T B S TA BUST. March 1Oth. 1951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5781

LONDON, MARCH 10th, 1951

SIXPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPEK

THE ITALIAN VISIT National Recovery and Governmental Difficulties

MIDDLE EASTERN DEFENCE The Growing Interest o f the United States. By Wilfred Ryder

THE PROBLEM OF DISPLACED PUPILS The History of a Clause. By Christopher Hollis, M .P . A LETTER FROM ROME SOVIET COMMENTARY

Rumours o f “ Titoism”

By Victor S . Frank

AN EDWARDIAN MEDITATION

Odd Man Out. By H . J . Massingham

THE SHAEF PRINCIPLE G ENERAL EISENHOWER’S appointments, not yet complete, include an Englishman, a Frenchman and an Italian, and the staff is to be built up on the tried and proved principle of SHAEF, mixing the nationalities, and making it the first commandment on all the members that they should work together as a team. Between the Americans and the British this was a great success in the war, for which the chief credit belongs to General Marshall and General Eisenhower. But it is even more remarkable that it can be established in peacetime, proving that men can be drawn from different countries and work together for a common purpose. And if this is no novelty, but an essential principle of the Catholic Church from its first years, and one constantly exemplified in the Orders and increasingly in the Curia in Rome today, it is nevertheless a portent in the modern world o f strongly differentiated nationalities.

Union is a dangerous encouragement to other national Communists to seek to breathe and to act a little more freely. But, in the broad picture, we shall do well always to keep in mind Mr. Vishynsky’s utterance last year, “We shall win by our ideas,” and expect to see the Politbureau concentrate on those weapons o f internal subversion, of external propaganda, which have the great advantage that, if they are unsuccessful, the Kremlin is where it was, and has incurred no great dangers, least of all the danger of losing everything. The Politbureau are increasingly likely to rely on this policy in proportion as the West is in earnest in making the North Atlantic Treaty organization a formidable reality ; and it is those in every country who preach any variant of passivity who are really giving the most dangerous counsel to their countrymen. Small Arms and Morale

But these professional Service officers, handpicked for a particular collective enterprise, have a much less difficult position than the politicians, each of whom derives his authority and public existence from the confidence of an untravelled local electorate, very quick to feel that its own particular interests have been needlessly subordinated because their champion has failed them. And the crux of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not to make plans or provide a command, but to persuade each separate member to make a full contribution, even although that contribution can only be made by foregoing things that have more immediate electoral significance. The position is helped by the dependence of the other members on American help, both for recovery and for defence. But there will be a constant temptation, as the preparations go forward, for them to seem less necessary, and for political parties, nervous of losing political power in the very unstable coalitions which are a form that parliamentary democracy so often takes on the continent, to fall behind with their contributions and preparations.

One great dissuasion to invasion which we hope will be quickly improvised will be the arming of a Home Guard, or similar civilian body, in the countries of the mainland. The recipients of these arms can be handpicked, and it is one advantage of the last chequered years, and of the elaboration of security measures, that in no country is it now difficult to know who can be relied upon. One of the great causes of bad morale has been the feeling of physical helplessness of the quite unarmed ; and the French, in particular, have the memory of 1940, when the German armoured units raced into the market square of one French town after another and took it. But even the most formidable tanks need supporting troops, and cannot hold towns without them, and the project of an invasion becomes immediately immensely more discouraging when it has to be planned with the knowledge that there would be a home army in the streets, harassing and sabotaging the occupation from the first ; and this is doubly true where the invaders need to watch their own troops lest they should melt away and join the other side, seeing for themselves that they had come into a world and among people both kindlier and wealthier than they had been allowed to imagine.

There are many signs that the Communist tactics now are to concentrate on exploiting the desire for peace and the misplaced resentment that the sacrifices which rearmament, imposed by Soviet policy, makes necessary. We note on another page the unexpected overtures made to the Pope by Professor Joliot-Curie. But it is reasonable to anticipate that Soviet policy will take a military form in the Balkans this year. The continual cumulative evidence o f what is going on in the satellite countries surrounding Yugoslavia suggests a serious preparation for moves in which the Kremlin will not be directly implicated, any more than it was in Greece. The Kremlin has very strong reasons for overthrowing Marshal Tito, because his continued existence in defiance of the Soviet

In the meantime, it is easy and interesting for the Russians, keeping an immense force under arms, to watch the strain under which the Western countries are placed. Predictions of capitalist collapse have not come true, and the map of the world in 1950 was very different and much more depressing than the Communist pundits expected or told their followers five and six years ago. But perhaps the burden of rearmament could just tip the scale ; and, in agreeing to a Four Power Conference, the Russians have a good deal to gain by a show of reasonableness which will help the peace campaign, provided it does not lead to any material sacrifice of military advantage, as a peace treaty with Austria, for example, would