TH E T A B L E T , October 27th, 1951

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

VOL. 198, No. 5814

FOUNDED IN 1840

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

LONDON, OCTOBER 27th, 1951

NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE CHRISTIAN AND THE COMMON GOOD

The H is to r ic a l A ttitu de o f th e Church THE UNITED STATES AND THE HOLY SEE

M r . Truman’s P roposal o f an Ambassador THE SANCTIONS OF MASS DEMOCRACY M r . Carr on the N ew S o c ie ty . B y Christopher D aw son TEMPTATION TO MARXISM REX JUD/EORUM

B y Louis Salleron

B y Jam e s Brodrick, S . J .

AUTUMN BOOKS SUPPLEMENT Reviews by T. S. Gregory, Raphael Williams, M. C. D’Arcy, Christopher Hollis, J. J. Dwyer, Arnold Lunn, Vincent Turner, Gerard Meath, T. A. Birrell, Peter Watts, Neville Braybrooke,

Yvonne ffrench, A. J. Brooker, B. C. L. Keelan and D.W.

th e rights o f sovereign communities and th e urge for the political organization o f social justice. Private business is possible because there are Courts to enforce contracts ; and it is a retrograde step to move business ou t o f th a t world in to the much more lawless world o f Governments. Basic Realities

THE PAYMENTS CRISIS W E write this week’s commentary before the election results are known, but the immediate problem s confronting any British Government are all o f them in te rnational, in a world which will certainly be affected by what happens in British politics, bu t less th an by its own passions and interests. Economically, our ra th e r dangerous position is th a t we live n o t merely by exporting, bu t by exporting inessentials to pay for essentials. Our im ports are literally vital— food and raw materials for our factories. But our exports—textiles and pottery, light and heavy engineering, services to in te rnational trade—are quality exports, n o t things people can only get from us, bu t things we do particularly well, from a long trad itio n o f good workm anship, serving a home m a rket where the customers had high standards because wealth was in the hands o f people who could discrim inate. Thus, o f our exports, ten per cent a re sold in America precisely on the appeal o f quality in the rich American market. O u r interest in the prosperity o f America is consequent ; any immediate and great decline there, and British exports, being high-class exports, n o t essential, would be bought less.

A nother ten per cent o f our exports go to the dependent colonial Empire, where the Governments under the Colonial Office buy largely th rough the Crown Agents. The future of our exports to these countries will have to be viewed differently as the local populations have more and more to say in their economic policies ; and we ought to be very alive to the short-sightedness o f boasting what good bargains a Government can force on outside sellers by buying in bulk and th rea tening to transfer a whole m a rket to whoever will supply it most cheaply. Where trad e is free, even where there are tariffs, th e whole m a rket is n o t lost, but, a t the worst, some p a r t o f it ; and no people have less interest in encouraging th e fashion o f Governments controlling foreign trade th an have we, who live by exporting inessentials. We ought also to see quite clearly th a t we export most easily to countries where there are diversified social classes, and th a t our markets a re upper-class markets. The Americans o r the Japanese will more easily supply cheap mass-produced goods, where the cheapness has to be the dom inant consideration.

O u r to ta l exports, over £2,000 millions a year, go all over the world ; and ou r in te rest is in the peace and prosperity o f the world, to be a tranquillizing influence, and to set a great example o f respect for ownership and contracts. These things should be commonplaces, but, unhappily, they are continually trea ted as o f little account by com parison with

We have been given as a gift th e equivalent o f one year’s im ports since th e war, and we cannot expect th a t to recur. We have done half what is necessary to balance our trad e ; we thought we had only to raise ou r exports by h a lf as much again com pared with 1938. In fact th a t is n o t enough. We are exporting £2,000 million and im porting £2,600 million worth o f goods : th a t is, we are still 30 per cent short. I t is an exceedingly grave problem , because the conditions in the future will no t be so easy as they have been since the war. There is no longer the m a rke t th a t there was for our motors, fo r example. I t is exceedingly h a rd to say where an increase o f exports is to come from unless British business is free to rove the world, seeing where it can be first to supply some growing need, and unless we can increase the attractiveness o f ou r invisible exports, o f the services we render to business the world over, services still very im portant in our account, capable o f bridging perhaps a th ird o f the gap. They are services which a re harder to render in p roportion as ou r own economy becomes a closed one, with no certainty th a t our money can be freely exchanged, even when it is money bought and held on foreign account. The American oil companies th ought for a long tim e before they decided to take a chance th a t B ritain is n o t Persia, and to leave the dollars owed to them fo r petrol supplied to the British market in an oil refinery near Southam p ton. T h a t is ju s t the k in d o f investm ent th a t it is most im portan t to encourage ; bu t its frequency will depend upon the way ownership and capital are respected, n o t only by th e laws—for laws today can be superseded by Governmental regulation—but by the dom inant social philosophy and public opinion. These are basic realities.

I f no t enough has been said o r pressed hom e ab o u t the peril which has been allowed, th rough a fatuous overoptim ism , to grow up and th reaten the pound, the same cheerful inconsequence has marked the recent handling o f foreign policy, as o f economic policy. W hat Mr. Morrison has been doing has been to isolate one feature in Asia and the Middle East. He claims th a t British L abour has a special fellow-feeling fo r the native aspirations, which a re then, in