The grim tourist traffic between the free world and the Communist world was in full swing.
¶ Bug-eyed Vladimir Prochazka, who arrived in Washington as Czech Ambassador last August, got bawled out by President Truman* and vanished three months later, was reported back in Prague and in jail. Comrade Prochazka, loyal party member since 1923, seemed to be a victim of guilt by association: his brother, Jaroslav, former chief of the Czech general staff, is suspected of treason.
¶ Private Robert Natskakula, U.S.A.,who deserted to Berlin's East sector two years ago just as he was about to be shipped home as "undesirable," walked into the Army C.I.D. office, flanked by three tough civilians. Good guess: Natskakula had been decoyed back into the Western zone, then grabbed by Army intelligence operatives. He was whisked through a U.S. court-martial, which sentenced him to a year and a half in jail and dishonorable discharge. While in East Berlin, Deserter Natskakula had starred briefly as a noble "peace fighter" who couldn't stand U.S. warmongering.
¶ British Private Dennis Eggleton, who deserted to the Soviet four years ago, returned to Berlin, gave himself up. He brought back a report that the Russians had established a "deserters' village" at Bautzen near the Czech-Polish border. There, said Eggleton, U.S., British and French deserters live in good apartments given them on Russian orders, get papers certifying that they are stateless, in turn are made to sign statements saying that they are leading happy lives. Unhappy Deserter Eggleton went off to jail.
¶ Yugoslav Tennis Stars Milan Branovic and Dragutin Mitic, playing in the International Tennis championships in Rome, announced that they would not go back home. Four other self-exiles from Red Europe competed in the tournament.
¶ Belgrade lawyer Nikola Mrvojevic and five confederates brandished two revolvers and a knife on a plane from Belgrade for Ljubljana, forced the pilot to head for Graz, in the British zone of Austria. In Graz, Mrvojevic asked political asylum. In his coat lining, the lawyer carried Maria Theresa dollars, gold napoleons.
¶ Ten Yugoslavs tried to flee to Paris via the Orient Express. Carrying bread, jugs of water, and pills to stifle coughing, they sealed themselves in the metal battery boxes slung under the cars of the once-famed luxury train, but were caught by frontier guards near Trieste. The government charged that the fugitives were members of a subversive, anti-Tito movement, but in court last week the defendants denied it. Said one, a 21-year-old blonde: she wanted to go to Paris because she was in love with a student who always traveled the battery-box route. Said another, a 26-year-old poet without a publisher: he wanted to see the world, including the flea circus in New York. "Fleas?" queried the judge, "we have them here." "Yes," replied the poet, "but these are trained."
* The President implied to Prochazka that the Communists had murdered Jan Masaryk, asked for the release of U.S. Newsman William Oatis.