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THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5783

LONDON, MARCH 24th, 1951

SIXPENCE

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SUCCISA VIRESCIT Easter and the Atom Bomb HOPE TO THE DOWNCAST A Newly-Discovered Sermon o f S t. Augustine CATHOLICISM IN LONDON IN 1847 Fr. Gentili Reports to the Holy See. By P . H . Catcheside

DOVES AND DONNA OLIMPIA

A Tale of Tact. By J . D . Utley THE HOLY SHROUD OF TURIN

By Stella Bellairs

ATTENTION ON GERMANY A FTER nearly a year o f intricate work by the specialists of six nations, the project to which M. Schuman gave his name last year has been worked out in the form of a draft treaty, which was initialled in Paris on Monday. M. Gromyko was still in Paris, and there was a striking contrast between the difficulty o f the Foreign Ministers in agreeing with him about anything at all and the very rapid manner in which delegates of the Western nations have reached among themselves an agreement in principle o f the most far-reaching and historic character, inasmuch as it is not what international agreements have been hitherto, a compromise between competing national interests, but a declaration of an overriding common interest to be upheld by common supra-national institutions, in favour of which there will be a measure of delegation of sovereignty.

one with his experience o f the relations with the three High Commissioners, and with his authority in the Bonn Cabinet and Parliament. Nevertheless, the disadvantages o f his new double role are many. The Chancellor will not only have to select the personnel and build up the complicated administrative machinery of the new ministry, a task that would fully tax the powers of a much younger man, but he will also have to co-ordinate the many different problems of German foreign policy arising from ERP, the Office for Occupation Forces, and German participation in the Schuman plan. It will be more difficult for him than for his British or French colleagues to leave Parliament and attend the Council o f Foreign Ministers. He will, moreover, lack their tactical advantage of having to consult home Governments before making a decision, for Dr. Adenauer is also the leader of the strongest party in Western Germany. The Appeal to German Nationalism

The original Schuman Plan, as it was propounded last May, has not been altered in its essentials, numerous as are the modifications, and the basic purpose remains to produce in common, for a common market, the steel and coal resources o f the Western continent. But in one evident respect there is a difference. The Plan was originally conceived partly as a remedy for the dangers of over-production, but since then the programme o f large-scale rearmament has begun, and those dangers do not exist, since for the present at all events there is no question o f any over-production. The initialling of the draft, moreover, does not by any means indicate that the plan is now sure of being carried into effect. The Allied High Commission has not yet given its final consent to the projects for “ decartelisation” in Germany, which the British Government regards with some suspicion. The Governments of the Powers concerned in the Schuman Plan, which do not, o f course, include Britain, have yet to accept the document that has been worked out ; and it will also have to go before the Parliaments o f these participating Powers for ratification, where in Germany especially it is by no means certain what its fate will be. The Germans find themselves more and more in a strong position.

The recent revision o f the Occupation Statute was followed by the formal establishment o f a West German Foreign Ministry, with Dr. Adenauer’s Government assuming responsibility for his own foreign policy ; and Pope Pius XII became the first foreign sovereign to enter into diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic, with the appointment of Archbishop Muench as Nuncio, noted in these pages last week. The papal colours were hoisted over his Nunciature in Bonn on March 13th. The Nunciature in Germany has never ceased to exist, but diplomatic relations could not be reestablished until now. Archbishop Muench is believed to be the first American-born prelate ever to hold the title of Nuncio.

I t was to be expected that Dr. Adenauer would take the role o f Foreign Minister upon himself. There is, indeed, no

The differences between the Chancellor and Dr. Schumacher, already great, will be greater still between the Foreign Minister and the opposition parties. Yet there is one question on which both are tacitly agreed, th a t o f German unity, and Soviet policy in Paris, as well as the attempts of the East German Government to get Germans “ at one table,” have not been slow to fasten on this issue. Herr Grotewohl’s letters to Dr. Adenauer, and the appeals of the Volkskammer to the Bonn Parliament, having failed, the campaign, in conjunction with the resolutions of the Soviet-sponsored “ Peace Movement” in Berlin last February, is now to be extended to the popular level of a “great plebiscite,” presumably on the lines of the National Front plebiscites o f two years ago.

So far, the Communists have refused the Bonn conditions —free elections, the abolition of the so-called Peace laws, and no parity between the eighteen million Germans in the East and the forty-eight millions in the West. But what if these conditions are accepted by Soviet Russia and the East German Government, as may well happen in the near future ? Generosity is always easier for the stronger man, and a cat likes to play with mice before it eats them. Sacrificing the Ulbricht regime for a number o f Communist representatives, however small, in an all-German Parliament may well seem worth while to Moscow. The Russians would gain the resumption o f normal relations with Western and Southern Europe, and a free field o f agitation, particularly in Germany. The influence of the Western Powers would be decisively weakened, and the Russians would probably succeed in winning over, and away from their Western commitments, those elements in Germany whose one aim is national independence. Dr. Adenauer’s CDU, already weakened in the recent West German elections, and the Liberals, would