The Third World War

Francis James is an Australian journalist, publisher of a small religious magazine in Sydney. While serving in the Australian air force during the war his eyes were injured. In February of this year he was authorized to go to England at government expense to get some special contact lenses. He applied for and got (according to his story) a Chinese transit visa, and booked passage via China through the “China Travel Service.” (He had visited China before, most lately in 1957.) In April he journeyed as far as Lanchow in central China, near the Sinkiang border. There (according to his story) friends took him in hand. Through Lung Shu- chin, the boss of Sinkiang, he traveled extensively in the troubled Sinkiang- Kazakhstan border region. He visited the great Karamai oil fields, which produce more than half of China’s petroleum, and the nearby Altai district where nearly all of China’s uranium ore comes from. He also saw (according to his story) some of the Chinese nuclear installations and talked to many of the scientists and officials who run them. He took photographs and was given others. No other Westerner is known to have visited Sinkiang for a decade.

Francis James did eventually reach England. He sold the most sensational part of his story to the Sunday Times (London). Parts have also been appearing in Guardian Weekly and other British and West European journals, but not yet, so far as I have noticed, in the American press. The Sunday Times states that it had the material gone over by China experts, who also interrogated James at length. They found “no contradictions” in his account, and concluded that he had unquestionably visited China, in particular Sinkiang.

JB

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James Burnham

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Francis James is an Australian journalist, publisher of a small religious magazine in Sydney. While serving in the Australian air force during the war his eyes were injured. In February of this year he was authorized to go to England at government expense to get some special contact lenses. He applied for and got (according to his story) a Chinese transit visa, and booked passage via China through the “China Travel Service.” (He had visited China before, most lately in 1957.) In April he journeyed as far as Lanchow in central China, near the Sinkiang border. There (according to his story) friends took him in hand. Through Lung Shu- chin, the boss of Sinkiang, he traveled extensively in the troubled Sinkiang- Kazakhstan border region. He visited the great Karamai oil fields, which produce more than half of China’s petroleum, and the nearby Altai district where nearly all of China’s uranium ore comes from. He also saw (according to his story) some of the Chinese nuclear installations and talked to many of the scientists and officials who run them. He took photographs and was given others. No other Westerner is known to have visited Sinkiang for a decade.

Francis James did eventually reach England. He sold the most sensational part of his story to the Sunday Times (London). Parts have also been appearing in Guardian Weekly and other British and West European journals, but not yet, so far as I have noticed, in the American press. The Sunday Times states that it had the material gone over by China experts, who also interrogated James at length. They found “no contradictions” in his account, and concluded that he had unquestionably visited China, in particular Sinkiang.