THE T A B L E T , Ju ly 7th, 1931

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 198, No. 5798

LONDON, JULY 7th, 1951

SIXPENCE

FOUNDED JN 1 8 4 0

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE PROFESSIONAL MAN’S CHILDREN

A Concession Refused

BEHIND THE NEGOTIATIONS IN KOREA The Changing Character o f Red Army Deserters. By Wilfred Ryder

PRICES, MONOPOLIES AND FREEDOM

The Rising Cost o f Living. By Douglas Jerrold THE CASE OF ARCHBISHOP GROSZ

The Real Reason for His Imprisonment

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

By Richard O ’Sullivan

THE POCKET WAUGH

By Christopher Sykes citizenship is primarily thought of more organically and racially as descent.

“ THE FIRST CITIZEN” T HE famous definition of Clausewitz, that war is the continuation of policy by other means, is equally true in its converse position, that proposals for armistices, for conferences and for peace, such as those now emanating from Moscow, have to be seen as a change of weapons and variation in the methods of undermining and dividing the world alliance of Powers resisting the Soviet ambitions. Neither the Kremlin nor the lesser Communist parties in China or Central Europe are moderating the habitual language about bloodthirsty imperialists and exploiters with which they depict us to their own listeners, presenting all the time a picture of the world which, where it is accepted, means that the Communist leaders would be grossly betraying their trust, and abandoning the still oppressed workers of the world, if they flagged or faltered in their determination, by hook or by crook, to extend the world revolution.

I f Mr. Malik’s overtures are really little more than an exploration, to see how much gullibility or crude pacifism or division of sentiment between different countries and between different classes can be found in the Atlantic community, the Kremlin can draw its conclusion that the leaders of the Westetn Governments have all found it necessary to utter emphatic warnings and to repeat that rearmament must go on. The Daily Herald has judged it useful to print a double column editorial, of the kind reserved for serious occasions, full of warnings, against the danger and the temptation of fancying that the sky has cleared and that the effort of rearmament can be immediately relaxed. It is the greatest disservice to the prospects of maintaining even the present strained position, to arouse any hopes of relaxation, or to suggest that we are doing anything more than the minimum that is necessary.

It emerged very clearly from General Eisenhower’s speech in London on Tuesday that, in fact, the progress is still disquietingly slow in Western Europe. But he was no doubt gratified to find Mr. Morrison calling him “ the first citizen of the Atlantic community,” a phrase which gives a greater focus to the idea o f a new kind of citizenship, and a greater suggestion of permanence in the new relationship than the language hitherto used on behalf o f the British Government. General Eisenhower could say, on taking up his appointment, that he would henceforth regard himself as only one-twelfth American. He could say it because Americans have a sense of citizenship as something contractual, such as innumerable immigrants have asked for and achieved, leaving behind some former allegiance ; and this has been a habitual and on the whole immensely successful method for the rapid development of the American continent, where the process of naturalization, in Britain as in other countries of Europe, has always been a small, exceptional, provision, while

An American like General Eisenhower has a further advantage, because the American mind is much more open to the radical possibilities before mankind, and the whole story of a century and a half of United States history, so far outstripping the vision of the Founding Fathers, is an immense encouragement for the view that men can change and merge their allegiances. Europeans could go from every country of Europe and become Americans through and through, thinking, feeling and acting as members of a new nation, which was yet every bit as able to act as a nation as the older States from whom the Americans were drawn. Today Americans tend to underestimate the difference between individuals coming one by one, having left their homes behind them and being anxious to enter a new society on the terms it proposes, and individuals of the same nations firmly established in their own homes, among their institutions and traditions, and with their inherited national relationships towards each other. But the European fault is the opposite one, of too much passive acquiescence in the frontier mentality, too great a disposition to treat exclusive national loyalty, a psychological development which is only four or five hundred years old, as though it were part of the unchangeable order o f human nature, when it is nothing of the kind. How the Truce is Presented

It is never easy to separate Communist propaganda from statements of policy. Mr. Malik, in his broadcast speech over the United Nations Radio on June 23rd, needed 1,800 words before, in his penultimate paragraph, he advanced the proposal of a cease-fire in Korea. The commentaries on this pronouncement in the Chinese Press and radio were similarly couched in denunciation o f the “ imperialist aggressors.” The People's Daily wrote :

“The' Chinese people have always stood for and still stand for the peaceful settlement of the Korean question. . . . I t was only because the unscrupulous United States Government repeatedly refused to accept its proposals, continued to extend the aggressive war in Korea, directly ' threatened China’s security and jeopardized China’s peaceful reconstruction, that the Chinese people could tolerate it no longer. They volunteered to resist America, aid Korea and defend their homes and Motherland, an act which was in complete conformity with justice. Today, as a result of the Chinese people’s volunteers fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Korean People’s Army, the United States invaders have had a lesson in fiasco—a lesson, however, which they have still not learned. The United States Government still wants more Americans,