TH E T A B L E T , October 28th, 1950

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, No. 5762

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, OCTOBER 28th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY An Outline o f the Theology. By Canon G. D . Smith THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE ASSUMPTION The Visible Tradition o f Christendom: I. By J . Duhr, S .J .

A CHANGE OF CHANCELLOR The Retirement o f Sir Stafford Cripps HOUSEHOLDERS AND OWNERS The Question o f Leasehold Reform. By Michael P . Fogarty “ALL PROPER” THE ASSUMPTION

By J. M . Bruce

A Poem by Alfred Noyes

Freie Deutsche Jugend, where they get para-military training.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS T HE bell which rang last Tuesday in Berlin, for United Nations Day, carried as its inscription a phrase from the Gettysburg speech : “That this world, under God, shall have a new birth o f freedom.” The Manchester Guardian is right to say that the idea of this Freedom Bell, in support of which three million signatures were collected in the United States, was something peculiarly American, and to compare it with the naïve Wilsonian enthusiasms of thirty years ago ; but it has, nevertheless, a great symbolic purpose in Berlin, behind the powerful new radio stations which are to carry the breath of freedom into the countries under Soviet domination ; and it will ring also for the Germans, whose country is the testing-ground of the time ahead, regarded by the Soviets as the key to Europe, as has again been shown by the presence of so important a figure as M. Molotov at a Prague conference called to add formal signatures to documents already prepared in Moscow.

In their own zone of Germany the Russians, since 1945, have never ceased to rebuild the German armed forces under Communist command. It appears, in fact, that the foundations o f the new German-Communist armed forces were laid already during the war within the framework of the Bund o f the Reichswehr officers taken prisoners during the Russian campaign. At the present time these forces consist of large numbers o f the “ People’s Police,” the Frontier and the Railway Police and the Bereitschaften—in other words, the Emergency Units who seem to have inherited the part of the former Nazi Storm Troops. Together these forces exceed a quarter o f a million men—some observers estimate their numbers at half a million—and, despite the denials o f the Communist authorities, they constitute a German Army whose existence is a patent contravention of the international treaties.

According to the latest report of the International Committee for the Study of European Questions, the members of these forces undergo a course of instruction amounting to 1,048 hours, of which 717 hours are devoted to purely military training. They are being armed progressively with machine guns, light and heavy mortars, anti-tank guns, light and heavy artillery, including 100 mm. and 155 mm. howitzers and armoured vehicles of different types. A number of centres called “Police Schools” have been established in Eastern Germany, where since March, 1950, nearly 60,000 additional recruits are receiving military training. As for the officers of this new Wehrmacht, they are trained in three principal schools and twelve other schools. Furthermore, constant appeals are being made by the Communist authorities to the former officers of the old Wehrmacht and of the Nazi S.S. to join the new Army, and, in addition, all the children and youth of Eastern Germany are enrolled in the formations o f the

It is against this background that we must weigh and judge M. Molotov’s Prague proposals for the unification of Germany. The Warsaw Declaration, made in lune, 1948, on similar lines, was obviously unrealistic, because even then it was already apparent that the Communist minority in the East disposed of sufficient means to seize power in the whole of Germany the moment the barrier between the two parts of the country might disappear and the Western occupying Powers might cease to be able to protect the West German democratic order. As for the present position, it is just impossible to believe that M. Molotov did not know that his proposals—including the strange idea of “parity” between the representatives o f the eighteen millions of Eastern Germans, governed by a Communist minority, and the representatives of nearly fifty millions of Western Germans who have elected their own Government in properly democratic elections would be regarded by no one as more than a propaganda move. The correspondent of Le Monde is probably right when he remarks that the Prague meeting should be interpreted as the Soviet answer to the New York Big Three conference, ju s t as the Warsaw Conference o f 1948 was an answer to the London meeting of the three Western Powers held a few weeks earlier. The German Reluctance to Rearm

It will certainly encourage the professional neutrals and pacifists among them who profess that Germany cannot possibly benefit by any form of rearmament and that her security must be safeguarded by other means.

It is too often taken for granted that the Germans will be eager to seize the opportunity which is offered to them by the Western need o f military manpower, and that they will welcome the rearmament o f their country. It is argued that the remnants o f the professional Wehrmacht, from the Generals down to the NCOs, will be glad at last to become once more employable, and that the rank and file soldiers who went through Hitler’s campaigns will hail the resurrection of a national Army or, a t least, the building up o f a large police force, as a step towards the restoration o f Germany as a great Power.

The fact is, however, that the proposed German rearmament has evoked little enthusiasm in Germany. Only a few of the newspapers, and still fewer among the political leaders, have given unqualified approval to it. As for the ordinary people, who would form the foundation o f the new national force, they seem to be “stupefied,” as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has said ; uncertain, but fundamentally in opposition. It appears that the Bonn Government is far ahead o f the people in this matter, and that, if Germany’s