T E E T A B L E T , A u g u s t 3 0 th , 1952

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5858

LONDON, AUGUST 30th, 1952

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

MR. ATTLEE IN AFRICA The Bad Drift to a Racial Basis for Politics STALIN REORGANIZES THE PARTY The Abolition o f the Politbureau. By Victor S . Frank THE SOCIALISM IN NATIONAL-SOCIALISM The Marxist Misinterpretation o f the Nazi Movement. By Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

LEAVING SCHOOL The Work o f the Pre-Y .C .W . By John M . Todd

ST. MADRON’S MIRACLE THE DRAMA AT EDINBURGH

By Donald Attwater

By George Scott-Moncrieff

WILFRID MEYNELL AT WORK A Further Excerpt from the Forthcoming Book by Viola Meynell

THE UNFORGOTTEN NATIONS T HERE was a refreshing realism in Mr. Eisenhower’s speech to the American Legion Convention, when he declared how necessary it is th a t the United States should tell the Kremlin th a t they would “ never recognize the slightest permanence in Russia’s position in Eastern Europe and Asia.” H e asked the Legion whether they doubted th a t the Kremlin will use the weapons o f direct attack, when it feels strong enough, if it feels th a t such means are necessary for its unwavering global ends. How necessary it was th a t he should speak like th a t was immediately shown in the disconcerted and uneasy comments in the French Press ; where there is very little realization how much the French, like the rest o f Western Europe, owe to the subjugated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, whose hostility to the Kremlin is a great deterrent to any Red Army adventures further West.

history. The Communist programme gains an extra step forward, and each piece o f te rrito ry o r population gained is made the base fo r the next advance. It must be the tactics o f those whose downfall the Kremlin is seeking all the tim e to encompass to push back the frontiers o f aggression, and to see th a t th e bases are as little secure as possible.

The Communists used the war years and the alliance to penetrate as deeply as they could in to the industrial vitals o f the non-Communist countries, and the process o f freeing trade unions and o ther organizations from this Communist infiltration, while it has been pursued with a good deal of success during the last three o r four years, is by no means complete. It is a process which went on parallel with the assertion o f direct Communist rule over anti-Communist majorities in Central Europe, another form o f aggression against the West in which we cannot acquiesce.

The fate o f these people, a hundred million o f them , who never showed the slightest a ttractio n to Communist ideals when they were free to be themselves and enjoyed free intercourse with the rest o f the world, is still a live and open issue. Those who are in touch with them know very well th a t their a t titu de to the progress o f A tlantic Union is no t altogether one o f welcome. They do n o t say th a t the free world is growing stronger and th a t this will result in forcing the Communist minorities now ruling them to be less intransigent until, little by little, the process by which Communists achieved a monopoly o f power is reversed and they are compelled first to share and finally to relinquish it. The feeling is rather th a t there is a good party going on, from which they have been, th rough no fault o f their own, excluded ; and this is because the emphasis o f the A tlantic Union has been so exclusively on defence, so th a t it is not surprising if they draw the deduction th a t they are to be abandoned.

I t is this impression which Mr. Eisenhower is concerned to correct. The alternative is no t between going to war in the biggest way and writing off these nations, and a wide range o f possibilities o f policies o f support lies in between. There is even a good deal to be learnt from the Communists in the a r t o f giving support short o f war. The great fallacy which Mr. Eisenhower seeks to remove is the notion th a t the prospects o f peace could be in any way furthered by treating the events o f the last seven years as settled and past

This is p a r t o f the battle which the leaders o f the T .U .C . are still fighting, because Communists in Western countries do not proclaim their full creed, but follow what are called the tactics o f “ advance by partial slogans,” which means finding ou t w hat the people you have marked down to be led want, and associating yourself vociferously with it. In this country today this means wage claim s and peace. But the recently published diaries o f Jacques Duclos showed what contem pt the Communist leaders have for those to whom they feed these slogans, so far away from the real intentions o f the Party. The E .P .U . Report

The T .U .C . is very much helped as the realities o f B rita in ’s trading position sink in. F o r the population here is a levelheaded one, and very aware o f what foreign trad e means in the livelihood o f every home, even where men earn by supplying the home market. The Second Annual Report o f the European Payments Union records a good deal ,o f steady progress by all the member countries towards multi-lateral payments and an eventual general convertibility o f money, things immensely in our interest here. F o r the great problem, how the E .P .U . countries are to earn more dollars, the report looks naturally to long-term dollar investment, following the classical model o f th e pound sterling in the last century. Then this country was in precisely America’s position, with