ESPIONAGE: Thank You, My Lord

ESPIONAGE Thank You, My Lord Preceded by the bearers of mace and sword, England's Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, robed in icy dignity and a scarlet gown, entered the oak-paneled courtroom of the Old Bailey. He shuffled his papers, impatiently tapped the silver snuff box on his high desk. Then, mounting the stairs which lead from the cells below directly into the prisoner's dock, appeared Dr. Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs. The court clerk solemnly read the indictment accusing Fuchs of communicating "to a person unknown information relating to atomic research . . . directly or indirectly useful to an enemy." His hand thrust into his trouser pocket, Fuchs whispered: "Guilty." In the visitors' gallery, which was packed with distinguished spectators, the Duchess of Kent toyed with her salmon-pink rose corsage.

A Chill in Court. "My Lord," began the Prosecutor, Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, his grey wig clamped firmly forward over his forehead, "this is a case of the utmost gravity . . . The prisoner is a Communist, and that is at once the explanation and indeed the tragedy of this case . . ." Shawcross went over the story that Fuchs had told in his confession —the course of a brilliant, morally blind man from confusion to total, irretrievable corruption (TIME, Feb. 20).

Shawcross added only one significant incident to the tale—how Fuchs had decided to stop being an open Communist and had gone underground. It was the morning after the Reichstag fire, in 1933, when the Nazis declared open season on Communists (whom they falsely accused of setting the fire). Fuchs read the story in a newspaper, riding on a train. "I took the hammer & sickle from the lapel of my coat where I had carried it," Shawcross quoted Fuchs as saying. "I was ready to accept the philosophy of the party as right in the coming struggle." The Chief Justice, listening with hard lines of patience on his face, opened the small silver box and took a pinch of snuff.

Shawcross concluded with a reminder that Fuchs would have got a different kind of trial had he been accused of treason by the power he served. "It should perhaps be said that this man's confession was made while he was still a free man," said the Prosecutor, "able to come & go as he chose and consult with friends and . . . lawyers."

The defense took over. Fuchs's attorney sketched Fuchs's youth in Germany, "among the smoldering fires of political struggles and strife . . ." Once, when the attorney referred to what Fuchs had called his "controlled schizophrenia" (by which, Fuchs had insisted, one-half of his mind was Communist, the other half supposedly loyal to Britain), Lord Goddard snapped: "I cannot understand all this metaphysical talk, and I don't know that I should."

But what stirred Lord Goddard (and all of Britain) most was the defense counsel's calm statement that Fuchs had been a "known Communist," that his record in the Home Office said clearly that Fuchs had. been a member of the Communist Party in Germany. Prosecutor Shawcross lamely admitted that this was true. But the fact, while it represented scandalous negligence on the part of British security services, did not alter the case or the course of justice.