Canada: QUEBEC: Wilted Rose

After 16 days in court, the bloom was off little Fred Rose. At the start of his conspiracy trial in Montreal, Canada’s only Communist member of Parliament had been jaunty. The defense sneered at documentary evidence produced by Igor Gouzenko, former Soviet Embassy cipher clerk, who named Rose as a “recruiting agent” for a Russian spy ring, as “ridiculous.” But the Crown produced some 50 witnesses, 175 exhibits and about 30,000 words of testimony a day to prove that Fred Rose had, indeed, sold out his country. The jury verdict: guilty. Once jailed for sedition (in 1931) he now faces a maximum sentence of seven years.