TH E T A B L E T , J u l y 26th. 1952

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5853

LONDON, JULY 26th, 1952

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

TOWARDS WORLD PLENTY The Stable Framework of Economic Progress THE ONE PER CENT SAMPLE Tendencies shown by the Preliminary Census Figures. By Thomas Harper

ON MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE Catholic Evidence to the Royal Commission PIUS XII TO THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

Excerpts from the Holy Father’s Apostolic Letter

EAST AND WEST OF TITO Two Recent Studies. By Ursula Branston

APATHY IN THE TRADE UNIONS BOLIVAR THE LIBERATOR

By R . P . Lynton

By Edward Sarmiento

THE MYSTERIES OF THE ROSARY Verses and Meditations. By Dorothy H . Wells

ON SACRED ART The Full Text o f the Recent Decree o f the Holy Office

PAYING FOR PAST ERRORS 4 4 0E T T IN G out to cross the Sahara by lavish expendituie t 3 o n waterproof suitings” is the pungent metaphor with which the special Committee set up by the Organization for European Economic Co-ordination, OEEC, describes the policy followed by the British Labour Government from 1945 to 1951. It was the policy of men so determined not to run any risk of the unemployment and other ills that they feared might come from reducing the volume of money that they took dangerous and excessive risks in the other direction, of failing to control a constant inflationary tendency ; and Dr. Dalton’s cheap money powerfully reinforced the inflationary trend.

There never was risk of unemployment in those years of a world sellers’ market. But the reasons were deeper than memories of the years after 1918 or 1930. The policies reflected the philosophy behind the political movement that had at long last reached power, and was, all too naturally, more interested in doing what it had dreamed of doing for years than in treating the post-war situation as it should have been treated, as a time of preparation for new world conditions, as a testing time for the nation, different from that of the war, but calling for many of the same qualities.

Because so much capital wealth had been destroyed, it was of primary importance to encourage saving. Because Britain had lost so much of her oversea investment, it was of primary importance to nourish all the sources of invisible exports, earnings from the services which foreigners had long sought and found in the City of London, but which they would seek and use less and less in proportion as the Government put difficulties in the way of their using them. Because it was a new world, every encouragement had to be given to the enterprise which might find new ways of earning for British industry, which meant keeping the idea of profits as socially useful and desirable, and worth taking risks to secure.

All the real requirements of British economic policy pointed then, and still point, in a direction which encounters great psychological difficulties, because it runs counter to what so many trade unionists have for a generation been taught to think of as progress, a society in which no one can get or stay rich by exporting or any other form of business activity, least of all by financial operations, and in which instead of some people having enough to be able to save and invest, even adventurously and abroad, everyone consumes more and the State provides against all contingencies ; an immediate increase of consumption, the provision of much by the State that used to be saved and paid for, being valued precisely because such provision leaves more money to be spent in other and pleasanter ways.

These are not in themselves ignoble ideals, although often mixed with ignoble feelings. The great thing wrong with them is their untimeliness and inappropriateness for the British artisan population, placed as they are in the world of today, with the rest of the world refusing, in the words of the Nigerian Minister of Trade, to subsidize the standard of living which the British want for themselves. There is all too great a contrast between the verdict of OEEC and the mentality behind the resolutions tabled for the Labour Party Conference at Morecambe in October—resolutions which show how much of the Party is still preoccupied with finding ways of consuming more without producing more, and towards the outside world shows a complete disregard for economic considerations wherever they conflict with political prepossessions. Sir Walter Monckton and Wage Restraint

The trouble about party politics is that there is a regular patter which all Oppositions talk, whatever the party that may happen to be in Opposition at the moment. No one