The Press: Snow Job

One of the Chinese Communists’ favorite friends in the West is Old China Hand Edgar Parks Snow, 55, who made his first trek to northwest China to visit them in 1936, interviewed Mao Tse-tung, and has remained a faithful apologist ever since.

In 1937 he published Red Star Over China, glorifying Mao and his men, has been affiliated with Communist-front groups. He argues for U.S. recognition of Red China. Last week Snow was back in China to finish gathering material for a biography of Leader Mao—thanks to Cowles Magazines, Inc.

When Snow first wrote the State Department asking for permission last May, he was turned down because his publishing house, Random House, Inc., was not one of the 30-odd news-gathering agencies authorized to apply for passports to Red China. He promptly got himself designated as the representative of Cowles’s Look Magazine and applied again. The State Department felt—and frankly told Cowles executives—that Snow could hardly be considered an objective reporter. “When we instituted this program,” explained a State spokesman, “we wanted objective reporting in depth, and now Cowles comes along with someone we feel cannot be objective.” Nevertheless, Cowles persisted, and the State Department reluctantly validated the passport. Within three days the Chinese Foreign Ministry granted Snow his visa, though it has rejected countless applications from other newsmen over the past few years. “The speed,” said the State Department, “speaks for itself.” Lest anyone think that Snow’s case might set a precedent, the Chinese explained that Snow was not in China as a newsman at all. He was there merely as the guest of a friend, New Zealand Expatriate and longtime Chinese Communist Propagandist Rewi Alley, with whom Snow is staying in Peking.