TH E T A B L E T , December l i t , 1951.
THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
VOL. 198, No. 5819
PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA
LONDON, DECEMBER 1st, 1951
NINEPENCE
FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0
PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER
DILEMMA FOR EUROPEANS The Great Uncertainties for National Communities THEOLOGY AND MODERN SCIENCE The Full Text o f the Recent Allocution of Pope Pius XII
A LETTER FROM FRANCE
The Administration of Justice
A LETTER FROM ITALY
Hard Winter in a Poor Country
IN ADVENT
The Personal Manifestation o f Christ : I . By Terence Tanner
WARNING VOICES
T HE European scene today is one in which the military and the economic authorities, the only people who best know all the facts and bend their minds and energies to devising policies, continue to repeat the most serious warnings; but these warnings are printed, read and noted, and at the end make some but little and quite insufficient difference to the way the peoples to whom they are addressed go on.
The latest of these warnings comes from Sir Edmund Hall Patch, speaking from the key position of Chairman of the Executive Committee of OEEC, and saying that inflation may wipe out most of the gains which the working classes in Europe believe themselves to have secured by political and trade union action. The report is an important and timely document for the statesmen at Strasbourg, for it shows how relatively small is the ultimate dependence on imports of the countries on the mainland. The vast majority of the goods and services consumed are produced locally ; what comes from outside is 8 per cent, half of it from the United States and Canada.
It is obvious that a rise in world prices due to the Korean war cannot be made the scapegoat, for the steady rise in the cost of living is everywhere primarily an internal matter. Its causes are to be found in the immense scale of modern taxation, which means the high proportion of each community which is withdrawn from production for other services, often excellent but non-productive, and in the persistent pressure from below to obtain an ever higher price for unskilled human energy, so that these highly civilized communities become in danger of being unable to afford to buy their own production.
The United Kingdom is a special case, much more dependent on trade with the rest of the world, and peculiarly in danger if it fails to control its internal prices. In the last year, says this report, retail prices have gone up by 12 per cent in Britain, “ a rate of increase unparalleled since 1940,” and wages by 8 per cent, probably twice the value of the increase in production out o f which those wage-rises must come : and the Report issues the warning that the wage increases in the last year have not yet fully reflected themselves in retail prices.
France also is an anxiety, not from basic material deficiencies, but because of the policies being followed, or not being followed. But in Germany, Italy and Belgium there are better hopes that prices will not rise, that the present level will be maintained, while in all of them there has been a rapid increase in productivity.
But all these countries face the same preoccupations about securing sufficient imports of the right kind, and, left to themselves, will compete against each other with all the new weapons which, since the rise o f Dr. Schacht in Germany, have become the commonplaces o f the last twenty years.
German competition in particular will be felt more and more as German production increases while the old Eastern European markets remain virtually closed.
It is not reasonable to tell either the Germans or the Japanese that they must renounce for ever the dreams of military empire unless at the same time they are accepted and encouraged to become producers and manufacturers and exporters. And far the least wasteful approach would be to see that the market is the largest possible, and for the different peoples in a competing industry to learn to specialize in different parts of that market. So far the different countries of Western Europe have all tended to keep their colonies in the background when meeting to discuss unity, and it is perhaps the most notable event of the November session at Strasbourg that it has put the question of overseas territories in the forefront, where it belongs.
The economies of the European countries are largely competitive, in the sense that they can all do a great many of the same things at home, but the economies of Europe and Africa are complementary. As it is the declared policy of all the Governments to raise the standard of life in Africa, they can best pursue that aim in common. Public opinion here must not allow itself to be rattled by the outcry o f the narrow imperialists that the Germans are getting a foothold and selling their manufactures in British colonies. I f we want to leave behind the older world of competing imperialisms, which leads so quickly to local nationalisms, we must get away from the idea of making special preserves, drop for good the old mercantilist idea that trade with a colony can be pre-empted by legal embargoes and a special profit safely taken, when such policies give a legitimate grievance to local populations who are prevented from getting better value, and to the foreign nations who are shut out from a trade they could do. The British at Strasbourg
M. Paul Reynaud, at Strasbourg last week, told the fourteen visiting American Congressmen that Britain was saying “Get on with your Europe, Continentals. You have our best wishes.” Germany, through the Social Democrat Dr. Carlo Schmidt, was saying : “At no price do we want Europe without Britain and the United States.” Belgium, through M. Spaak, said that Belgium too did not want Europe without Britain, and the Dutch, the Italians, and the Scandinavians all agreed. Moreover, the Commonwealth senators and deputies declared last year that they too were all absolutely in favour of Britain’s entry into Europe. M. Reynaud omitted to mention what the French said, but he went on to quote Jacques Bainville to his American listeners, to the effect that there is no federation without a federating agency. Europe and the United States wanted a federation,