T H E T A B L E T , February 25th, 1950

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA D E I , PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, N o . 5727

FOUNDED IN 1840

L O N D O N , FEBRUARY 25th, 1950

S IX PENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE TEST OF BRITISH STATESMANSHIP

The N ext Government and the World’s Trade THE ART OF DIVIDING AND RULING

The Methods o f the Rumanian Persecution THE EUROPEAN REFUGEES

Work that Still Remains to be Done

THE VOCATION OF CATHOLIC JOURNALISTS

The Address of Pope Pius XII to the Journalists’ Congress

SCHILLER—POET OR IDEOLOGIST THE SACRAMENT OF LENT

By Arnold Lunn

By Fr. Philip Hughes

‘DOUBLY URGENT’

M R . ACHESON and Mr. Hoffman have now set ou t to see th a t Congress does no t cut to o drastically the allocation fo r European Recovery in the th ird year o f the P ro gramme. The opposition has grown, and it is argued th a t the process is o f its natu re unending, bo th in Europe and in Asia, and th a t in Europe the transaction does n o t unfortunately have the pleasant and hopeful character o f advancing a man money so th a t he can set up fo r himself. But the need, says Mr. Acheson, is doubly urgent. Europe has achieved great things, but, a t the end, they are insufficient. The gaps remain, and Mr. Acheson pu t i t very plainly th a t the United States must either give more direct help, o r they must enable the Europeans to sell more o f their production for dollars ; the second course will be the better fo r everybody and is more natural, because it means concessions which will affect certain interests in the United S tates ; all movements to leave trad e free do so o f their nature, which is why free trade came so very late and always so partially into the practice o f organized communities.

long debate was ended in the way grandiose conceptions do end by a violent change in the balance o f forces, the division and disintegration o f the Mongolian Empire. But the ro o t o f today’s troubles is a conflict o f missionary creeds, and it would show more sense o f the realities to try to arrange an immense, full and searching philosophical and theological debate, before all mankind, with the disciples o f M arx and Lenin, than meetings o f statesm en. The great and growing danger to the world comes from the adventitious com bination o f immense physical resources in the hands o f extremely narrow minded and bigoted materialists, men who a re convinced that they are right, and dem onstrably right. But they will no t let the debate be carried on before their own subjects, whose minds are carefully conditioned and who believe, and are expected to believe, wild and savage myths about the realities o f life outside the closed Communist society, and about the motives and ideals o f those in charge o f o ther countries, and prim arily o f the Americans.

The Adm in is tra tio n ’s requests to Congress come simultaneously with the breaking off o f American relations with Bulgaria, as a rem inder th a t in M r . Acheson’s words the Soviet is acting w ith “ increasing boldness.” T h a t is the dom in an t reality o f these years, against which the election campaign ju s t ended is likely to look in history a most deliberately provincial affair, and the emphasis on security curiously ostrich-like. We have never before moved so consciously tow ards more troubled waters with so very small a margin fo r emergency increases o f revenue ; on the contrary , the Governm ent affirm both th a t the present revenue is the minimum, and th a t it cannot be materially increased from taxation. Once again as in the early ’thirties there is a search fo r the cheapest way to the greatest security, no unreasonable aim provided it does n o t now, as then, make too many people mistake their wishes for solid grounds fo r action. Talk suggests itself as cheapest o f all ; but a t what level are E ast and West to meet ? At the Deepest Level

It is related o f Mangu, brother o f K ubla Khan, that, seeing the extent o f the Mongol Empire a n d the num bers o f conquered and trib u ta ry peoples, he sought to unify them by a universal religion. F o r this purpose he summoned to his headquarters in India exponents o f th e three great universal religions am ong his subjects : Islam was the creed o f the enemy, but he could choose am ong Confucians, the Buddhists, and the Catholics. He listened attentively fo r many days to a F ria r from St. Louis o f F rance before concluding against the Christians because o f their bad lives, saying i t was better to be faithful to soothsayers than unfaithful to a testam ent. The

A great deal o f harm has been done many years past by the inveterate addiction to false categories in this field o f British public men and their official advisers. L o rd Beaverbrook describes his own interviews w ith Stalin in the Kremlin, mentions in passing, to show the simplicity o f the setting, the portraits o f Marx and Engels on the walls o f the sanctum , with no phrase to suggest any understanding th a t they were much the most im portan t and revealing objects. W hat should link a Georgian peasant w ith men as alien in time, place and habit as Marx and Engels and their remote and angry studies o f Victorian England bu t a community o f faith in the world revolution, fo r which Marx and Engels provided the myth and the theory, but Lenin, and after him Stalin, the physical resources. To go to the Kremlin is no t prim arily to visit a foreign capital, to ta lk to foreign statesmen ; behind the Russian State there is another reality, and it is with that reality th a t the Western world has to reckon, and when it surveys the movement, the creed and the Party which is its instrum ent, there is found something whose whole raison d 'e tre is nothing less than the transform ation o f our world. 11m ust be aggressive o r deny its nature. P roposals for divisions o f spheres o f influence, in the trad itio n o f in te rnational d ip lomacy, were freely made and accepted in the years o f war-tim e alliance, and very smoothly did they serve the purposes o f the world revolution, transform ing the countries o f Central Europe into the Communist dictatorship.

Unless the anim ating beliefs o f Communism can be reached and modified, everything a t more superficial levels will only be tactical : and therefore give no confidence. The question is whether the rapid development o f engines o f mass destruction, far beyond the atom bombs th a t closed the Japanese war, creates a new situation. The a tom bomb itself five years