T H E T A B L E T , October 14th, 1950

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA D E I , PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, N o . 5760

FOUNDED IN 1840

L O N D O N , OCTOBER 14th, 1950

S IX PENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE NATION AND THE PARTIES The Dangerous Monopolies o f the Party Politicians A COMMUNIST FAILURE IN AUSTRIA The Background to the Attempted General Strike

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL THE STALIN OF THE EAST General Franco Meets Dr. Salazar The Role o f Mao Tse-Tung in Asia

CATHOLICS AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

The Last Fifty Years. By Christopher Hollis, M .P .

“LE SORCIER DU CIEL”

The Film about the Curé d’Ars

MUSIC OF THE MONTH

By Rosemary Hughes that the resolute action of the United Nations had had a resounding effect on the attitude o f the free nations, both in Europe and in Asia, they rushed back to the Security Council and did all they could to distract the attention of the millions who were watching the naked aggression in Korea with indignation. The Temporary Uncertainty

ACROSS THE PARALLEL T HE forces o f the United Nations have now crossed the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, but only after a delay which ought never to have occurred. It is always dangerous to give the enemy, even if he has been defeated, time to reorganize and re-group his forces, and the British and the American troops, pressing towards the North Korean capital, will now meet obstacles in their way which they would not have met a fortnight ago. They may have to pay dearly for each of the days when they were kept waiting on the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, while the diplomats at Flushing Meadow made up their minds and tried to find “suitable formula,” while it was clear all the time that, unless the Communist aggressors laid down their arms and surrendered, the logic o f the situation demanded that what remained o f their organized resistance should be stamped out.

But on the broader diplomatic front, too, the unnecessary delay did not enhance the prestige o f the United Nations, who, having given admirable leadership to the free world, suddenly seemed to become hesitant and frightened o f the victory they had achieved. Worse still, it even seemed for a time that the very unity was endangered with which the free nations had realized only a few months before that this time open aggression had to be stopped, so that its Russian instigators should not be tempted to repeat it in some other part of the world. All kinds of arguments were brought forward, not only a t Lake Success and at Flushing Meadow but also in the course of a wide-ranging discussion o f which Mr. Walter Lipmann’s articles were a part, as was, to a certain extent, the Margate conference o f the Labour Party, which only helped to weaken the clear moral case o f the United Nations, because people began either to advocate the doubtful wisdom of the old-type Realpolitik or to obscure the issue by dragging other matters into the discussion, as, for instance, the problem o f Chinese representation in the United Nations, or the future o f Formosa, or the character of the South Korean Syngman Rhee Government.

This was largely the fruit o f Russian efforts. In the first week of the campaign, while the Communist aggressors were easily defeating the bewildered and unprepared South Koreans, and while the hopelessly outnumbered Americans were falling back towards the sea, the Kremlin propaganda revelled in displaying the picture of a small Asiatic nation imposing a crushing defeat upon the United States, which would serve as an object-lesson for the world that the myth o f Communist invincibility was not a myth but a reality ; and in Western Europe, especially in Germany, the Communist parties made the most of the new slogan, “Korea is a lesson.” But when it became clear that the Americans would not be driven into the sea, and when the Russians realized

M. Malik, back once again in the Security Council, denounced American policy on Formosa as an attack against Chinese territory, the Chinese Communists provided the necessary threats and resolutions, and throughout the world the Communists—but with them also many fellow-travellers, and also many people who were influenced by their propaganda—immediately forgot about the Korean war and about how it was that the problem o f Formosa had arisen, and started behaving as if the real danger to the peace o f the world was General MacArthur alone. At the same time, M. Malik reopened the question of the Chinese representation, which M. Vyshinsky later raised once more in the General Assembly, and again one could notice how quick were some people gratefully to pick up the new trail which enabled them to turn away from the painful sight o f the Korean aggression and to revert to the well-trodden path of anti-American criticism. Then again, when the United Nations forces approached the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, anxious voices were heard saying that if we crossed the Parallel we should be branded as aggressors ourselves. Did we then really become aggressors when we crossed the Rhine in 1944 and fought Hitler on German soil ?

All this does not mean that the problem of Formosa, and o f China’s part in the United Nations, should be waved aside. They must certainly be dealt with, but not so as to overshadow the principal issue, which is the Korean issue, which would then degenerate into some sort of a bargaining item. Yet the issue is clear : in Korea, international Communism resorted to open aggression, and for the first time since the war the free nations of the world resolved that aggression should be met by an international police force. I f the “police force” should allow the aggressors to build another army, and should withdraw without securing true peace in Korea, then the entire venture would be deprived o f meaning.

As for the power-political arguments against the crossing of the Parallel—such as, for instance, the argument that Russia could not allow the presence o f a Western military force in the vicinity o f Vladivostock, or that China is bound to intervene when the United Nations approach the Yalu river, or, again, that the pacifying efforts o f the United Nations will be frustrated by the guerillas which will continue the fight inside Korea—all these arguments were equally