THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

VOL. 199, No. 5849

FOUNDED IN 1840

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

LONDON, JUNE 28th, 1952

NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE BASIS OF UNION National Communities Rather than Political Regimes CHILDREN UNDER SOVIET COMMUNISM

The Indoctrination in Rumania. By Peter Cross THE YOUTH EMPLOYMENT SERVICE The Story of the School Record Cards. By Philip Anley

ITALY, NORTH AND SOUTH Contrasts with Abiding Consequences. By Bernard Wall A WELSH FESTIVAL FLOODS AND FARMS

By Illtud Evans

By John Todd

FRENCH POETRY TODAY A Valuable New Introduction. By Robert Speaight

SWITCHING THE PARTY LINE T HE question of the relationship of Germany to Western Europe, to which the three Foreign Ministers are once again addressing themselves, has provided the occasion for a new switch in the “party line” o f the Communists in the Western countries. For the present at least, they are reverting to the old tactics o f trying to build up alliances in Popular Fronts. They judge that if there is one issue on which they can hope to gain allies and bring themselves back into a position o f political influence it is this, and they appeal for a common opposition to the Bonn Agreements and the rearmament of Western Germany, hoping that national apprehensions can be whipped up enough to submerge apprehensions about themselves. This, rather than the negative reason of the failure of the call for strikes in Paris and Rome when General Ridgway visited those cities, and more than any division within the Cominform that some may seek to read into the news of purges in Rumania and other East European countries, is the key to the new Communist "line.”

who is tried, a child of our family (i.e. he is a Frenchman) . . . It is logical that a Government engaged in a cold war and bound by its treaties should eventually refuse to tolerate the threatening operations of an implacable opposition. It becomes vital to rally the people. N o t all methods are tolerable on that account, and first amongst such methods is lying.” Le Figaro, meanwhile, is doing an excellent public service by insisting that it was in any case high time th a t the Communist leaders were called to account, rather than their unfortunate rank and file ; and by reminding the Assembly that, no matter what arguments are used to clear M. Duclos from actually participating in the riots, it was the newspaper of which he is the political director which called for violence. The Resolution of M . Pinay

In Germany itself they cultivate the Social Democrats, whose views' are so often expressed in language strikingly similar to their own. In Italy, as Mr. Bernard Wall described in these pages a fortnight ago, the ta lk is again o f Popular Fronts, in which cause recent issues o f Unita have been thrusting Signor Togliatti into the background to make room for the less familiar name o f Signor Secchia. And in France the main tendue was last week again, if somewhat tentatively, extended, and Mme Jeanette Vermeersch, at a meeting o f the party’s Central Committee, saluted the action o f those prêtres-ouvriers who, as we noted last week, took part in the demonstrations against General Ridgway.

M. Pinay is in no mood to be beguiled, and he is steadily supported by the Socialist newspaper Le Populaire, o f which the new political editor is M. Paul Ramadier, who, as Premier in 1947, first expelled the Communist Ministers from the governing coalition. But it is lamentable that the Communists can find Le Monde, perhaps not unexpectedly, saying that the arrest of M. Duclos was unnecessary and ill-advised ; even the Gaullist weekly Rassemblement has denounced the “ criminal lightness” with which the Government proceeded to this action ; while Témoignage Chrétien writes :

“ However enslaved to Moscow you like to call him, when Jacques Duclos appears in Court it will be one of us

M. Pinay is keeping his nerve amidst all the confusion of comment and counsel, and is treating the affair as sub judice. To some extent it may assist him in the difficult phase he is encountering in the widespread attacks against the foreign policy o f M. Robert Schuman. Significantly M. Pinay had to intervene in the recent debate on Tunisia to say that there was not a separate policy of the Quai d ’Orsay : it was the policy o f the whole Government. But no other Premier is likely to be keen to take over the Government, if M. Pinay is defeated, while the Duclos affair is still awaiting solution.

It may well be that the arrest of M. Duclos suits the Party very well. At all events they have been careful to avoid forcing a vote on the subject in the Assembly. When M. Duclos sent a letter to the Speaker to ask that he might be allowed to address the Assembly on his own arrest, M. Herriot replied that the request was irrecevable, but he indicated th a t any Communist Deputy who wished could demand a debate, and the Communists, who had been very vocal until then, failed to take the opportunity. I t may be th a t the arrest also suits M. Duclos personally, as he is thought to have been under attack within his own Party.

M. Pinay, meanwhile, has been more concerned to stabilize the economic situation of the country than with matters which concern his Minister of the Interior and his Foreign Minister. On June 6th the newspapers carried full-page advertisements for the Pinay “Confidence Loan.” First results have been