GREAT BRITAIN: Ignorance in High Places

Sir John Pratt, 75, brother of Hollywood’s horror specialist, Boris Karloff,*had a distinguished, 27-year career in the British Foreign Service in China, was knighted in 1929, retired in 1938. From 1939 until 1941 he was head of the Ministry of Information’s Far East Section, in 1948 was appointed to the nonpaying job of Foreign Office representative on the Universities’ China Committee—a nonpolitical body which selects Chinese students wishing to attend British universities.

The committee has not had much work lately (Mao’s regime does not permit Chinese to study in the West), but Sir John has been busy giving Britain the benefit of his long experience in the Far East, although he has not been to Asia since 1925. Last year he wrote to the London Times: “[The Red Chinese government’s] soldiers are remarkable for their exemplary discipline and their police for their kindly and courteous attitude . . . They are supposed to be Communists, but they employ no secret police, make no attempt at thought-control and do not resort to political assassination. They are in fact pursuing the kind of policy which is advocated as an antidote to Communism . . .”

Said he when Britain voted for the U.N. resolution branding Red China an aggressor: “The most shameful thing Britain has ever done.”

Said he last month: “I am quite certain from all the documents I have examined that the war in Korea was not started by an invasion from the north but by action in the south which gave President Truman the opportunity of sending troops into Formosa.”

Last week, prodded by Opposition critics in Parliament, the Foreign Office sacked Sir John Pratt.

* Karloff’s real name: William Henry Pratt.