T I IE T A B L E T , Octobei 21st, I960

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, No. 5761

FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0

LONDON, OCTOBER 21st, 1950

SIXPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

AUTHORITY IN DOCTRINE

An Open Letter to the Archbishop o f York. By Aelred Graham, O .S .B .

THE SPOKEN WORD The Responsibilities o f those who Broadcast THE VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS OF FRANCE

The Crisis o f the “ Ecoles Libres”

A LETTER FROM ITALY “ PRO CIVITATE CHRISTIANA”

The Agrarian Reform

By Daniel-Rops

VYSHINSKY THROWS A PARTY Impressions of a Soviet Reception in Berlin

MR. TRUMAN SPEAKS B Y choosing for Tuesday’s speech the very building in San Francisco wherein five years ago, amid so much rosy optimism, the United Nations were established, President Truman perhaps intended to emphasize the gravity o f what he had to say ; to remind the world of the contrast between those days and this, and to insist that the Americans are not by instinct sternly military or unduly nervous about the intentions of other Powers ; that, on the contrary, only five short years ago they were filled with eager hopes about their relations with a Soviet Government which has not changed since then, so that only a few lone voices like that o f Senator Vandenberg were raised in protest when the Veto, a t Moscow’s request, was written into the United Nations’ rules of procedure.

Yet even now there was an undercurrent in President Truman’s phrases to betray the habits o f thought which governed American behaviour then ; he was thinking, no doubt, partly o f the Congressional elections, which lie now less than three weeks ahead, and talking for American as well as for Soviet hearers ; but it was all too probably an illumination o f his real mind when he denounced the Soviet Union for pursuing not a predatory revolution but “a new colonialism,” as if he had been an eighteenth-century American making a speech against the British, and when he went on to mock Moscow for not being revolutionary at all, but “ the most reactionary movement in the world today,” and to contrast it with the authentically radical tradition o f the United States, as though the lack of an authentic revolutionary fervour, in the sense in which Jefferson had it, were the gravest defect in a Soviet structure which Americans could admire for its size and its success if only it were more reasonable.

more than a purely French colonial and domestic affair and, if so, how it differs in principle from the war in Malaya. The meetings between M. Jules Moch, M. Petsche and General Marshall have impressed Washington with a sense o f the urgency of French military requirements. The civil war in Indo-China has been going on for four years, but not until this summer has the Vietminh Government o f Ho Chi Minh—himself trained in Moscow—been in a position to mount a major offensive. Ho Chi Minh now has many thousands of guerillas and at least seventy thousand regular troops, half of which have been trained and equipped by Communist China. The Vietnam forces number 210,000 troops, o f which 150,000 are Frenchmen and Legionnares. But the Government set up by the French, headed by an Emperor who has not been anxious to leave the French Riviera, suffers great handicaps. The New York Times goes so far as to say th a t American aid to the French and to the Boa Dai Government “alienates the greater part o f the Asiatic peoples” ; but it agrees nevertheless, that two possibilities only remain, Bao Dai or Communism, and there is no prospect o f any third alternative. Francois Mauriac, in an article in Tuesday’s Figaro, voiced tine general opinion when he wrote :—

“ Let us not make the excuse that this war could have been avoided, that the incapacity o f our leaders has imposed it upon us, that the peace has been sacrificed to the defence of particular interests. I too have held that opportunities have been criminally neglected or lost. But today it is clear that Indo-China has become but one sector o f an immense front in this battle o f continents.” France and Voluntary Institutions

This should not have been a speech for home consumption, but a statement o f purpose a t the conclusion o f a successful military operation. In so far as it was electioneering, it was good electioneering ; but in so far as it was an indication o f the sort o f language in which Mr. Truman still judges it appropriate to speak to the men who rule today in the Kremlin, it gave all too much reason to fear that the inadequacy of comprehension shown at San Francisco five years ago persists even now. It is true that he used very firm language about the determination o f the United States to support the United Nations with force o f arms again, if need be ; but it is necessary to know an enemy as well as to be firm with him. The Communists are engaged in something more than “un-American activity.”

While the Korean war, at least militarily speaking, has entered its final phase, the French reverses in Indo-China come as a reminder that the Far Eastern conflict is by no means over, and the question arises, in French minds a t any rate, whether the United Nations can treat the war in Viet Nam as

The French Parliament reassembled this week to find one o f the deepest of the nation’s problems brought more directly into the political arena than it has been for a long time. The destruction o f school buildings in the war, the rising birthrate, and the growing educational ambitions of this generation, have combined to create a series o f problems for the Ministry of Education which a governmental commission is now examining. One consequence of these factors has been to bring home to the French nation the enormous debt which it owes to the Catholic body for maintaining its voluntary schools, and so taking off the hands o f the harassed State, at no expense to the budget, a large number o f children for whom provision would otherwise have to be made. I f all the schools which the Catholics maintain were to be closed from sheer inability to support them further, a major crisis would arise. Successive devaluations of the franc have impoverished all voluntary and private institutions ; the increased cost of living makes life all the more precarious for the devoted people, all over France, who teach in the Catholic schools at salaries very much lower than are regarded as a bare minimum