THB TAB L E T , February 2*0, M 2

VOL. 199, No. 5828

FOUNDED IN 1840

TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

LONDON, FEBRUARY 2nd, 1952

NINEPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

CUTTING OUR COAT The P a in fu l Return to Sound H ousekeeping WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE STATE A Concentration o f P ow er and i t s 111 Consequences. B y D ou g la s Jerrold

THE UNFORTUNATE BORROWER A s H e L ook s to the B ank M an a g e r . B y Jan ie s Dandy A ROME LETTER THE ISSUE IN EGYPT I ta l ia n C a th o lic A c t io n B y Charles P . Brown A ROMAN HOLIDAY THE IMMORTAL MEMORY Freda Bruce Lockhart on “ Q uo V ad is” M o r le y Jam ie son on Robert Burns

“HALF SLAVE AND HALF FREE” The London Conference on Eastern Europe. B y John B ig g s -D av iso n of the arrangements. This will have to be said again in reply to the latest Soviet protest against the creation of a Middle Eastern Command, which follows upon the visits to Ankara and Athens of the three NATO chiefs, Field Marshal Slim, General Bradley and General Lecheres, and the decision that Greek and Turkish representatives should join the Washington standing group. Abiding Soviet Preoccupations

NATO AND THE LEVANT T HE appointment of Earl Alexander as Minister of Defence brings into Mr. Churchill’s Government a man with unique qualifications for his work in the defence o f the Atlantic community, as it stretches today from the Mediterranean, the scene of his military victories, to Canada, with whose aspirations and great prospects he has so thoroughly identified himself in the years since the war. The appointment underlines the gravity of the time in a way that should correct the natural bias of the popular Press, reflecting the scale of public interest by which whatever is domestic and immediate takes pride of place. Earl Alexander knows as well as any man the military questions posed by the outbreak of inflammatory Egyptian nationalism, and the strategic considerations which have to be held in mind lest we should be tempted to extend ourselves, the Americans in Korea and the British in the Middle East, in a way which would dangerously diminish our power to defend Western Europe.

Before their departure from Paris, M. Vyshinsky and M. Malik went to a dinner given in their honour by the SecretaryGeneral of the Arab League. The principal Arab guest was the Egyptian Foreign Minister, of the Nahas Pasha Cabinet. M. Vyshinsky genially told an Egyptian journalist that Russia would “ try to aid economically and politically all the peoples of the Middle East which desire freedom from Western economic domination.” Last Friday Pravda supported this thesis, saying that it was only natural that the Egyptian people, “ fallen into misfortune under foreign occupation,” should now turn their eyes “ to the Soviet Union, to Moscow, to Stalin.” And on the following Monday Pravda wrote that in Indo-China, Malaya, Persia, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia,

“everywhere a mighty liberation movement o f people striving to throw off the yoke of colonial slavery is widening and gaining strength. No matter how the exploiters rage, they cannot halt the course of history.” The events in the Middle East should serve to emphasize the key position of Turkey both geographically and militarily for the security and stability of that endangered part of the world.

The extension o f the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include Turkey and Greece was approved by the French Assembly last Saturday. What were originally British, Scandinavian and Dutch objections have had to give way to the overwhelming necessity of common action. On the Soviet protest note of November 3rd, the Turkish Foreign Minister pointed to the defensive nature

In the course of a conversation in Berlin with the then Soviet Foreign Minister, M. Molotov, on November 13th, 1940, Ribbentrop made the suggestion that Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan should divide the world between them. He offered a secret agreement in which Germany would recognize that Soviet aspirations were “centred” in the South of the Soviet Union, in the direction of the sea. “Which sea ? ” asked Molotov. Ribbentrop meant the Indian Ocean, but after Molotov’s return to Moscow, and further negotiations, the German Ambassador, Schulenburg, cabled on November 26th that the Soviet Government were ready to accept Ribbentrop’s agreement on condition that “ a basis for Soviet land and naval forces be established in the neighbourhood of the Bosphorus and of the Dardanelles,” and that “ the zone in the South of Batum and Baku in the direction of the Persian Gulf be recognized as the centre o f the aspirations of the Soviet Union.”

That was in 1940, and it was the Russian refusal to be deflected from looking westward as well as southward, towards the Balkans, the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf as well as, and before, looking to the Indian Ocean as the Germans had wished, that prompted Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Geography has not changed, nor have the Soviet objectives in the Middle East. The Lenin anniversary last week served as an occasion to remind the world of this fact. The Germans and the European Army

Dr. Hallstein, the German delegate to the European Army talks, made it clear last week that Germany was not making membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a condition for joining the European Defence Community. But her inclusion in the latter should not be interpreted as a renunciation by her of future association with NATO. Much of the international Press commentary on this point, supported by the undiplomatic German pronouncements on the scarcely more diplomatic French move to raise their Saar