Religion: Communist Leniency

When World War II ended, Dr. Homer V. Bradshaw took off the uniform he had worn as a medical officer with General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force, returned with his wife to his work at the Presbyterian mission at Lienhsien in China's Kwangtung province. At that time the Bradshaws, medical missionaries in China for 13 years, were 47—strong, healthy, and hopeful that they would be able to go on serving the country they loved. Last week the Bradshaws left China, the latest in the long line of returning missionaries whose pitiable condition told the world how Communist China feels about servants of God.

Homer Bradshaw, feeble and haggard (he had lost 40 Ibs.), helped his wife to freedom across the Lowu Bridge that separates Hong Kong from Communist China; as they walked onto British soil, Red Cross workers had to support them. Wilda Bradshaw, skeleton-thin and empty-eyed, mumbled incoherently and shrank in terror from photographers' flashbulbs.

The Bradshaws' ordeal began in March 1951, when Chinese Communists burst into their house and marched them off to the mission hospital and then to jail. They were separated and later shipped to another jail in Kukong. When Physician Bradshaw saw his wife there, he realized that her mind had given way.

For the next four years Homer Bradshaw waited alone in prison, undergoing "a slow process of starvation." Not until last October did he hear the charges against him: espionage, "maintaining radio contacts with Hong Kong, Manila, Tokyo and the U.S." Says Bradshaw: "The greatest lies I've ever heard."

He met his wife again two weeks ago in Canton, when negotiations started for the Bradshaws' release. "I know she recognized me, because tears came to her eyes," said he. "But it did not really register with her." It will take some time before his wife even realizes that she is free; last week, under treatment in the hospital at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, she was reported to be "periodically aware." Said Missionary Bradshaw: "I have just as much love for the Chinese people as ever, but for the gang that kidnaped us I have nothing but loathing and contempt." The gang seemed well pleased with itself. The Bradshaws, said Peking's Red Cross smugly, had been released "with leniency."