Free High Jinx by William F. Buckley Page A

that the defendants in the great purge trials were any less than flatly guilty, as charged, of treason. She was happy to think of herself as a consolidated member of an international movement, the great purposes of which would be to remove war and the causes of war and social and class antagonisms from the earth forever.
    Alice wrote poetry, and her poetry included paeans to the Soviet state and its leaders, though she had had on more than one occasion to face the metrical choice either of substituting the name of a new leader in place of the name that figured in her original lines but was now exposed as having been treasonable or, if she couldn’t find another leader with the requisite number of syllables to his name and ending with the same sound as the deposed leader (she was not able to find someone to substitute for Zinoviev), she would have to toss the poem away. But she had now the equivalent of a little book of poems, dedicated to Soviet leaders, to Soviet cities and villages, to Soviet schools, and to some of her Soviet teachers. One day, she dreamed, when her father’s professional interests would no longer be jeopardised, she would publish these poems. What pleased her most was that she had been able to compose them both in Russian and in English, taking here and there the necessary linguistic liberties.
    While doing postgraduate work in Russian history, she had been approached by her cell leader and told that Comrade Pleshkov of Intourist desired to see her. The meeting took place late that afternoon in what had been the groom’s cottage of a czarist prince, on Herzen Street.
    It was wildly exciting. The idea of it was that every summer until further notice she would escort a half-dozen or as many as a dozen British students, bringing them from England for a month’s tour of the Soviet Union. Mrs. Pleshkov explained that Soviet policy was to encourage a true knowledge of the country by intelligent young people from abroad, particularly those who had shown interest in communism. On top of her regular duties—to lecture to the students, to expedite their travel arrangements, to coordinate their programmes—she was to keep a sharp eye out for any student who inclined sufficiently toward the great communist experiment, of which Russia was the matrix, to qualify for possible recruitment.
    â€˜Do you mean—actually to invite them to join the Party?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Mrs. Pleshkov said in her husky voice, taking a deep drag at her cigarette. ‘Yes—of course, you will in each case check first with me so that we can conduct appropriate investigations. But I have that authority, to extend membership. And we can hope that some of the young people will in due course show themselves willing to go further.’
    â€˜What do you mean, Comrade?’
    â€˜The imperialist world—as you know, Comrade Corbett—is always poised to do damage to the socialist revolution. We need help from within Great Britain from young people who are loyal to humanity, not to decadent imperialist regimes.’
    â€˜You mean, spies?’—Alice Goodyear Corbett’s calm, matter-of-fact request for elucidation snowed that she was not in the least troubled by the nature of her proposed commission, let alone shocked by the idea.
    â€˜You might call them that, yes. “Friends of the Soviet Union,” I would prefer to call them: foreign friends of international socialism. These young men and women will, when they graduate, branch out and take positions in the armed forces, in the foreign service, in the academies: it would be good to know that out fraternity is always growing, that everywhere—everywhere in the world—there are friends of the Soviet Union.’
    Alice Goodyear Corbett said the prospect pleased her in every way. Among other things it appealed to the poet in her, the notion that, using her own informed intuition, she might discern which students especially to