US visa officials ignore protests about scientist's leftwing beliefs
Professor Einstein received his American visa today. The incident that postponed his departure was not serious. He was subjected to the same questions at the United States Consulate here that all who apply for a visa are subjected to.
These questions sound naively comic in European ears, but they are, as a rule, answered good-humouredly. The applicant is, for example, asked if he intends to over-throw the United States Constitution. If he says no - as, of course, he will - he may, if still suspect of being sympathetic to Communism or Socialism, be asked if he can give an assurance that he would not be pleased if the United States Constitution were to be over-thrown. (This question was actually put to a distinguished European applicant some weeks ago.)
Professor Einstein has visited the United States before, but hitherto the Hamburg-Amerika line obtained his visa for him. This time he was asked - like ordinary persons - to go to the United States Consulate himself. He has long been associated with organisations that are more or less associated with Communism or Socialism. He is a pacifist, and belongs to the War Resisters' movement. He has often added his signature to others in protest against non-Russian Imperialism.
When he was in all solemnity cross-examined at the United States Consulate here he got annoyed (though he had no more reason to be so than other less distinguished persons who have to go through the same formalities) and threatened to give up his journey altogether.
Some women's organisation in the United States has also interfered by asking the State Department not to let him land. When Professor Einstein heard that these busybodies had been at work he said something about "cackling geese" who wanted to save Rome once again and asked the Consular officials whether the "chicanery" that was being practised was deliberate or not. Professor Einstein has now obtained his visa, thanks, so I understand, to the intervention of the United States Embassy.
In an interview with Reuter's Berlin correspondent, Professor Einstein confessed himself more amused than offended by the opposition of the American Women's Patriotic Association to his visit to America.
"Never before, I think, have I received such an energetic rebuff at the hands of the fair sex," he said, "and not by so many all at once.
"But aren't they perfectly right, those watchful Citizens? Why should one admit to the country a man who devours capitalists with the same appetite and relish as once upon a time the monster Minotaurus in Crete devoured luscious Greek maidens, a man who in addition is so vulgar as to oppose every war except the inevitable one with his own wife?"
"Give heed, therefore, to these dear, wise, patriotic ladies and remember that the Capitol of mighty Rome was once saved by the cackling of its faithful geese."
Reuter's New York correspondent adds that Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, President of the University of Columbia, said in a reference to the action by the women's patriotic organisation: "As an American citizen, I feel so humiliated and disgraced that I have no words to express myself."
[Einstein decided not to return to Germany after his tour of America in 1933. He had spoken out against the treatment of Jews in the country, and his cottage had been raided while he was away. He renounced his German citizenship, and became an American citizen in 1940.]
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