T S E T À È L E T , February Ylth. Í 9 S Í

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5778

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, FEBRUARY 17th, 1951

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE WRONG ROAD IN AFRICA The V ic to ry o f the Convention P e op le ’s P a r ty in the Gold C oast

EXPERIMENTS IN GERMANY M e r its and P er ils o f P la n s for Co-Partnership

THE FOGBOUND YEARS A LETTER FROM SCOTLAND

B y U rsu la Branston

B y Frank M a cm illa n

AMERICAN CATHOLIC COLLEGES

Impressions o f a V is it . B y Rosalind M urray

BYRON AS LETTER WRITER M r . P e te r Quennell’s V o lum es. B y Arnold Lunn

THE TERMS OF TRADE T HE Government has now lasted for a year with the most exiguous and precarious majority ; and it has been a richly educative year for the British electorate. Many of them would have believed that the worsening international situation and the worsening standards of living were the results o f the defeat of Socialism, if Socialism had been defeated. Many politicians who today glumly acquiesce in rearmament, only because it comes from a Labour Government, would be stumping the country against it were the Conservatives in power.

apparently indefinite time the idea that is to govern Socialist policy is that universal scarcity is preferable to allowing the consumer to choose what he will spend his money on. The effect is to force up to record heights the kinds of meat that are not rationed, like rabbits, and there is no achievement of equality, except in the very small basic ration. The Meat-Eating ’Thirties

Ministers cannot deny the patent deficiencies of the Welfare State that they have talked about so much ; deficiencies in the elementary and first desiderata, like food and houses. What they can say, and are entitled to say, is that they cannot help it, that the conditions of life in this country are intimately affected by what goes on in the world outside. This is profoundly true. I t is the most important tru th for the electorate to keep before itself. I t is one of the main reproaches to be made against the Socialists, that they have for so long talked in terms of welfare which have treated this island as a self-contained entity, inside which incomes should be redistributed and economic activities directed, whereas the truth is that we have to find and keep to the patterns of industrial activity which will best enable us to secure good prices abroad, because it is from abroad that most of the things must come which the bulk of the population needs, whether it is meat for the table or timber for houses.

We are a crowded island, full of manufacturers, and we are the most exposed of any of the European peoples to the disadvantages which follow the worsening of the terms of trade against manufacturers and in favour of primary producers. For a long time the terms of trade were favourable, manufactures commanded a high price in terms of primary products, but today the terms are shifting, as all the agricultural world resolves to live better itself.

Mr. Webb’s defence of the meat shortage was highly significant. “ In the long run,” he said, “ this country, heavily dependent as it is on imports, cannot hope to isolate itself from world movements of prices.” He spoke of our position as highly vulnerable in a time of under-production and rising prices, such as now exists and is likely to exist for a long time. The world's supply of meat, around 31 million tons in 1950, is only 10 per cent greater than before the war, but the amount available for export is about 11 per cent less. Having explained that “ the meat we want simply does not exist,” Mr. Webb then proceeded to congratulate the Government that more people, owing to full employment, would like to buy it, and would buy it, and would compete against each other for it, but for an iron system of rationing. For an

One thing this policy makes certain is that in the summer of the Festival of Britain a record number of the British will seek théir holidays abroad, simply to have a few satisfyingly carnivorous meals, if no further away than Boulogne, for there is no rationing bn the European mainland. The British artisans are in the unique position that, while their money wages are higher, and they can buy things like television sets for which there is no comparable market in Europe, they pay very much more taxation on their beer and tobacco, and the Government decides on what goods they shall spend their money. The great question taking shape before the electorate is whether all this Government planning only makes life rather harder than it would otherwise be.

I t was an incidental by-product of the debate on meat, that it enabled Captain Crookshank to give the figures of workhouse diets in the ’thirties, as well as the average artisan consumption then ; figures very unwelcome to the people who live on a myth of the ’thirties as a time when poverty and hunger stalked the land. Although some people could not afford the average, it is inescapable arithmetic that, if many people consumed less than the average, an equal number consumed proportionately more : and there is this about the population of Great Britain, th a t it is nearly all found within narrow limits of income. It is an artisan population, and in meat-eating the richest man cannot consume by himself an ox a day. The very comparison that Mr. Webb made about pre-war imports was a vindication of how much was imported and consumed in the ’thirties. Mr. Alport, the member for Colchester, produced the figures to show how much importance the poor have always attached to meat ; how fifty years ago the percentage spent on meat was 7 per cent of the lowest weekly wage, and rose to 10 and 12 per cent. Past preference is a very good indication of what people would do if they were left free to choose for themselves ; and for more meat they would cheerfully pay more. Without the Foundation

The chief omission in Mr. Attlee’s otherwise sound speech in the House of Commons on Monday was that he nowhere mentioned the cause of European unity, even in connection with German rearmament. Yet it is undeniable that German rearmament is something which should have been approached