TB S TABLET, March »2nd, m e

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 199, No. 5835

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, MARCH 22nd, 1952

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NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE GAP IN THE BUDGET The Lack o f Incentives for the Providers o f Work

FACING THE FOOD SITUATION The Need for a Long-Term Agrarian Policy. By Jorian Jenks

THE MAKERS OF MONEY Limits to the Creation o f Credit. By James Dandy

PROTESTANTISM IN SPAIN Background to a Pastoral Letter o f Cardinal Segura

BELIEF AND ORDER

The Catholic Tradition in Political Thought. By T. S . Gregory

THE BIDDING IN GERMANY A FTER two years of warnings that German rearmament was the one thing which they could not tolerate and could not be expected to tolerate, the Russians have now calmly proposed it themselves. Herr Grotewohl is doubtless but the first of a long line of non-Russian Communists who, not for the first time, will have obediently to unsay all that they have been saying and to applaud what they have hitherto been denouncing. The Russian move, and the consequent defection of the German Communists from the antirearmament group, means the end of whatever small chance there may ever have been that there will be a majority in Western Germany that will spontaneously reject rearmament. But it means also that Germany, in rearming, will have a choice whether to find her friends in the East or the West.

though well it might be, but formed part of M. Molotov’s speech on October 30th, 1939. The Soviet Foreign Minister then also spoke of “ old formulae manifestly having fallen into abeyance,” which was to remind the Communist parties in Europe that they had better change their attitude to “Fascist” Germany.

The comparison with the events of 1939 might well serve as a sobering reflection on the optimistic reception which the present Soviet move has found in many quarters both in Germany and abroad. The three leading ideas of Soviet policy in Germany, onwards from November, 1950, and earlier, have been unification, neutralization and disarmament. The danger of German disarmament, which the Soviets have now discarded, was made the basis of the meetings of the four Foreign Ministers at the Palais Rose. Those sessions were long drawn-out and came to nothing. This may well happen again in working out the present proposals.

So far the Germans show little desire to rearm, but there is no longer any possibility, even if we wished to do so, of our preventing German rearmament if opinion changes, and in a situation where dangers are increasing the only wise policy is to make things as easy as possible with those in Germany who for genuine moral reasons wish to throw Germany’s weight on to the Western and Christian side.

The Real Soviet Purpose

I f the defence of the West is to be built round NATO, then it becomes folly wantonly to weaken Dr. Adenauer’s position by asking him, as the Lisbon decisions ask him, to accept for his country the role of a bastard brother of the European family—neither in NATO nor wholly outside it. Such a demand will merely play into the hands of those in Germany who want to break with the Atlantic Treaty altogether. It will not delay German rearmament. It will merely make it more probable that German arms are one day turned against us. We will be well advised to grant equal status to Dr. Adenauer while we can, being very certain that, if we do not do so, we will soon have to give it to someone a great deal less friendly than Dr. Adenauer. We can still have a European Army, if we are willing to come into it. I f we are not willing, then we must have a Wehrmacht.

No one can doubt that the Russians will be prepared to pay the price of a fifth Partition of Poland in return for a German alliance.

“We have always been of the opinion that a strong Germany is the one condition necessary for stable peace in Europe. Today our relations with the German Government are based upon our friendly relations, our will to support Germany’s peaceful aspirations, and, at the same time, to contribute by every means towards the development of Soviet-German economic relations, for the advantage of both countries.” This passage is not to be found in the recent Soviet Note,

The primary Soviet aim remains the obstruction of Western Germany’s integration in any European scheme. That aim is worth a good deal more to the Russians than saving the faces of their Communist supporters in the West, whose loyalty can be counted upon and who need not be reasoned with about inconsistencies in suddenly reversing all that they have said about the dangers of revived German militarism. But there is as yet too great a readiness to believe that the Russian proposal to put up with a German national Army rather than with a West German contribution to a European force will entail the sacrifice of the East German Communist regime. The German Communist movement was repeatedly sacrificed in the days of the Weimar Republic, and finally to Hitler, but today it is no longer a question of giving up local branches of the Comintern but of safeguarding powerful military positions of the Soviet Union in Europe. The sovietization of the Eastern zone has advanced too far for its sacrifice to be entertained now. There is more to support the belief, also voiced by M. Raymond Aron, that the German treaty which the Russians today pretend to offer to the Western Powers is intended to serve as the model for the treaty to be concluded tomorrow with the German Democratic Republic. Equal rights to the former members of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Party have there already been accorded, and Herr Grotewohl, in his latest speech, implies the resurgence of a German Army based on the armed formations of the East German youth organization. A German Army might then exercise that strong appeal to the German imagination which the half-hearted Western plans have failed to do.