T H E T A B L E T , J anuary 14th, 1950.
THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA
VOL. 195, No. 5721
FOUNDED IN 1840
LONDON, JANUARY 14th, 1950
SIXPENCE
PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE ELECTION?
The Real Issue at a Deeper Level CATHOLICS AND MOSLEMS IN INDONESIA
Fruits of the Missionary Policy of Assimilation BISHOPS, SCHOOLS AND GENERAL ELECTIONS
A Comparison with 1885. By the Rt. Rev. G. A. Beck, A .A .
AFTER THE FRENCH “PURGES” The Case for an Amnesty. By Frank Macmillan
THE TWENTY-FIFTH HOUR The Menace of the Machine. By Bertrand de Jouvenel
THE FORCED ELECTION I T is a fitting, if quite undesigned, coincidence th a t the General Election campaign will come to its climax and end on Ash Wednesday. The General Election in February has been forced by economic pressure, by the austere character o f the next Budget which any new Government, o r this Government returned to power, will have to introduce. The election is being held several months before the natu ra l end o f the five-year Parliam ent, because Mr. Attlee and his advisers know th a t tim e is against them—that no figures o f increased p roduction can offset the dom inating reality, which is th a t we are not so far finding a way to balance o u r payments w ith the dollar area, from which alone we can obtain so much th a t we must have. As th is is a perm anent problem , which began to emerge thirty years ago, it might have been expected th a t both political parties would try to concentrate more public a tten tion on long-range measures designed to make a better balance in world trade. A feverish increase o f immediate exports to the American market, even i f it is achieved, will always be precarious, for the American m a rket is in constant change, is an intensely competitive market, and most o f what we export are luxuries, resting on fashions among a people singularly susceptible to suggestion. The most reassuring factor is th a t so far American wealth continues to increase, and with it the margin fo r luxuries and quality workmanship.
I t was p a r t o f the immense wisdom o f the Founding Fathers, very fo rtunate in the day in which they lived and legislated— for the year o f the Declaration o f Independence was also the year in which Adam Smith gave the world his great .masterpiece The Wealth o f Nations—that they made no attem p t to plan the economic growth o f the United States. To them , Government control o f economic activity was the very essence o f what they hated in the colonial rule from which they were freeing themselves. Those whose rule they then repudiated went a little more slowly th rough a parallel evolution, and the greatness o f the two greatest Western Powers has been built on these principles. I t will be a tragedy fo r mankind i f they are no t allowed to operate in Asia merely because wherever they operate they produce, simultaneously w ith great wealth, great inequality o f possessions. The Asian Field for Investment
President T rum an, in his statem ents last week to Congress on the state o f the Union, could paint a very rem arkable picture o f a continuing economic expansion, which has falsified the most confident predictions o f the Marxists in Moscow, who have been expecting for six years th e great American slump. Both the President and his Council o f economic advisers reiterate th a t the United States, and o ther nations as well, must reduce their present barriers to imports and must lower tariffs. And the Council said explicitly :—
“ In undeveloped countries there is an enormous potential dem and for products o f Western Europe and o f the United States, which will become active as their resources are more efficiently used and the standard o f living o f the people raised.” Poverty continues to be the great affliction o f Asia, and the basic problem o f the world, stated by Lord Boyd O rr again last week, is th a t the population will rise to three thousand million, and th a t the modern science o f public health and sanitation enables far more young children to survive and grow up and themselves give birth. The great practical question is how to develop the e a r th ’s resources to support this population. I t will no t be done if the new Governments in Asia show themselves too eager to do everything them selves, too ambitious to plan the economic future.
Through its long and sad history Asia has always known the greatest inequality : what it has no t known has been the greatest wealth. But there must be security for the foreign private investor ; fo r Governments, as President T rum an pertinently said, cannot do everything. I t was an understatem ent. Most o f the field must be left to private enterprise. As national wealth increases and public revenue can be collected, social services can be brought in to cushion misfortune, and from the beginning there can be legislation about hours and wages. Such legislation is no t the deterrent for the foreign or home investor, provided it still leaves him w ith a fair prospect o f profit. What deters him is insecurity, uncertainty, the strong probability th a t i f he does well he will be victimized, either by taxation o r by being taken over by the State ; and this fear must always be present where there are mass political parties with ambitious programmes on National-Socialist lines. And it is these parties whose existence is the main th rea t to prosperity in non-Communist Asia, although they believe themselves to be the only bulwarks against Communist p ropaganda. Their presence will serve to maintain the poverty which the Communists exploit.
The priests who, in Indonesia (o f which a correspondent writes on another page o f this issue) or anywhere else, are so placed th a t they have a special apostolate to the proletariat o r to the native populations, should remember and make proper allowance for all this side o f the question before warming to general denunciations o f capitalism .
The measure o f the statesm anship o f Pandit N ehru and the o ther new men will be shown in nothing more th an their ability to make th e mass o f their followers, poor and uneducated people, understand the realities about capital— th a t capital is somebody’s savings, somebody’s abstinence, and