THE TABLET, May 19tf. 1951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5791

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, MAY 19th, 1951

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

A PRINCIPLE IN PERSIA What Americans and British must jointly Assert GERMAN REALITIES AND UNREALITIES

Impressions of a Recent Visit. By Michael Derrick MALTA AND THE BRITISH ISLES

A Unique Partnership. By John Eppstein

LETTERS OF CREDENCE CHESTERTON ON CONVERSIONS

A British Envoy in Rome

By John Maude

A BEATUS OF BRETON CORNWALL

By Donald Attwater

“ E PUR’ SI MUOVE ” W HEN the first meetings of the European Assembly were held at Strasbourg, two years ago, it was common in England to find an attitude of great scepticism. Many people, particularly in the political and official world, not only did not believe that anything would come of it, but did not want anything to come of it ; and a year later, when the Schuman Plan was first mooted, their reaction was the same. But after two years there emerges quite clearly that something is taking root and beginning to grow, and that so far no frosts have killed it. Europe has given plenty of marks o f debility and demoralization, but here, a t any rate, are proofs of vitality. For it does require vitality for men to pull themselves out of the deep ru t of emotional and intellectual habit, and there is no deeper ru t than that of absolute national sovereignty, with its corollary that the only ways for men to associate are through their Governments and governmental agencies. This habit of mind, natural and congenial as it is to politicians and officials who are themselves the Government, is quite needlessly cramping ; and it is not with any intention of being offensive to politicians or officials, both o f whom have necessary and important métiers, that we say that this attitude is, in its result, uncivilised. I t is one of the great and obvious tests of a civilization that there are innumerable forms of association, national and international, parallel with, and not merely agencies for, Governments.

example. I t is along these lines that a new hope and vitality can increasingly be looked for in Western Europe. Policy by Daylight

Europeans should be very much heartened by the testimony of those who are responsible for American policy, as it continues to be given before the Senate with a fullness to which history affords few parallels. The makers of American policy have set out so many o f their calculations, hopes and fears, and differences with one another. The peculiar conjunction of the American constitutional division of authority between legislature and the executive, combined with the magnitude of the crisis, have produced this exceptional result. How remarkable it is by any European standards—and how fantastic by Oriental standards—can be seen by comparing it with the meagre information that the British Government has ever thought it necessary to give, the quickly-reached point at which Foreign Secretaries refuse to go beyond their statements, or to submit to cross-examination, because other Governments would be involved, although the French procedure before a special Committee of the Chamber has been a little fuller.

The progress of the European Assembly and of the Schuman Plan have both been greater than their enemies imagined, if less than their friends hoped. New principles, new ways of thinking, have been brought out into the light of day, and this latest session at Strasbourg has been particularly valuable for its direct approach to the United States. The intelligent advocates of European unity have always seen that unity inside the larger unity of the Atlantic community, and have seen the Atlantic community as something not limited to its geographical designation. One of the early weaknesses of the European Movement was that on the Continent many people supported it, more or less avowedly, as an alternative to closer association with America, fearing the risks that such association seemed to them to involve. They saw a United Europe as Marshal Pétain had seen France, as an area that could be neutralized, and could live its own life whatever storms raged outside. But two years have sufficed to demonstrate the total unreality of those pipe-dreams, and to show European unity for what it must be—a regional grouping inside a yet larger reality—and it is the larger reality which is important for the defence of the whole. But the frame-work of the Atlantic alliance ought to prove eminently suitable psychologically for the development of new organs, of which the iron and steel authority set up by the Schuman Plan is a first leading

The broad picture that has emerged is that President Truman, General Marshall and General Bradley are much more preoccupied about Europe, which is, in General Bradley’s phrase, “ under the gun,” than is General MacArthur. It would be a great mistake for anybody in Europe to underestimate the representative quality of General MacArthur. His hold is as great as it is because ordinary Americans understand his reactions, and feel as he feels when he riles Englishmen and Frenchmen and Dutchmen by talking of them as all unethical exploiters of Asiatic peoples, whereas the Americans have come to bring and have brought democracy to the Philippines and Japan. We recognize exactly the mentality which responded so uncritically to Pandit Nehru when he went propaganding up and down America, a mentality which, coming out of the American history, was very ready to condemn European imperialism, and has been genuinely disconcerted to find itself labelled as “ imperialist” for being also a country built on private enterprise.

There seems to us to be an excessive credulity about the possibility of changing in five or ten years national characteristics and attitudes which have been formed over generations, so that we remain profoundly sceptical when we are told that the Japanese have learnt democracy in Asia since 1945. General MacArthur’s main limitation is the defect of a quality, that having devoted himself to Asia and in these last few years to the Japanese he quite naturally exalts Asia, and seems ready to take risks with Europe which the generals who know the European situation are not ready to take. He