TH E T A B L E T , February 10tk , 1951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5777

LONDON, FEBRUARY 10th, 1951

SIXPENCE

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THE AMERICAN PARDONS The Vital Principle o f Accountability ATTACK ON THE WATERFRONT An Old Hand Looks at the Tactics. By Fred Copeman

CROSS-CURRENTS IN PARIS

A ROME LETTER

The Continuing Enigma o f “ Le Monde” Resignations from the Communist Party

“THE KING’S PROCEEDINGS” Bishop Beck Discusses Fr. Hughes’ New Work THE WORDS FROM THE CROSS The First o f a Lenten Series by Fr. James Brodrick, S .J .

THE GREAT AGENDA M R. ATTLEE has very well replied, to suggestions that he should go to Moscow, that it would serve no useful purpose. He might have put it more strongly, and say that there could hardly be a bigger mistake for a British Prime Minister. The Russian answer to the proposal of a meeting of Foreign Ministers to discuss more than Germany shows a certain readiness to widen the agenda, and it can be a good thing for the Western Powers to set out in its fullness all that has happened since 1945, to give their immense list of charges of broken faith and deception by which Central Europe has been deprived of that national self-determination to which, in the case of the peoples allied to us, we know ourselves so pledged that we must for ever be seeking to restore their freedom.

despairing of fruitful negotiation and increasingly emphatic on the need for the rich countries to help the poor countries and for social justice between nations as well as between individuals. There is much in this with which Christians, and indeed all humane men, will warmly agree. But there are also qualifications which the letter invites, and large assumptions which should not be asserted as self-evident. Too Much on the Defensive

Because the Russians never shared any of the American idealism, the dreams of a fruitful partnership for international peace and the jo int devotion to progress and prosperity, they have very much under-estimated the burning sense of injury which is so widespread in the United States, that men should have behaved as Stalin, Molotov, and Vyshinsky did behave, taking full part in the reconstructions at San Francisco and then, with successive surly vetoes, showing that they had no sort of intention of allowing it to do its work.

The American sense of injury is a double one. I t comes in part from outraged idealism, and in part from resentment on being compelled to rearm and to make all the costly and painful dispositions that modern warfare exacts. And those in this country who like to make the most of Russian fearfulness, and think they stay so heavily armed because they are fearful, should impress upon the Kremlin that they have, in fact, gone too far, and in very few years have convinced people who began full of good will that Soviet Russia is a danger to the world. A Document of the World Council of Churches

The Executive Committee o f the World Council of Churches, after a meeting over which the Bishop of Chichester presided, has issued a letter to its members on the international crisis. The general sense o f the document is that, while it does not oppose rearmament, it accepts the necessity reluctantly and grudgingly, and utters a warning that men might become obsessed with military considerations and plans and lose from sight the real paths which can alone offer any prospect of peace.

The first is the assumption that a completely defensive attitude is the one most helpful to peace. The World Council does not say that the Government should not rearm, but it says that they must rearm passively. Whether this is sound advice depends entirely on the character o f the enemy envisaged. Too often in history the genuine lovers o f peace have, in fact, brought down war, because they have made it look as though it were quite safe to hit them. I f it is good advice before avoidable combat, it is poor advice if the combat is in fact on, “Beware o f entrance in a quarrel, but, being in, bear it that the opposed beware of thee.” To be always on the defensive is always to wait for attack, and in the presence o f an aggressive mentality is to invite the aggressor to exploit at his leisure every weakness he can find, instead o f feeling that he must himself devote a great deal o f his energies to looking to his own defences. There can, in fact, be little doubt that the decisions were taken in Moscow and Pekin to take over the Korean peninsula by force, because the Americans had said so much about not proposing to interfere. The position in Europe today is more dangerous than it would be if the Russians had not been allowed to triumph so completely in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and conversely the position is less dangerous now because the Russians were firmly withstood in their Berlin blockade. The aggressions that are now feared for later this year from Eastern Germany, and against Yugoslavia become more and not less likely in proportion as the Russians have no sort o f apprehension that the West, too, could take an initiative to restore elementary freedom in any other part o f the continent. It is not, in short, true that the best way men can prove their hatred of war and passion for peace is to recommend a policy by which the Western world, in addition to the handicaps which lack o f foresight has brought, invests itself with the additional handicap that it is always to sit still and watch while its provinces are successively sapped and mined and corroded by all the great range of weapons in the Communist arsenal.

The letter is directed inevitably to Protestant Christians living in non-Communist countries ; the two Ministers of religion invited from beyond the iron curtain were not able to appear in Paris. These Christians are told that they should exercise their influence on public c p iiio n and Government policy for patience and moderation o f statement, never

To the Christians behind the iron curtain, the World Council of Churches sends the assurance that “ it rejoices with them in the evidence that the word o f God makes its power felt among them.” What exactly this expression means is left vague. But the fact that from the beginning Communism has