TH E T A B L E T , September 30th, 1930

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, No. 5758

F O U N D E D IN 1 8 4 0

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 30th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

PRINCES OF THE CHURCH The Gathering o f Cardinals for the Congress

THE UPROAR OF 1850

Who Raised the Cry o f “ Papal Aggression” ? By Philip Hughes A PARIS LETTER DANCING AMONG RUINS Seeking out the Fifth Column A Letter from Cologne

AN ENGLISHMAN IN ROME: 1650 Experiences o f an Earlier Holy Year. By H . J . D . Utley THE BACKWARD GLANCE REFORMERS’ PARADE

By M . Bellasis

By Christopher Hollis

WINNER TAKE NOTHING The Case o f Mr. Hemingway. By Evelyn Waugh bers, have gradually proved to be strong moral weapons, and now the General Assembly seems to be ready for the same development that has come among the lower houses o f the national Parliaments in the various democratic countries. I t was, in fact, the General Assembly that established the South Korean Republic and supported it as the only legal Government o f the peninsula after Russia had refused to permit free elections. I t was also the Assembly’s Korean Commission, in Korea a t the time, which swiftly verified the fact of North Korean aggression on June 25th and whose report provided the Security Council with a basis for further decisions. The “ International Police Force”

BY-PASSING THE VETO T HE American plan for peace, which has now been endorsed by Mr. Bevin a t Flushing Meadow, is in many ways the result o f what has been going on at Lake Success in the last three months. The plan, whose authorship is attributed to Mr. John Foster Dulles, the Republican adviser to the State Department, is based on the experience, so conclusively confirmed during recent months, that the United Nations can survive only if they succeed in ridding themselves o f the deadening influence o f the veto-power. It assumes that the Russians, when they were planning the aggression in Korea and when they were giving their North Korean Communist vassals the order to cross the ThirtyEighth Parallel, did not expect that the United Nations would take such a swift and determined stand. In Mr. Bevin’s words, “ they counted on being able to present the world with a fa i t accompli in Korea and to win a victory for aggression.” They forgot, however, that the Security Council was only unable to act so long as they were exercising their power o f veto there. By boycotting the Security Council they gave it a freedom o f action which not only enabled the democratic Powers to build an effective resistance to the aggressors but which had, besides, a resounding moral effect throughout the world. They soon realized their mistake, and thus Jacob Malik was ordered back to the Security Council, from which he had departed in January and to which he had not been meant to return save in the company o f the Chinese Communist delegate. Since his return, however, the Security Council has relapsed once more into its former state o f impotence ; and it was especially the period o f M. Malik’s presidency which gave the world an object-lesson in how its work could be effectively sabotaged by the Russian veto if a new aggression on the Korean pattern should develop in the future in some other part of the world.

Drawing the logical conclusions out o f these recent experiences, the Dulles-Acheson project falls back upon the General Assembly, whose decisions cannot be thwarted by the Russian veto. This body was originally designed as a more or less powerless “world forum,” but its recommendations, when backed by more than fifty o f its fifty-nine mem

The General Assembly, however, is a large and slowmoving body, and it is therefore suggested that its rules of procedure should be amended so that the representatives of the member-States could meet, if a new aggression should take place, a t a few hours’ notice. At the same time the Assembly would create a permanent staff of observers, who would be dispatched to the spot where the new aggression took place and who would submit a neutral report to the Assembly. As for the United Nations “police force,” it is agreed now that it would be dangerous to rely once more on the same improvisation to which the United Nations were obliged to resort in Korea ; not only because the Americans would hardly be willing permanently to take upon themselves the rather disproportionate burden of sacrifices, but also because it is essential that the forces o f the United Nations should have a truly international character. The Asiatic nations especially will be asked to contribute more than the ambulance units that are all that have so far come from India, for example, or than the token forces which have been promised by certain other Asiatic countries but which are still undergoing military training far from the battlefield where they are badly needed : for one thing, they would help to restore the unfavourable balance o f military manpower and, what is even more important, they would give the lie, by their mere presence, to the Russian allegations that the Korean war is just another imperialist war against a colonial nation. For