The Travelers

Arrivals in Prague, capital of Communist Czechoslovakia, via KLM Flight 650 from Mexico City to Montreal, Shannon and Amsterdam: one man, one woman and one boy, bearing brand-new passports and making like brand-new citizens of the Republic of Paraguay. Their credentials:

Names: Alfred K. Stern, 59, of Fargo, N. Dak., Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University and Chicago; Martha Dodd Stern, 48, daughter of U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1933-37) William E.

Dodd, of Ashland, Va. and Chicago; their son Robert, 12.

Description: He is pockmarked, toothbrush-mustached, wealthy, aristocratic, weak-willed, easily swayed. She is small, slight, bright-eyed, wealthy, aristocratic, intellectual, intense but unstable. Both are products of the 1930s.

Occupations: Professional Communist spies on the lam from the U.S., lately members of the U.S. network that included Jack and Myra Soble, Jacob Albam, George and Jane Zlatovski and U.S. Counterspy Boris Morros, specializing in recruiting likely U.S. prospects for Soviet espionage.

Careers: He inherited a big bank account from his North Dakota banking family, tried banking in Fargo, N. Dak. (1918-19). flopped at Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago (1921-25), married very rich Marion Rosenwald* in 1921 (they were divorced in 1937), did better on the board of multimillionaire father-in-law Julius Rosenwald's Rosenwald Fund, also sat in as chairman of the Illinois State Housing Board (1933-37). She went to the University of Chicago (1926-30), learned there, as she put it. about "inequality, injustice, economic persecution," put in two years as assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune (1931-33), flung herself into sportive sex situations, moved on to Germany with her scholarly, New Deal-minded father, excitedly tried to date Hitler but later thought that he had "an acute castration complex," visited and much preferred Russia as "a definitely going concern,'' came back to the U.S. to write books, e.g., Through Embassy Eyes and Sowing the Wind, and to champion F.D.R.: "Any party that is violently anti-New Deal falls into the category of pro-Fascist ideology."

Espionage: He and she married in 1938 at her country place in Virginia, set up homes in Manhattan and Ridgefield, Conn., moved amid a milieu of bums and bohemians, philanthropists, philosophers, progressives and an odd Communist diplomat. Both scurried to sign up for Communist-line outfits, e.g., American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. American Peace Mobilization, National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions. He led a Communist-backed protest march (on the train) from New York City to Albany (1947) to urge Govenor Dewey to freeze rent controls in New York. Both were heady for Wallace for President. 'Both broadened their contacts with Communists (she felt, it was suggested, that she had to seek and find discipline; he just tagged along), joined up as spies in the Soviet embassy's net, soon attracted the careful attention of the FBI.

Recent Travel: In 1954 they fled to Mexico City, later quietly liquidated null of assets in the U.S., last month threw in their U.S. citizenship and got easy-come, easy-go Paraguayan passports, made plans to move to safety behind the Iron Curtain. Mexico was getting ready, they thought, correctly, to extradite them to the U.S. to face grand-jury questioning about their espionage activities.

Duration of Stay: Indefinite, said Stern in Red Prague last week. The U.S. is caught up in "spy hysteria" to the point that "war budgets can be passed, disarmament conferences torpedoed and peaceful coexistence deferred." His exception was the U.S. Supreme Court, "one of the most liberal bodies in the U.S. in recent times." "We are visiting this peace-loving country," he said, "and we are enjoying an interesting and restful trip." Another announcement of the week, from Moscow: the U.S.S.R. next year will publish Martha Dodd's latest book, The Searching Light.

*Now the wife of New York Editor Max Ascoli and leading financial angel of her husband's magazine The Reporter.

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