TBE TAR IL I , March 1S/A,

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, No. 5730

FO U N D E D I N 1840

LONDON, MARCH 18th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN CHRISTIANS Some Comments from Lambeth and Geneva, and from Downside

THE COLLAPSE OF THE UTOPIAS The Church Alone Survives: III. By F . A. Voigt LIFE AND DEATH AND THE LAW Euthanasia in the News Again. By Richard O ’Sullivan

A LETTER FROM MADRID

SEEN FROM EUROPE

The Work o f Restoration

Continental Views on the British Election

THE ENCYCLICAL “ ANNI SACRI” The Full Text o f the Pope’s Call to Prayer for Peace

THE BRITISH AT STRASBOURG O NE of the first good results of the disappearance of the Government's large majority has been the abrupt withdrawal of the Control of Engagements Order. The Government have very wisely abandoned the direction of labour before the House o f Commons forced them to do so, for this is a question where not only would the Liberals have voted with the Conservatives, but a number o f Labour members would have abstained, even if they also had not voted against direction. That it is an abrupt volte-face is very clear from the speeches Mr. George Isaacs was making during the election, when, so far from talking o f bringing direction to an end, he was throwing out dark hints about directing employers to accept particular men. As a matter o f statistics, the Government can certainly claim that very few people were in fact directed. But that does not mean that the existence o f the powers did not play a great part in enabling the officials of the Ministry o f Labour to obtain a pseudo-voluntary assent to their suggestions. The knowledge that these powers were there, and could be invoked, was present on both sides o f the table while the interview took place.

ment harassed and tense and to prevent Ministers with seats in the Commons from fulfilling their duties abroad or in the countryside. There are some Ministers to whom it is very welcome to have the honourable excuse that they cannot leave London ; there are others, especially those concerned with foreign and economic policy, who will be tempted to lose their sense o f proportion and to fancy that the international position will wait till they can attend to it more fully. As far as the Council o f Europe goes, the Government should consider whether it cannot develop an agreed policy with the Opposition, so that representatives o f both sides of the House could go to Strasbourg together. The divergence between the two parties over European unity is much more a divergence, a difference over pace, urgency and on the extent to which the British economy can be closed, so that it may be controlled. This second issue is fundamental, but it still leaves a good deal o f common ground. The Unrecurring Opportunity

There were, and there are, serious arguments o f an economic character for direction, but the Government are to be commended for doing the right thing, even if they, too, have done it voluntarily, in order to anticipate being directed to do it. For the liberty involved is one o f the few that really are fundamental, and not to be abrogated, save in such moments of grave national danger as came to us in 1940. Yet the implications of withdrawing it will prove much bigger than is anticipated. In conditions o f a wage freeze, there will be no way o f persuading people who cannot be ordered to go and live in lodgings or hostels where the work is, instead of waiting where their homes are for work on the spot to turn up sooner or later. It remains to be seen whether any economy can, in fact, be conducted without either unemployment or the fear of it, or direction, unless there are all sorts of rapidly changing differential rates o f pay which can attract labour to the place where it is wanted for as long as it is wanted. All these conditions have been removed from the rigid British economy with which the Government is expecting the nation to survive and prosper in an increasingly competitive world.

It was inevitable that the Opposition should a t the outset o f Parliament challenge the Government, and on more than one issue, for no party can make a great deal o f something in the election and then show itself strangely quiescent when it has the power to raise the issue in the House. The votes of confidence have underlined what a very different House of Commons this is, with the Government on the defensive. But once that has been underlined there will be no advantage in maintaining the strain, simply in order to keep the Govern

Meanwhile, as Socialists know in their hearts, the great moment for Socialism has passed. 1945 will not come again. It took an unrepeatable and extraordinary combination of circumstances to condition the British public for Socialism. For ten years before 1945 the effects o f the great slump, the disappointment of all the pacifist idealism, the Popular Front ideology, the war-time discipline, the emergence of the Soviet Union as an unwilling but strong and effective ally, all led a great section of the nation towards accepting or acquiescing in ideas of full State control, which had long been preached by a few but were instinctively rejected by the ordinary man or woman. It would have been a great tour de force to make Socialists out o f either the English or the Scots. But it came within a measure o f success, as Socialists had the luck to come to office with a flying start. They found half the powers they would have startled and angered people by taking already in existence, as war-time emergency powers, and continued them with far less excitement than would have accompanied their introduction. Now they have every motive for appearing as a steady, moderate, reforming party, and it is surprising to find the New Statesman, in its defence o f Mr. John Strachey, reviving the memory of a book, The Betrayal o f the Left, in which he took part. That book attacked the Communists for not supporting the war, but its whole thesis is that of an internecine quarrel between people who are all agreed in wanting a class revolution to bring the working class to power, wanting to achieve it legally, but envisaging with eagerness a drastic transformation. To Mr. Strachey, and to Mr. Attlee, the years 1945 to 1950 were merely preparatory. British Reluctance over Convertibility

I f the declarations o f the Government are accepted at their face value, the Government, from their own point of