TH E T ABLET, A p r i l 19th, 1962

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 199, No. 5839

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, APRIL 19th, 1952

NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE NEW LOCARNO Britain’s Guarantee to the European Defence Community THE UNITED STATES IN AN ELECTION YEAR

Reflections after a Recent Tour. By Douglas Jerrold

ON MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE An Opportunity for Ecclesiastical Statesmanship THE VAGARIES OF MR. BEVAN Three Blind Mice of Modern Politics. By Christopher Hollis, M .P . THE FRINGES OF FREEDOM THE WORK OF LAGERKVIST

By D . J . Chisholm

By Neville Braybrooke his followers, on the contrary, say with equal emphasis that they must have no t more but fewer guns. Marshal T ito is much more certain than Mr. Bevan th a t the only way to meet the Cominform is with a show o f strength. But Marshal T ito is not thinking about the Cominform alone. The Easter parade in Belgrade was thinking about Trieste, and its rage was directed no t least against Italy.

A GUARANTEE TO ITALY T HE proposed Agreement between Britain and the European Defence Community announced on Wednesday means th a t if there is a war, and if it happens that Britain is attacked while Western Germany is not, then Western Germany will be bound to come to the assistance o f Britain. We have th a t consolation. The possibility was a t least discussed in th e Daily Express not long ago, when it carried an interview w ith a distinguished Spaniard who said th a t the Soviet strategy would be to launch air-borne attacks sim ultaneously on Britain and Spain, the two corner-stones o f the Western continent, and to wait for the mainland to fall w ithout a struggle. The contingency is not th a t which is generally envisaged in the Western defence preparations. Yet, ap a r t from the inclusion o f Italy, this is the only contingency covered by the proposed Agreement th a t is no t already covered by the Treaties o f D unkirk and Brussels o r by the declaration made by the United States, Britain and F rance in September, 1950, that they would “ treat any attack against the Federal Republic o r Berlin, from any quarter, as an a ttack upon themselves." N o Western country except Italy has gained anything beyond this assurance th a t the Western Germans will come and help them if necessary. But the way the Western Germ ans would in fact behave in the event o f an a ttack does no t seem very much less a m a tte r for speculation than it did before. The chief result o f the new Agreement seems to be to increase the prestige o f the Germans.

Mr. Bevan, meanwhile, has seen his school o f thought advance among the trade unions during the conferences held during the holiday weekend ; and since it is the trade unions, and no t the constituency party associations, which have the chief voice in policy-making at the L abour Party Conference, Mr. Bevan has made further progress towards entrenching his position a t the all-im portant meetings a t Morecambe a t the end o f the summer. The Significance o f M . Pinay

I t is curious that all the atten tion should thus be given now to the way developments affect the Germans. Practically no notice has been taken o f a second and perhaps more genuinely im portant consequence of the proposed A greem ent: and th a t is th a t Italy is a party to it. Italy is not concerned in the Dunkirk o r Brussels Treaties, but she is a member o f the European Defence Community. The language o f these documents naturally never mentions the Soviet Union as the quarter from which military a ttack might come, although everyone assumes th a t it is the only quarter. Yet the new Agreement will pledge support for Italy also if Italy “ should be the object o f an armed attack in E urope,” from whatever source, and it happens th a t its publication follows immediately after the reports o f the way the Easter holidays were spent in Belgrade, with organized mobs shouting “ T ito, Tito, give us guns.”

I t has become a commonplace to make comparisons between Marshal T ito and Mr. Aneurin Bevan ; but to us the contrasts seem a t least as rem arkable as the similarities between these two men. Mr. Bevan does not assemble his followers and make them chant their eagerness for guns ;

The success o f M. Pinay in the last month p rio r to the Easter recess o f the F rench N ational Assembly may well prove to mark a significant stage in the history o f the Fourth Republic. The story o f his premiership so far has certainly been an extraordinary one. M. Pinay was no t thought to have any chance o f winning the necessary initial vote o f confidence ; least o f all by himself, because he was out o f Paris when o ther hopefuls were being interviewed by M. Auriol. He was one o f the 580-odd Deputies o f the Third Republic in 1940 who had voted full powers to Marshal Petain, and for this he had been declared “ ineligible” for public office in 1944 ; although this disqualification had been lifted in 1945 because o f his courageous a ttitu de as Mayor o f the little town o f Saint-Cham ond during the Occupation. N o t only did M. Pinay receive the necessary vote o f confidence by a com fortable margin, bu t he also managed it w ithout Socialist support. He was the first Premier so to succeed since the Liberation. Even more remarkable, he split the Gaullist Party against the direct orders o f General de Gaulle.

Since then the firmness o f the Government’s policy in Tunisia (which has been compared to similar British firmness in Egypt) has consolidated Gaullist support, though it has split the MRP. When M. Pinay faced the debates on the Budget, therefore, he was able to resist all challenges and win solid votes o f confidence on all disputed issues—the fiscal amnesty, Government economies—while cleverly managing to delay until after the recess the debate on the delicate question o f the “ sliding scale” for salaries.

Temporarily, a t least, the “Third Force” form ula o f Government has been superseded, and the logical consequence