TH E T A B L E T , November 19th, 1989

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 196, No. 5765

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, NOVEMBER 18th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE MAKING OF EUROPE Mr. Bevin’s Remaining Opportunity THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS I : Aims and Methods in Re-Education. By Douglas Woodruff

THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD

Labour Shortage in an Ageing Population GREECE AFTER A YEAR OF PEACE A Report from the Thirty-Eighth Parallel. By Wilfred Ryder INDEPENDENT MEMBER WEST COUNTRY CATHOLICS

By Christopher Hollis, M .P .

By Mgr. R . A . Knox

THE ENEMY AT THE GATES T HERE was a strange aptness in the photograph of Picasso’s dove which the other day appeared in an Austrian Communist paper, printed inadvertently upside down. That poor bird coming from the Eastern Ark can no longer return with an olive twig : it has been fatally wounded in its flight over Eastern Europe and Korea.

There were still enough delegates in Sheffield to hold a conference, but the Communist organizers and promoters o f the so-called Peace Movement were clearly afraid that without the “ travelling majority” o f trusted Communists the less indoctrinated delegates might reach deviationist conclusions. People like Mr. John Rogge, the American delegate, and his fellow-idealists, like the Reverend Fauntleroys, father and son, from California, are invaluable to the organization because they lend it a semblance o f respectability in the Western countries, and for that reason the Peace Movement even puts up with their occasional criticism o f the Russians. But while they play the part o f a screen, they must be never allowed to escape the control o f the overwhelming majority, whose spirit and discipline were so well revealed the other day in an article o f the Czechoslovak Communist newspaper, Rude Pravo. Addressing the Czechoslovak delegation, which was just leaving for Sheffield, the writer o f the article said :—

“You are not going there humbly to treat with the rulers o f a dying capitalist world, to beg for crumbs o f comfort. You are going, as self-assured members o f the peace camp, to say to all the enemies o f peace . . . that we, the Czech and Slovak people, have for ever bound up our lives with those who did not stint their blood, their lives for our liberation ; who, by incessant, brotherly help are strengthening us in our way towards a new tomorrow. You must say to all the world that our slogan, ‘With the Soviet Union for ever and ever,’ is not made up o f dead letters, but that it bums with a mighty and bright flame in our hearts.” This is the kind o f profession o f absolute submission which the Russians require, and which they will receive in Warsaw, and nothing but such a submission can fit into the pattern o f their anti-Western campaign. A few days ago a letter from Mr. Zilliacus appeared in the Manchester Guardian, in which the writer, a man who knows his Communists and fellowtravellers well enough, stated very bluntly that the disciplined acceptance o f the Soviet lead is, in fact, the central issue o f the campaign for peace, and that the so-called Partisans o f Peace are themselves so convinced that war is inevitable that they consider it to be their first task to align as many Western people as possible to the side o f the Russians.

A testimony to the aims o f the “Peace Movement,’ both authoritative and unusually frank, comes in L ’Aube, which reprints some statements made by the French Communist leader Waldeck-Rochet and subsequently quoted in the Russian provincial Press, in which the speaker explains to his Communist audience why the Russians did not come to the rescue of the North Korean Communists. Such an intervention, he says, would have started a world war, “which, for the time being, is contrary to the peace policy o f the Soviet Union” ; and he emphasized that a year o f guaranteed peace will be well used by the Russians and their satellites to reinforce their military strength. He then revealed the part which the Peace Movement must play in this “peace policy” o f the Russians :—

“It is to permit this rearmament, this development o f the Soviet Union’s strength as well as the strength o f the popular democracies, that we must actively continue our propaganda in favour o f peace. It is this movement for peace that will undermine the imperialist armies and delay the outbreak o f war. Do you not see that this is the best means to assure the destruction o f our enemies ? The Soviet Union will choose the right moment, and the imperialists will have no say in the matter. You will see, therefore, how important it is to develop our action in favour of peace.” The Saboteurs at Work

This is not peace-time ; not only because in Europe the Russians are waging a cold war, but because in Asia a real war is in progress, and because both are component and complementary parts of the Russian plan for the domination of the world. Can a democratic country at such a time grant access to its territory to people who fight for the destruction o f its liberty and for its subjugation to a foreign Power ?

At the one-day meeting which took place in Sheffield on Monday, there was a speech from a North Korean woman delegate. There was nothing new or surprising in what she said, and she would have said exactly the same things in Warsaw, and, for all we know, she may have done so by now. But it is new and surprising to see a semi-official representative of a country with which this country is in a state of actual war, coming to an English city and there openly abusing those who are sacrificing their lives in the fight against those who have sent her here.

There is no doubt that some of the members o f the so-called Peace Movement are only pathetic dupes who cannot do much harm. But behind the screen which they provide,