T U E T A B L E T , February 4th, I960

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, No. 5724

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, FEBRUARY 4th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE HEAVY HAND The Catholic Schools under the Collectivist Philosophy CHURCH AND STATE IN ARGENTINA

By John Murray, S .J .

INSIDE TIBET

HI. The Secret o f the Panchen Lama. By Père Matthias Hermanns CARITAS IN POLAND STIRRINGS IN WALES

The Story o f the Seizure

By H . W. J . Edwards

THE HYDROGEN BOMB T H ERE was never much serious doubt th a t President T rum an would give the order th a t the Hydrogen bomb should be manufactured, as he gave the order five years ago th a t the a tom bomb should be dropped on Japan. The Hydrogen bomb is vastly more destructive than the A tom ic bomb, and there is reassurance now in the very stupendousness o f the power available, th a t each increase in th e range o f devastation leaves less tem p ta tion to the men in the Kremlin to rely too much upon the enorm ous geographical space they command. The most dangerous conditions would be those in which the Russians were tem pted to th ink th a t by submarines and other surreptitious means, and by using the advantage their great fifth column in America gives them, they could prepare in secret the sudden catastrophic destruction o f the one power whose strength is greater than their own. The safety o f the world lies as never before in achieving unity fo r defence : the more allies and bases the Americans have, the more centres from which they could retaliate, the less they need to apprehend th a t th e destruction o f their industrial centres will be organised in advance. A few m onths ago General Knerr o f the U.S. A ir Force reminded his countrym en th a t New Y ork is one o f the world’s six most perfect targets for the atom bomb, and gave the o ther five as Boston, Norfolk, Baltimore, Seattle and San Francisco, all places which could be reached by apparently innocent-looking merchant ships.

remove a Germ an menace which, both in 1917 and 1941, was remote by comparison with what the Russian menace threatens so very shortly to become. These are fearful prospects which open up for humanity, and strong will be the tem p ta tion to o ther countries to imagine th a t they can take advantage o f their own industrial insignificance to contrac t out o f any collective security system. But the more o f th a t sauve qui peut spirit there is, the more dangerous is the future going to be fo r everybody. The Freeing of the Exchanges

We can note with satisfaction th a t after a period o f difficulties a real step has been taken to free the exchanges between Scandinavia and Britain. T rade is no t yet freed, but personal expenditure is to be, and the present anom alous position is th a t i t is going to be for a tim e easier to receive permission to exchange sterling fo r Scandinavian currencies fo r unproductive reasons than fo r productive ones, to buy holidays ra th e r th an tim ber. But it is a step forward, and it coincides with the appointm ent under American pressure o f a perm anent official, the Dutchm an D r. Stikker, as D irector o f the O.E.E.C. : from one official and his secretaries many great departm ents o f S tate have grown over and over again, and th a t is plainly Mr. Hoffmann’s hope, th a t a seed has been planted and a beginning made ; for Europe cannot come to life w ithout organs and institutions.

I t is th is quite new danger which makes it less and less possible to see how the world can continue indefinitely as divided and hostile as it is today. There is an extraordinary coincidence o f misfortune th a t the emergence o f a new kind o f man who wholly repudiates the trad itio nal morality took place ju s t before these inventions came to give such men fo r the first time in history the power to destroy those who stand in their path, even a t a great distance ; and th a t these new am oral men became the masters a generation ago o f the one country, Russia, which is, by size and remoteness and the characteristics o f its peoples, most difficult to bring into in te rnational control. Except for the existence o f this sort o f Government in ju s t th a t one country, the problem s o f jo in t control could be faced and solved. There is no other country, Germany o r j a p a n o r Spain, o r Argentina, where it matters to the rest o f hum anity what ideas inspire the Government, no o ther country which could no t be forced to accept in te rnational inspection and control or quickly immobilised.

There will have to be further attem p ts to reach th e Russians, o r there will emerge little by little in America a feeling th a t life under the new insecurity from day to day is an increasingly intolerable prospect. The Americans are a people devoted to peace. But any survey o f their history shows th a t they have, too, a ruthless side, and have reluctantly but resolutely gone to war whenever they have believed war to be the only course, whether to achieve independence, o r to annex the west from Mexico, or to save the Union, o r to in this connection, it is notable th a t, w ith every election speech the Labour Party leaders make it clearer and clearer how insular is their outlook and how national their socialism. The controls which M r. Douglas Jay listed a t Stafford as essential and to be perm anently retained were the following : control o f the financial machine, meaning o f capital investment, foreign exchange control, control o f imports, allocations o f rare raw materials, factory locations. Each o f these controls can be used as a weapon to ensure obedience to o thers ; a firm is to ld it will be allowed to im port o r will be allocated some essential material if and only i f it sets up where the Government directs. A firm is told it will be allowed to raise more capital if it undertakes to export some high percentage o f its output. The key decisions in every industry are removed from the people in charge o f the industry, the people with most knowledge and most a t stake and are made by Committees o r civil servants who are judging by quite different criteria.

This would be much more tolerable if the decisions were being made to serve the larger interest o f the western world, to bring into existence a really great economic area, with all the promise th a t what has been achieved in America by people from Europe, can be achieved by those who have remained this side o f the A tlantic. All the immense relief which the Americans are giving Europe and Asia is only a tenth p a r t o f what their political and economic system enables them to produce. But controls narrowly conceived, the so r t o f restrictionism which only seeks to shift the economic