THE TABLET, May 5th, 1951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 197, No. 5789

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, MAY 5th, 1951

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE NATIONAL FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

The Disappointed Hopes of the Prince Consort

FROM GREAT EXHIBITION TO FESTIVAL, 1851 - 1 9 5 1

By Yvonne ffrench “WITHOUT U S ” Neutralism and Pacifism in Germany

A NEW AUSTRIAN PRESIDENT LIGHT IN OUR DARKNESS

By Christopher Hollis, M .P .

By H . J . Massingham

TWO UNQUIET LIVES

Mr. Stephen Spender’s Autobiography. Reviewed by Evelyn Waugh outstanding characteristic of their policy towards their European associates. But it is unfortunately true of demagogic politics that it is much easier to whip up enthusiasm by pointing to some other particular class of human beings as responsible, and British Socialists, who cannot now find very much to allege against the hard-pressed British employers or shareholders, transfer their habit of mind and speech across the Atlantic. This is a well-known characteristic of all the variants of National-Socialism. We see this process busily at work, alike in China and Persia and Argentina. We can only expect to see it grow and accelerate. But it will look in historical retrospect as a piece of extraordinary stupidity on the part of the British to have played a leading part in fanning flames from which they were to suffer more severe damage than anyone else. Standards Rest on Imports

DESTROYING CONFIDENCE I T is the general characteristic of Middle Eastern Governments today that they are under a continual pressure from below, that politicians are immediately accused of serving foreign interests if they show any understanding of the importance of keeping agreements, or inspiring confidence for future investment. Both the Persian and the Egyptian Governments have a great deal to gain and preserve from friendship with Britain. But because that means the presence of British influence in their countries, whether as companies developing natural resources or as military power, helping to maintain, externally and internally, confidence in the future, the cry of foreign domination can be raised. A crude local nationalism is fanned by those who want to isolate and weaken all those countries preparatory to taking them over and imposing the Communist revolution upon them. Nothing could be more shortsighted than this local nationalism, but it is an emotion, and very strong, particularly among the young ; it does not reason, and is a mood of exaltation. The Government is right to say it wants good relations with Persia and a friendly settlement. The nation is wrong if it imagines that the way to secure this is to be weak either in force or resolution. We say the nation because it was the electorate that has aggravated these troubles for itself by voting as they voted in 1945. That was a turning point when the choice was made for a softer and easier time. It was one of the great counts against Mr. Churchill that he had declared himself not prepared to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. Not only would there have been much less precipitate eagerness to abandon so much in Asia, but many other countries would have felt much less encouraged than they have to disregard agreements and British legal rights. But no Government can do more than the nation behind it is ready to do, and the real question is how far we have lost the self-confidence and energy that marked our greater days. One great source of debilitation has been the cultivation of a false conscience about the moral deficiencies of imperialism, political or economic, when our influence all round the world was never a quest for exclusive and highly protected advantages, but was to open all the world. Our presence in every Continent was the presence of sound international principles of government and commerce, to which the world must find its way back from the present bad fashion of discriminating everywhere against foreigners.

Like the White Queen, crying out first and pricking her finger afterwards, the resigning Ministers made their fuss and cried out in advance, not because something had, but because it might happen. They had no reason to doubt that the representations of the other members of the Atlantic Treaty Alliance would be listened to in Washington with the reasonableness which, to do justice to our allies, has been an

Mr. Bevan, speaking in his own constituency, spoke of the repercussions in this country of American buying, but he did not tell his hearers that we are in the presence of a permanent problem, which is misunderstood if it is thought of as an unforeseeable and unforeseen bad consequence of the unforeseeable and unforeseen Korean War. Ministers o f the Crown talk like that because they have to live down their triumphant shouts, only a year old, a t having rounded recovery corner. But the truth is that Communist aggression somewhere was always patently to be expected, just as more is to be expected now, and that, when the Western world resolved on resistance, and began to move back on to a partial war footing, the demand for certain war materials was certain to increase and the prices to rise. It is exactly the sort of development for which a government of planners ought to have been ready, especially of planners who possess in their colonial Empire an immense range of raw materials, and command much more diversity than do the United States. It is not just a crisis problem. As the terms of trade continue to move against us, as the growers of raw materials can demand and obtain more manufactures in exchange for their primary products, the British dilemma is going to grow more acute. Our standard of living is not a matter of our buying our own motor-cars and radio sets : it is primarily a matter of eating and drinking, and every kitchen table in the country proclaims our reliance on what is imported for the population here to eat and drink. Next, it is a matter of cotton and wool and petrol. We are, consequently, the last people in the world to imagine we can practise or should ever preach any doctrines of self-sufficiency, and we should never cheer our politicians when they talk in terms of the clever way they have succeeded, or the unfortunate ways in which they have been unsuccessful, in preserving something in this island by some high-handed Government action.