TEE TABLET, May ‘27th, 1950

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, No. 5740

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, MAY 27th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

ALL THE FAITHFUL A Hopeful Mark o f the Church in this Century THE MESSAGE OF THE CENACLE A Pentecostal Meditation. By Mgr. R . A . Knox

THE CONVERSION OF ISRAEL I : Finding the Temple Rebuilt. By G. Schmerling CATHOLICISM IN THE MODERN WORLD

A Survey. By Christopher Dawson

STE. JEANNE DE VALOIS

The Whitsun Canonisation

THE COCKTAIL PARTY

The Morality at the New Theatre

THE ASIATIC STRATEGY T HE series of important meetings which have been taking place in London in the past weeks have been closely followed, in the United States, by the greatest display o f armed forces which that country has ever seen in time of peace. The American celebration o f the Armed Forces Day was a most impressive demonstration o f the increasing might o f the United States defences, and the military parades, which were held not only in New York and Washington, but also in Germany and in Japan, were obviously intended to underline one o f the basic principles on which the Atlantic community had been built : namely, to quote President Truman, that this community needs first o f all “a force o f sufficient strength to deter aggression and to make impossible the defeat of America by any blitz attack o f any dimensions.”

proletariat is able to combine its own revolutionary struggle with the movement for emancipation o f the toiling masses o f the non-sovereign nations and the colonies against the power o f the imperialists and for a dictatorship o f the proletariat.” A Quarter of a Century’s Warning

This is a theme which recurs again and again in Stalin’s speeches and writings. He reiterates that the abolition of what he calls the national oppression in Europe is inconceivable without the emancipation o f the colonial peoples o f Asia and Africa : it was the Communists, he says, who first revealed the connection between the national question and the question o f the colonies, and who made it the basis o f their practical revolutionary work, and this broke down the wall between the white peoples and the coloured peoples, between the “civilized” and “ uncivilized” slaves o f imperialism.

Another logical sequel to the conference o f the Atlantic Treaty countries is the increased attention which the member States have decided to devote to the menaced countries of Asia. The incorporation o f China into the Soviet bloc, with its catastrophic effects on the balance o f power in the Far East, and especially in South-East Asia, helped them to realize that there might be a connection between the temporary lull in Western Europe and the advance o f Communist penetration in the opposite side o f the world. They were led, for the first time since their association was formed, to view the cold war from a global aspect and to look for a global anti-Communist strategy.

The Communists were by far the first to realize the importance o f the colonial countries in their world strategy and to devise comprehensive plans of action. These plans, like all other Communist plans, have an ideological foundation firmly anchored in the Marx-Leninist doctrine ; but they have also an eminent importance in the practical strategy o f the permanent revolution which, in the Communist terminology, the exploited workers of the western countries and the exploited peoples of the colonial nations are waging together against the imperialists.

In 1921, discussing the national question—a subject to which he had devoted much study—Joseph Stalin wrote in a Pravda article :—

“ I f Europe and America may be called the front, the scene o f the main engagements between Socialism and imperialism, the non-sovereign nations and the colonies, with their raw materials, fuel, food and vast stores o f human material, should be regarded as the rear, the reserve of imperialism. In order to win a war one must not only triumph a t the front, but also revolutionize the enemy’s rear, his reserves. Hence the victory o f the world proletarian revolution may be regarded as assured only if the

“This circumstance considerably facilitated the coordination o f the struggle o f the backward colonies with the struggle o f the advanced proletariat against the common enemy, imperialism.” Stalin, however, is more o f a practical leader than an ideologue, and it is rather the practical implications which interest him in his appreciation o f the colonial problems. He may give thought to the “imperialist oppression” o f the coloured peoples, but he dwells much more on the thought —no doubt a haunting thought—of the strength which his capitalist opponents derive from their association with the colonial nations, their material wealth, their reserves of manpower and raw materials—in other words the thought o f the “capitalist rear” which must be disrupted. In his report to the Twelfth Congress o f the Russian Communist Party in April, 1923—a report in which he explains why the Party had made a turn within the country towards the New Economic Policy and outside the country towards a slower rate o f advance—he declares :—

“For we decided that we needed a respite, that we must heal our wounds, the wounds received by the vanguard, the proletariat ; that we must establish contact with the peasant rear, and continue to prosecute our work among the reserves, which have fallen behind us—the reserves of the West and the reserves o f the East, the heavy reserves which form the main rear-line reserves o f world capitalism. It is of these reserves—the heavy reserves o f the East which at the same time constitute the rear-line o f imperialism— that we must speak when discussing the national question. Two things are possible : either we succeed in stirring up and revolutionizing the far imperialist rear—the colonial