Journey's End

A short, squat bridge perches across a shallow gully at Lo Wu, where Red China and British Hong Kong meet. Railroad tracks as well as a footpath stretch across the bridge, but until last week, no passenger had ridden across since 1949. The thousands of Chinese refugees, European missionaries and businessmen who have crossed the bridge with their wives and children since then have been forced to walk, or more frequently, to limp along the footpath bearing on their weary backs or in their hands those few possessions they were able to wrench from the Communist grasp.

Last week, riding in a gleaming, Japanese-built parlor car behind an old, Philadelphia-built locomotive decorated with the red stars of Mao Tse-tung's China, British Laborites Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan and their six fellow travelers emerged from three weeks behind the Iron Curtain to roll across the Lo Wu bridge in luxurious oblivion of the lowly footpath beneath them. In Hong Kong the touring Laborites parted company: Attlee to go to Australia, Bevan and the others to visit Japan. But behind them in Red China, they had obligingly left with Chinese newsmen a joint declaration that gave no evidence of an ideological split. "We sympathize with the efforts the Chinese people are making," the Laborites had said in a single voice, "and we believe that this sympathy and understanding should be shown by the rest of the world in immediate and practical form."

Frustrations & Freedoms. To the 70-odd U.S. and British reporters waiting to meet them in Hong Kong, the Laborites were considerably less gracious. "Any statement on your tour?" one of the newsmen asked Attlee, but before the former Prime Minister could even remove his pipe, Morgan Phillips, Labor Secretary and party chaperon, snapped, "No." Only Trade Union Leader Harry Franklin and Dr. Edith Summerskill seemed disposed to chat, the one about houseflies ("Why, I've seen more flies right here than I saw in all my time in China"), the other about the "increased freedom in the field of love" now enjoyed by Chinese women. Dr. Summerskill had also been impressed with the absence of flies and the "fact" that their extinction had reduced China's infant death rate from 20% to 4%. "On what is that figure based?" asked a reporter. "Oh," said Dr. Summerskill, "a nice Chinese professor told me." "Well," muttered one frustrated reporter to himself after hearing still more testimony relative to houseflies, "one thing is sure--there are no flies on Mao."

At a later Hong Kong press conference, free at last of his chaperon Phillips, Attlee was a little more talkative. He described with satisfaction his answer to Red Boss Mao, who had urged him to use his influence to withdraw all U.S. military aid from Asia and Germany (TIME, Sept. 6). He, in turn, had urged Mao to do what he could to curb the rampant militarism and intolerance that he had noticed in Soviet Russia, "the most heavily armed country in the world." Attlee cited this exchange as if it were proof of his standing up to the Reds, whereas the net impression of Attlee's remarks seemed to be that all of Mao's bellicose accusations against the U.S. were unfortunately true, but American misbehavior was offset somewhat by Russia's militance and bad manners.

In almost a sotto voce footnote, Attlee declared that China's rulers maintained "far too many delusions about the West," but by and large, he had "been impressed by certain very definite reforms that, from all we could gather, marked a new departure in China." Attlee said that there was "evidence," although he cited none and admitted there was really very little, that "you have [there] a government that is incorruptible, that is genuinely working in accordance with the principles believed and has done some very remarkable pieces of work, a government based on the good will of the peasant population." In Red China, said Attlee, "there is no pretense that everything is all right yet. That is an engaging contrast to Russia, where we were always assured that they are ahead of the world in everything." And of course, in Red China, said Clem, there were "no flies."

Petrifaction & Differences. In Tokyo, where he was shunned by Premier Yoshida and welcomed with open arms by the opposition Socialists, Nye Bevan agreed with his party chief that China's Communists seemed far more relaxed than those in Russia, who all "seemed petrified with fear in the presence of Malenkov." He called again for "peaceful coexistence between the nations of the world" and sought to torpedo the SEATO conference in Manila. Somewhat irrelevantly, he added: "There are ideological differences between Communism and Socialism, just as there are between Socialism and the United States, but we do not believe these differences can be properly settled by war." When a Socialist brought up the subject of tuna fish irradiated by H-bombs that the Japanese would not eat, Bevan brought down the house with the wisecracking suggestion: "Feed the tuna to U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan."

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