T R E T A B L E T , A p r i i Vinci, 1950
THE TABLET
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA
VOL. 195, No. 5735 FOUNDED IN 1840
LONDON, APRIL 22nd, 1950
SIXPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER
THE RETREAT FROM STATE SOCIALISM
Growing Signs o f a Better Social Philosophy AMERICAN CATHOLICS RE-VISITED The American Imprint on the Life o f the Church. By Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn CHURCH AND STATE IN POLAND THE VATICAN ON TRIAL
The Reported Agreement
The Recent Case in Prague
CLAUDEL AND GIDE A Correspondence on Belief. By Mrs. George Norman
SPRING BOOKS SUPPLEMENT Reviews by Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis, Shane Leslie, Arnold Lunn, Michael Derrick, Edward Hutton, Desmond Fitzgerald, Gerard Meath, Yvonne ffrench, M . Bellasis, J . M . Cameron, D . J . B. Hawkins, J . J . Dwyer, T. Corbishley, Donald Attwater, A. H. Armstrong, F. Sherwood Taylor, and Christopher Howard
A SIGNIFICANT BUDGET T HE Budget is in one way, and simply in term s o f changes in the incidence o f taxation, a very unspectacular affair. There a re some useful slight reliefs fo r the large company paying income tax a t the lower rates on small salaries. There is, on the o ther hand, a fairly steep addition to the price o f petrol, o f ninepence a gallon, imposed no t merely for revenue but to discourage waste, especially by commercial vehicles, and presumably intended also to help the railways. But it is a landm ark, perhaps a tu rn ing point, all the same.
th a t has been given away free, because from the natu re o f things this is n o t likely to last. I t was always the principle o f social work th a t poor people should pay something, i f it was only sixpence, towards a pair o f boots, because then the boots would be valued the more, and people would th ink twice about asking fo r w hat they did n o t really want. A small charge on the Health Service from the beginning would have saved the country a great deal o f money and the doctors a great deal o f annoyance. Retrospective Legislation
Broadly speaking, the Chancellor accepts the view th a t there is no great scope fo r new taxation, no un ta pped source— certainly n o t in the profits o f industry, which the Governm ent’s White Paper, published the day before, had shown to have declined by £95,000,000 in a year in which wages and salaries have increased. The Chancellor and the Government have declined to listen to the left wing o f their Party, to the mischievous urgings o f the New Statesman th a t they should p ro duce a class budget, on which they could fight the next election, on the issue o f the rich against the poor. F o r this they are to be highly commended, as statesm en serving the national interest ; and they do themselves much more good than harm in their o th e r lesser role as party strategists.
The main weakness o f the Budget, which came ou t particularly in the Chancellor’s broadcast the same evening, was its defeatism about economies. The Health Service is costing double what was estim ated, and one may reasonably th ink th a t it would never have been sanctioned in this form if the original estim ate had been the true figure. The Government would, o r certainly should, have said th a t a t this juncture, midway in a most difficult business o f economic recovery, and a t a tim e when the national health has never been better, this immense addition to the annual budget was highly im prudent, and th a t the Government should content itself with setting apart, say, £100,000,000 for the improvement o f hospital facilities where they were inadequate. Now, merely because the immense annual expenditure has been occurred, so much o f it for services which are th rough nobody’s fault no t very satisfactory, the Chancellor treats it as a sacrosanct item. I t is no more true to say th a t the run on the service demonstrates the existence o f a vast am ount o f hidden illhealth, precluded by poverty from seeking relief, than the rapid and to ta l disappearance o f matches and envelopes from hotel room s o r o ther places, where they are exposed to the public for everyone to help himself, shows there was a famine and unsatisfied need for those two useful articles. The simple tru th is th a t where things are free and on tap, commonsense suggests th a t it is advisable to take advantage o f something
Another regrettable feature is the proposal to take re tro spective action to recover payments which were perfectly legal a t the tim e they were made. Retrospective legislation is always bad, bu t it is particularly objectionable when it is the result o f political agitation, o f people saying “W hat you are doing is legal, but as we do n o t like it we will change the law and make it illegal.” An uncertainty o f the most injurious kind is in troduced in to commercial life. I t is a natural temptation, but one which ought to be resisted, th a t when some unintended gap appears in legislation it is no t only closed fo r the future, which is reasonable, bu t deemed no t to have existed in the past.
In this m a tte r Sir Stafford Cripps has yielded to ju s t th a t same spirit which has made Mr. Maurice Webb blot his copy book, a t the outset o f his tenure o f the Ministry o f Food, by shutting ou t Irish cream on the irrelevant ground th a t some people could afford i t and others could not. The English are no t by nature a t all an envious people, and the minority who do indulge in such feelings ought no t to be approved and pandered to by those in charge o f public policy. Once the general principle o f high taxation, to provide from the revenue help for those who need help, is freely conceded, as it is, it must equally be accepted th a t people’s remaining incomes are their own to spend as they please, and there is no conceivable logic o r justice in preventing them from spending it on Irish cream while tolerating the existence o f different classes on the railways, o r different seats in theatres. Mr. Dulles at the State Department
General Omar Bradley, speaking in Chicago a week ago, and providing the first high-level comment to be made on the recent A tlantic m ilitary talks, declared th a t the A tlantic defence plan could hardly be implemented and p u t in to operation unless the member States— including the United States—give up a certain am ount o f their sovereignty. All this is perfectly consistent with Mr. Acheson’s views, which concern rather the o rb it o f political defence and political and