ÎTEE TABLET, March 4th, 1930

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, No. 5728

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, MARCH 4th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

HALTED IN ITS TRACKS The Electoraie’s Growing Scepticism about Socialism

THE COLLAPSE OF THE UTOPIAS The War and its Aftermath Through German Eyes By F. A. Voigt

BRITAIN AND MARSHAL PETAIN

The Story o f a Secret Agreement in 1940

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE (ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

The Full Text o f the Holy Office Document

T. G. MASARYK, 1850-1937 THE SCOTTISH ISLES

By Jan Stranskv

By G. Scott-Moncrieif

THE UNEASY PARLIAMENT T HE result o f the general election leaves Mr. A ttlee’s Government able to adm inister but no t to legislate. They held the election in February because they did n o t th ink it advisable to wait any longer. Some o f them hoped for an increased majority, most o f them for a substantial one, so th a t it would have been a Government fortified and refreshed, like Antaeus, by contact w ith the nourishing soil, which could have braced itself to face both the international and the economic rough weather ju s t ahead. In general, foreign comment asks uneasily : is G reat Britain, a country so im portant still, going to be paralysed and indecisive with its Ministers only thinking o f the next election, and the Opposition only thinking how to tu rn everything to account electorally ? The answer is th a t it can work out like this, but there is no necessity whatever why it should, no reason why Mr. A ttlee's Government should not be supported by the Opposition in pursuing a firm policy supported by the whole nation towards the expansive aims o f the Soviet Union. On that, the dom inating issue o f our time, there has been singular unanim ity , all through Mr. Bevin’s Foreign Secretaryship. One m inor good result o f the election has been the unseating o f a good number o f the fellow travellers and their associates. The Labour movement will have to keep a yet more intensive discipline : th a t is one o f the less happy results o f the election, th a t the already powerful tendency towards a more and more military discipline in the great parties will be strengthened. But in in te rnational affairs, whatever Mr. Bevin says and Mr. Churchill endorses, will come with more authority today than in the past.

temptuously by Ministers sure o f their majority. This course will be much more in the national interest. In general, we hope the Conservatives will not show themselves in any great hurry to force the next election. I t is ra th e r from inside the Labour movement th a t the impatience will come. If Mr. Attlee and his colleagues seem content to adm inister but not to legislate, recognise th a t they have no shadow o f a mandate—that favourite word o f Mr. Attlee’s— to try to nationalise anything more, if they make their Parliam entary business chiefly the answering o f questions about the departments, they will save themselves and all Parliam ent much intolerable strain, and the position might be quite satisfactory. But then it is quite certain that voices would be heard saying th a t “ there is a coalition in all but name, a secret collusion,” and th a t men elected to carry forward the red banners o f Socialism were really quite content to stay in office with all the a t ten dant perquisites. As the months went by this propaganda would become dangerous among the very people who, because they are fanatical Socialists, are in every constituency essential to the movement. There is already quite a big gulf between the world o f the higher trade unionism, from which men are appointed to national boards, enough plausibility in Communist assertions th a t the Labour politicians and trade unions classes are, and are content to be, a new governing class, only the latest o f the new batches o f new blood which are continually taken into the ranks o f those who rule and enjoy themselves.

Economically too, the Government need no t be weak and indecisive, although this will require m ore sacrifice o f party prepossessions. The Budget must be in troduced in a few weeks, and one o f the first decisions the leading Ministers have to take is about its character. There will not be wanting voices to tempt them to draw up a Budget designed to set the poor against the rich, in the belief th a t many people who voted against the Socialists on general grounds would vote for the Budget th a t gave concrete personal advantages o f a considerable kind. D r . Dalton in his tenure o f the Exchequer could not find a feasible way o f making a levy on capital, but for electoral purposes it would not m a tte r so much th a t the projects were no t practically sound, if they could be produced in a spirit o f “ fair shares,” and with the argument, dear to Mr. Jay, th a t the rich still have some capital and some in heritance, which ought to go in to the common pool before ordinary men and women accept heavy taxation o f their earnings o r their pleasures. Something o f this kind, some People’s Budget, may be attem pted, although i t would be exceedingly dangerous, as i t always is, to underrate the electorate.

But the alternative is an agreed Budget, agreed in substance and w ith many amendments no longer turned down con

Mr. A ttlee will be to ld th a t the longer he governs quietly and with the forbearance o f the Opposition, the less possible is it going to be to evoke all the semi-religious fervour which has provided so much o f the driving force behind British Socialism. Men who have for so long professed th a t there is no moral nor economic salvation w ithout collectivization cannot behave as though they knew th a t this is no t really true. The Government are going, in any event, to be compelled to trea t the Conservative Opposition with more respect, for it is intellectually as well as numerically greatly reinforced. We shall n o t hear any more o f Mr. Shinwell’s pretences th a t the Conservatives are finished as a party, o r Mr. Morrison’s pretences th a t he is debilitated by lack o f worthy Opposition. The End of a Theme Song

We hope, too, th a t this is the end o f the Liberal attem p t to pretend th a t the Conservative Party is no t the great broadly based national reality th a t it is, but merely the party o f wealth and privilege. I f it were merely th a t, it could hardly expect to get even the two and a half million votes which the Liberals themselves secured. But it is one o f the curiosities o f our electoral history th a t the Liberal candidates, whom the electorate did no t want, so continually based their case on the assumption th a t the electorate would no t have the Conservatives, that, regrettable as it might be to have to split