TU E T A B L E T . October 18th, 1952.

THE TABLET A W E E K L Y N E W S P A P E R A N D R E V IE W

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5865

LONDON, OCTOBER 18th, 1952

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE BRITISH QUANDARY Grave Considerations for the Commonwealth THE DISTANT PROSPECT OF SOLVENCY

What Must and Can be Done. By Douglas Jerrold

A TURN OF THE SCREW MAU MAU AND THE MISSIONS The Fate o f Rumania. By Ursula Branston Priests to Remember on Mission Sunday

WHAT’S THE ODDS ? Mathematics and Monte Carlo. By Sir Arnold Lunn

THE CHRIST OF DOSTOEVSKY The Russian Messianism. By Christopher Hollis

AT “ L ’EAU VIVE”

By Charles CunlifFe

A SAINT ON THE SCREEN

By Freda Bruce Lockhart

THE DANGER-SPOTS

M R . CHURCHILL, expressing his view th a t the th ird world war might n o t occur, said th a t n o t only would the immediate consequences be frightful but those dependent on long land communications might find th a t they had lost control o f events. Even before the more recent developments, with all the th reats they carry to the maintenance o f communications, it was an obvious deterrent to the employment o f the Red Army in Western Europe, th a t its communications would become immensely extended through populations overwhelmingly hostile, and th a t the close central control by the Party in Moscow, to which such im portance has always been attached, would become highly problem atical. Human history in the past has been largely made by successful Generals, who have ignored those in whose nam e they were acting, d istan t masters w ithout any means to compel obedience and many weeks distant by messenger.

But M r. Churchill was speaking a t a Pilgrim ’s D inner for General Ridgway, and his rem arks must be seen in th e context o f an occasion which was a reaffirm ation o f the supreme im portance o f NATO while the work o f essential preparation is still so incomplete. While every contributing country has a political opposition which grudges the sacrifices and wants to spend the money otherwise, there is a likelihood th a t these statem ents will be tu rned to purposes which are far from being those o f the Prime Minister.

The chief danger o f th e position facing the world is no t that, from either Moscow o r Washington, there is likely to come a decision to p u t everything to the hazard. Wars are generally launched by someone who thinks he is going to win quite quickly and easily, because he is overwhelmingly stronger ; and no one can have th a t feeling today, o r th ink himself immune from swift and stupendous devastation. The danger is ra th e r o f a continual disintegration, o f small fissures becoming big ones. The world is full o f small nations unequipped with atom ic weapons, still th inking o f war in the old way and very frontier-m inded ; and these local quarrels, in Asia or Africa, cannot today be separated from th e great struggle going on everywhere between Communist and anti-Communist forces.

Germany will be fo r a long while the biggest danger spot, as th e Kremlin increasingly pits Communist Germans against

Western Germany, and presses on with the organization o f the Soviet zone in to a new European country, a German Soviet Republic, with its sympathizers in the rest o f Germany and its ta lk o f unity and peace. The Germans and th e French

The G erm an Social Democrats are making a last minute effort to forestall the ratification o f the Bonn treaties with the West. The allegation o f F ranco-R ussian talks, as well as the discovery o f an American-supported secret resistance organization, which was announced by the Socialist Prim e Minister o f Hesse, were used with th a t end in mind. Rum ours o f negotiations between France and Russia with the object Of maintaining the partitio n o f Germany—there was even ta lk o f a secret conference a t Geneva—-were first circulated a t the SPD Congress in D o rtm und. Official F rench denials did n o t stop these allegations, until the Foreign Minister, in an interview with the Kölnische Volkszeitung, m ade a strong a t ta ck on what he called “ pieces o f bungling to spread suspicion and confusion.” German memories are still haunted by th e Franco-Russian alliance o f 1891, th e prevention of which had been a principal aim o f Bism arck’s diplomacy, and it is also remembered th a t after th e last w ar F rance objected to unified F o u r Power control and refused a t first to merge her occupation zone with the zones o f Britain and th e United States. But today the F rench Governm ent cannot countenance a separate Russian policy, and what kind o f reunification in freedom the German Social Democrats themselves desire did certainly not emerge from the D o rtm und discussions.

I f D r . Wehner’s rum ours have died their natural death, the revelations about the Germ an Partisan organization are o f a more serious nature, and successive confirm ations and denials from Washington have caused no t a little embarrassm ent in the S tate D epartm en t and in the Office o f the United States H igh Commissioner for Germany. I t appears th a t members o f the Bund deutscher Jugend and some form er Wehrmacht officers were encouraged and supported financially by American officers to establish a resistance organization which would go underground in case o f war and Russian occupation. I t is n o t clear whether the BdJ is identical with the Technische Dienst, with some th ousand members, which had been