Monday, Jul. 28, 1952
Punishable Eccentricity
Ever since he linked up with the Communists in 1939, Professor Andre Bonnard has become a sort of Swiss pocket edition of the Red Dean of Canterbury. A son of a wealthy Lausanne family and a respected Greek scholar (his translation of Antigone was played last fall at Paris's Comedie Franc,aise), Professor Bonnard has one eccentricity--he heads the Swiss branch of the Red-run World Peace Partisans. Last week the Swiss Federal Council, Switzerland's national executive body, announced that it regards Professor Bonnard's activities as more than eccentric.
At the instigation of another Communist stooge, France's Frederic Joliot-Curie, Bonnard had set out to prove that the International Red Cross is actually a "tool of the western powers" and of "Swiss warmongers," is therefore unfit to investigate Red germ-warfare charges in Korea. Three weeks ago he was all set to take his "evidence" to the East Berlin World Peace Council when the Swiss Federal Police moved in at the Zurich airfield, grabbed his briefcase, and forwarded the contents to a court of inquiry. A government communique announced that Bonnard's papers contained "slanderous allegations" designed "to discredit the reputation of the International Red Cross in the eyes of the world." This kind of discrediting, said the government, "constitutes a grave attack on the policy of neutrality of Switzerland and compromises, in consequence, the security of the country." If a court of inquiry finds criminal intent is present, Professor Bonnard can be sentenced to 20 years at hard labor.
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