l t l E T ABLET, äepiember 16th, 1950

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, No. 5756

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 16th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

“TO WHOM SHALL WE GO ?” The Loose Thinking Underlying some o f the Objections to the Assumption CATHOLICS AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE : 1864-1895

II : Permission Secured from Rome. By H . O. Evennett

REJECTING THE WAGE FREEZE Impressions o f the Trade Union Congress at Brighton MR. ALFRED NOYES AT THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL Tributes for his Seventieth Birthday A Summing Up. By George Scott-Moncrieff

TIME FOR DECISION

W HEN the Foreign Ministers o f the Atlantic Treaty Powers met in London four months ago their discussions were already determined by the growing tension throughout the world. In Europe, Eastern Germany, methodically re-armed by her Russian protectors, was already emerging as a menace to the Bonn Federal Republic, while in the Balkans the Cominform pressure on Yugoslavia was increasing, and while in the West, especially in France and in Italy, the Communist fifth column was being openly mobilized against Europe’s economic and military recovery. In Asia, Communist aggression in Indochina and in Malaya served •—or ought to have served—as an example o f the diversionary tactics by which the Russians might try to drain the resources of the democratic Powers, and the problem o f Chinese representation in the United Nations had since January produced an impasse in the Security Council o f the United Nations.

should fill at least the most dangerous gaps in the Atlantic defence with the utmost speed.

This feeling of urgency provided the background for the preparatory work of the Deputies o f the Atlantic Foreign Ministers, who have been sitting in London all through the last month, and the same feeling prevails this week in New York at the conference of the Big Three Foreign Ministers, which is now followed by the meeting o f all the Foreign Ministers o f the twelve Atlantic Treaty countries. Mr. Dean Acheson, when asked what would be the range and the nature of the problems to be discussed, said :

“The range will be very great. Probably in the next four or five weeks the State Department will be working on more problems than it has worked on in any period of fifty years in peacetime.” The Difficult Question of China

The Foreign Ministers were quick to recognize the gravity o f the situation and the necessity to restore, a t least partially, the balance o f world power which was so dangerously disturbed by the military superiority o f the East. Their plans, however, were still rather o f a long-term character : they spoke o f measures o f which the results would begin to materialize not in the very distant, but still in a distant, future, and their planning o f defence was still very much influenced by normal peace-time considerations, in which economic arguments were o f paramount importance.

Since then, the Communist aggression in Korea has clearly provided the spark from which the entire world could be easily set aflame. True, for the time being the conflict remains localized and every kind o f effort is being made by the United Nations to prevent it spreading. Yet the Russians, the real instigators o f this conflict, must have known from the beginning that open aggression as blatant as that o f the Korean Communists involved a risk o f a general war. Perhaps they did not expect the swift and energetic reaction of the United Nations, and perhaps they thought that the danger of a general war was relatively slight, yet they could not have dismissed the danger entirely. In other words, those who believed that Russian plans for aggression against the West were timed only for 1952 or 1953, and that the danger of war could be averted if by th a t time the Atlantic community is strong enough to deter the potential aggressors, became obliged to realize that the period o f danger is already here and that the defences o f the Altantic nations must be strengthened immediately. That is why the economic arguments—such as that an abrupt speeding-up o f rearmament would impose too heavy sacrifices upon the economies o f the nations concerned—lost most o f their political value, and why the long-term defence planning had to be revised and complemented by a number of steps which

But even before the three Foreign Ministers met on Tuesday in the New York Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, President Truman announced that “ substantial increases” will be made in the strength o f the American forces stationed in Europe, although there was no indication in Mr. Attlee’s declaration in the House o f Commons on Tuesday that the British garrisons in Germany would be strengthened as well. One could almost hear the sigh of relief from Western Europe when they were told, in addition, by General Mark Clark, that the arrival of the new American contingents in Europe would not be much delayed. They realized that these increased garrisons would help to fill the present gap in the West European defences until such time as the effects of the British and. French lengthening o f military service is felt.

The question of Formosa, linked with the problem o f the recognition o f Communist China and of her admission into the United Nations, presents one of the most complicated problems in the present discussion. The American attitude remains unchanged, and was reaffirmed by Mr. Acheson only a few days ago, but nobody—the Americans no more than anyone else—seems to be happy about the present position, when the Chinese problem constitutes a dangerous rift in the democratic majority of the United Nations. It is especially the attitude of India which is watched with some concern in the United States, as India’s prestige amongst the nations of South-East Asia is known to be higher than the prestige of any other Asiatic country.

Recent statements o f Mr. Pandit Nehru, published in the magazine United States News and World Report, have left nobody in doubt as to the Indian Prime Minister’s resolve to press the matter of Chinese representation further. His practical arguments, based on the existing position—that is, on the fact that the Communist Government controls the