T E E T A R L E T , J u n e 3rd, 1950

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 195, No. 5741

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, JUNE 3rd, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN IDEA A Statement from the Exiles in the United Europe Movement

THE CONVERSION OF ISRAEL I I : Leaving the Synagogue. By Gregory Schmerling

THE POWER OF THE CINEMA A Note on the Recent Report. By H . P . Newsholme A PARIS LETTER A ROME LETTER Prospects o f an Amnesty Africans and Incunabula

THE TEPID WELCOME

M R. ATTLEE and his colleagues are extraordinarily bad at their public international relations, and give a worse impression both of themselves and their country than they either need or intend. The French make a remarkable offer, a concrete first step towards creating the few essential organs for a United Europe. The British Government cannot, indeed, refuse to take part, and give a conditional response, not intended to be tepid. Mr. Attlee asked for more warmth than his officials a t first thought necessary. But then, after his rather mumbled acceptance in general terms, the chief Ministers disappear, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for holidays in France, the Foreign Secretary, unhappily, back to his hospital bed. What a difference it would have made if either Mr. Attlee or Sir Stafford Cripps, but preferably both, had made the very slight rearrangement in their holiday plans which would have enabled them to go first to Paris for a few hours, and there to show to the French a little genuine enthusiasm for the great vision of European unity ! We do not grudge either Minister his holiday, but we do judge it very unfortunate that they should seem to be so little moved or interested by what is a great event, provided it is hailed as a great event.

ground is only historical explanation ; it is not justification. For there is no future for Britain as a closed economy, but only as a full member of the great new Atlantic community which, under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances, is seeking to be born. Whitsun in Berlin

As the 500,000 German youth were gathering for their Berlin demonstration last week-end, the British, American and French High Commissioners in Germany sent to General Chuikov, the Soviet Commander, a proposal that free elections should be held in all Germany to choose a constituent assembly which would draw a constitution for a unified Germany. The proposal comes as a sequel to the London Foreign Ministers’ conference ; and, viewed in connection with the recent Western preparations against the re-militarization of Eastern Germany, it shows that the Foreign Ministers have agreed not only on the principles of a jo int policy for Germany, but also on the practical measures by which these principles can be applied. This is a most important achievement, as it might enable the Western Powers, for the first time since the end of the war, to regain the initiative and to acquire a broader platform for their political manoeuvring.

Nobody has asked Great Britain for a blank cheque, or reached such a detailed stage in working out the nature and powers of the steel and coal authority as to suggest that the main partners must not, at the beginning, at any rate, have all sorts of rights of veto and non-participation. But it is to give quite the wrong impression when all the publicity is focussed at once on the practical questions, and on the hesitations and misgivings, ft is to fail so conspicuously to see the wood for the trees. Governments are quite right to be closely solicitous for the full employment and standards of their own people, but it is bad statesmanship to look as if these considerations are present in their minds to the exclusion of larger considerations.

Full employment itself will be best safeguarded in proportion as the European nations get out of the vicious circle to which national economic policies and national planning easily lead, in which each country tries to export its unemployment problem, using import quotas or exchange control to do so. This is a matter where Ministers in office have a double duty : a duty to lead and educate the electorate, as well as a duty of looking after its present interests. There is undoubtedly much less realization of the urgent necessity for a much more real European unity than has yet been achieved here and on the mainland. We are still insular, living on what we imagine is an island, and one in which highly organized trade unions with a highly protectionist outlook overshadow the Government. In the last ten years the Government has learnt many new arts of control and is reluctant to part with them. But all this psychological back

The new move also confirms the reports that the representatives of the three Western Powers have agreed to continue to look upon Europe as upon the primary “cold war” theatre of operations, and upon Germany as the first battle to be fought and won. Thus it is believed that the latest proposal was sent to forestall a Russian move towards a separate peace with Eastern Germany, which would be followed by a treaty of friendship, and possibly by an alliance, modelled on the pattern of the alliances which Moscow has concluded with her other satellites. The Western Note counters this move by making it clear that the Western Allies have no intention of making a separate peace with the Federal Republic, since such an act would have the effect of making the division of Germany permanent. “The Western Powers do not wish to associate themselves with any such concept,” says the Note, which further proclaims the wish of Great Britain, the United States and France to recreate German unity through the proposed election, which would prepare the way for a peace treaty acceptable to every German.

Chancellor Adenauer had every reason to welcome the Western proposal. Until now he has been in a difficult position, accused by his right-wing opponents of not devoting himself sufficiently to the cause of German unity. But now unity comes as a proposal from the West, and the terms on which it is offered are such as to allow every German democrat to accept them completely and whole-heartedly.

The terms, however, are utterly unacceptable to the