T E E T A B L E T , June 23rd, J951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

VOL. 197, No. 5796 PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA LONDON, JUNE 23rd, 1951 FOUNDED IN 1840

SIXPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

RULE FROM BELOW The Demagogic Threat to Human Progress THE MARTYRDOM OF THE CHURCH IN CHINA

The Increasingly Severe Persecution

AFTER THE FRENCH ELECTIONS THE CRISIS IN PARLIAMENT

The Changing Pattern

By Christopher Hollis, M .P .

A RETREAT IN CHELSEA

By Aubrey Noakes

THE AACHEN PILGRIMAGE

By David Scutt

THE ENCYCLICAL “EVANGELII PR/ECONES” A Summary, with Translated Quotations, from the Encyclical on the Missions

INSULT TO INJURY

M R. HERBERT MORRISON had no comfort to give the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon. The Persian Oil crisis goes from bad to worse, with an accelerating note of hysteria on the Persian side which has brought to nothing all the efforts of the British Government and the Oil Company to lower the temperature, to make some new arrangement for the future by which Persian national pride and Persian desire for a greater share of the revenue can be combined with the preservation of assets and interests brought into existence by British capital and brains. When the Persians proclaim themselves an old and proud people, it is pertinent to remind them that the oil was under their feet for a very long time before, in the early years of this century, the British came and began to develop it.

The British Government is in a dilemma. The course of reasonableness is being pursued from a mixture of motives. They may or may not be good tactics with the Persians. They are perhaps all too likely to create further difficulties for us in other parts of the Middle East and further afield, the suggestion being that there will be no unpleasant consequences from the most high-handed action against Great Britain. This is something new.

in the world, and less to trying to erect on insecure and sandy foundations a Welfare State which it becomes increasingly improbable that we shall be able to maintain. The large population of this island finds itself in a world full of inflamed Nationalists, frequently particularly hostile because of the part we played in developing their countries and in making their new assertiveness possible. We are caught in a hiatus, and while we have moved increasingly into a recognition of the interdependence of peoples and their mutual rights, it takes two to recognize interdependence, and the other parties are still lightheaded with the new wine of sovereignty and self-sufficiency ; and particularly resentful when they cannot tax British enterprises in their countries as highly as they would like because those enterprises are taxed so highly at this end, to help maintain the relatively high standards of Britain. Meanwhile, a Government whose trade union members have such experience of solidarity, should be organizing support and solidarity against the Persian search for substitute technicians; because the principle being violated is as important to American or Dutch or German engineers as to British, that agreements must be kept. Rousing Emotions

It is fashionable among politicians, confronted on their house-to-house canvasses with perpetual reference to the high cost of living, to conclude that internal prices will decide the next election. Housewives have plenty to say about this rising tide which threatens the Welfare State, and English people find it easiest to talk to strangers about such concrete particulars. But it would be a great mistake to underestimate what is inarticulate and unexpressed but nevertheless very deeply felt ; and a t all levels of the nation there is a profound feeling of distress that, within six years of the victory, we should have drifted, or been led, into the present inglorious position, when all round the world people who used to be proud of their close connection, political or commercial, with this country, consider the moment ripe and easy to make exorbitant demands, often very offensively phrased, and to treat us as a people with whom it is both safe and profitable to be aggressive. This goes deeply in the consciousness even of people who do not also realise that they are themselves very largely responsible for the figure their Government makes in the world.

A people gets the politicians and statesmen it deserves, and a people which has put the building and maintenance of a Welfare State in Britain as a first priority is itself responsible if, six years after the war, it is as disarmed and supine as it appears. Perhaps the shadow begins to be seen, the writing on the wall that things have been approached in the wrong order, and that more of our effects should have been directed to fortifying our economic and political and military positions

How primitive much of this Persian national feeling is emerges only too clearly in the language used to the BBC from Teheran radio, where the Persians profess to want friendly relations with Britain and say that, now that the company which disturbed the public mind in Persia has been liquidated, the one obstacle to harmony has been removed— as though the British Government was not intimately linked with the Company. A lot o f the needless rudeness, the insults which accompany the injury, are no doubt painful to civilized Persians, but the pace is set by the Communists and the radio of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, attacking Dr. Mossadegh all the time for faint-heartedness and for being ready to betray the interests of the Persian people in their struggle against the imperialists, saying : “The Teheran radio broadcasts nightly on the crimes and treacheries of the oil plunderers, but the people are tired of mere talk.”

Dr. Mossadegh can be sure that by his present courses he is only gaining a very partial and brief respite ; that he and all he represents will be the next victims ; and that the propaganda which he feels is too strong for him now will be too strong for him then. He and the other members of this Government are apparently not strong enough to dare to make a friendly settlement with the British, because then, however advantageous in fact the settlement might be to Persia, they would be attacked as traitors ; but this will soon be happening to them in any event.

The British Government’s protest against anti-British