of news telegrams." In the drab, drafty Peking Club, the correspondents met and voted to stay on, at least until they were sure the ban was permanent.