T B B T A B LB T , May 13 Ik, 10 SO

THE TABLET

VOL. 195, No. 5738 FOUNDED IN 1840

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

LONDON, MAY 13th, 1950

SIXPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE NEED FOR DOCTRINAL EDUCATION The Improved Climate o f Opinion for the Voluntary Schools

THE POST-WAR GENERATION I : An Industrial Sample. By T . S . Copsey II: Children and the Cinema. By the Hon. Mrs. R . T . Bower

THE IMPRISONED MARSHAL

By Frank Macmillan SHAKESPEARE’S ISABEL

By Isobel Macdonald

SPANISH RECONCILIATION

By Edward Sarmiento WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN

By Peter Watts

AFTER FIVE YEARS

B Y a coincidence, the day on which Mr. Dean Acheson was crossing the Atlantic, on his way to Paris and London, marked the fifth anniversary o f the end of the war. Five years ago, on May 7th, 1945, General Jodi signed the act of unconditional surrender to the Allies at General Eisenhower’s headquarters a t Rheims, and two days later another surrender was signed in the Soviet headquarters at Berlin. Since then Soviet Russia, one o f the participants in what Communists then called “an anti-imperialistic crusade,” has gained control over 4,197,340 square miles o f territory and more than 532,000,000 people. Today Communism threatens to engulf more territories and nations and, unless it is checked, it will fulfil the war-cry o f its old battle-song : tomorrow the world.

It is to meet this threat that Mr. Acheson came to Europe, to discuss the world’s situation first with M. Schuman and Mr. Bevin and next week with all the Foreign Ministers o f the Atlantic Treaty Powers. Jn a statement issued before his departure for Europe he said :—

“Free men and free nations everywhere will face increasingly crucial tests in the years immediately ahead. What we seek in London is to accelerate the mobilization o f the moral and material strength o f the free world. The free world contains vast untapped moral and material resources. We must develop those reserves to the best o f our ability. We should be doing so even if international Communism did not exist. As things are, we must do so with utmost vigour.” Things, indeed, are rather tense, both in Asia and in Europe. The lull in Asia is only superficial, and those who thought that the conquest o f China would absorb the impetus of Communist progress for many years ahead were once more mistaken : while the Cominform’s hold on China slowly consolidates, and while Chinese resources are being gradually integrated with the Soviet economy, Communist propaganda, fostering nationalist tendencies o f the local populations, stimulates unrest in far-ranging areas o f South-East Asia. As for Europe, Russia is obviously once more trying to find a weak spot in the Western defences : the planned demonstrations in Berlin, to take place at the end o f this month, the wave o f strikes in the Western harbours, the American plane recently shot down in the Baltic, and the seizures o f Scandinavian and British trawlers, the renewed demands on the Dardanelles, the Prague meeting o f the Defence Ministers of the satellite States and the reported military moves in Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia—all these details are part of a picture which gives a special significance to the London meetings.

An American correspondent remarked that the agenda for those meetings was as long as a laundry list, but there is hardly anything to be surprised a t in its length. I t is the first time since the end of the war that the American, British and French Foreign Ministers have set themselves the huge task o f discussing all their common problems, all over the world ; and it will also be the first time that the twelve North Atlantic Treaty Ministers have attempted to review all the political, military and economic problems o f the cold war. Moreover, certain problems have arisen which need to be solved immediately, or in the very near future. There is, for instance, the question o f how to divide the cost o f Atlantic defence among the member States so that their economies will not be disrupted by the increased financial burden ; the weapons provided by the United States under the Atlantic Pact are only one part o f the common effort, and the plans adopted at The Hague and Brussels military conferences call for the building of air and naval bases and the creation of fifty divisions in Western Europe by 1953. This, however, cannot be achieved unless the United States increase their share and unless the European countries receive assurances that American help will be forthcoming even after the Marshall Plan ends. The Future of Germany

As for the future o f Germany, it is now recognized that the German problem is inextricably connected with all the problems o f the defence and economic organization o f Europe. The West is committed to support the Bonn Government against Russia and to hold the outpost in Berlin. There is, however, a long-standing difference o f opinion between the French and the Americans as to the methods and the limits o f this support—a difference which seems to survive even after the airing o f the question in the Acheson-Schuman talks last Monday. Fundamentally, both the French and the Americans agreed that a constructive policy has to be defined, and to be applied when the Occupation Statute for Germany comes under revision. The French, however, insist that before the present precautions are relaxed Germany must give more proofs o f a change of heart. They are apprehensive lest the Americans, in their desire to build in Western Germany one o f the “areas o f strength” by which Mr. Acheson wants to counter the Soviet menace, should reinstate Germany as a sovereign Power, instead o f opening the way to the Western community by first building the Western world into a real community and integrating its economy and defences.

The French proposal for the French and German steel production to be placed under a single European authority, which could be joined by all the other European countries as well, is consistent with the policy o f European unification which M. Schuman has been following ever since he came