THE T A BLET, November let, 1062.

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5867

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, NOVEMBER 1st, 1952

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NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

AFRICAN FUTURE The Growing Urgency of a Common European Problem

THE AMERICAN ELECTION

Impressions during a Visit to the United S ta tes: II. By Hugh Fraser, M .P .

THE PIED PIPER Hitler as a Mass Demagogue HOUSING THE FARM WORKER The Problem o f the Tied Cottage. By Jorian Jenks

A COMPOSER’S WORLD The Reflections o f Paul Hindemith. By Anthony Milner FOR ALL SOULS LITURGICAL REFORM A Poem by Margot R . Adamson A Conference at Monte Ste. Odile

TIME RUNNING SHORT T H E vital policies o f European integration are becoming more and more a race against time. Western statesm anship has had over seven years since the complete collapse and juridical disappearance o f the Third Reich left millions of bewildered, disillusioned and apprehensive Germans with nowhere to go. In the first years after the war it gradually became clear th a t, to the masters o f the Soviet Union, as they recovered their self-confidence, the war fell into place as one o f the many internecine capitalist conflicts expected in the Marxian analysis as providing the great opportunities fo r extending Communist revolution. I t also became clear th a t Western Europe was far more dangerously exhausted, spiritually and economically, th an anyone had liked to think possible. F rom 1947, with generous American help, the convalescence began ; and now, with the convalescence, there re-emerges in every country one variant or another of the old self-sufficient and self-confident nationalism .

defending Europe tom orrow are profoundly divided, because to all too many o f them patriotism , the service o f the national interest, is a sufficient answer to crim inal charges, a cause in whose name anything may be done. Hitler taught this, but it is something which must be and can be repudiated. The history o f the Geneva Conventions, about which many people were sceptical a t the time, but which has in fact enormously alleviated captivity fo r millions o f soldiers, shows th a t common standards can be worked out and proclaim ed as in te rnational law. The American View of Democracy

I t emerged with M. Daladier a t the F rench Radical Congress. I t is active in Italy in the parties o f the Right. A lthough its manifestations in Germany are numerically small, when they happen they have a character o f extremism, it is unhappily no t difficult to picture a Europe o f the 1960’s full o f Governments and newspapers representing the national man in the street and quarrelling and abusing each o ther and making up their own versions o f the three previous decades o f in te rnational affairs.

I f the Americans could believe more in the military possibilities o f Europe, ap a r t from the Germans, they would not have pressed so hard the policy o f German integration, even where it means making such concessions to German national sentim ent as strike a t the very basis o f moral unity on which the whole A tla n tic Community takes its stand. I t is one thing to release men sentenced for crimes against humanity, for murders which are no t the less gross and grave crimes because those who ordered them were wearing uniform , when such men are pardoned, in fact if no t in name, on grounds of compassion, for old age and illness. But th a t is no t what is happening. They are released for political reasons, to placate a Germ an public opinion which has never believed they deserved to be sentenced a t all.

This is as much as to say th a t those who are to jo in in

This is something much more modest than the claim th a t the Germans must be democrats, which only a minority o f them have hitherto been. General M acA rthur came away from Japan, after five years, saying th a t the Japanese were now good democrats, as a doctor might say a man had a t last got rid o f a distressing cough, as though the norm al condition o f hum an health in politics is to believe in representative democracy. Many Americans do apparently believe this, and , in the strong glare o f their own successful experiment o f 170 years, lose sight o f the larger tru th th a t there has been very little parliam entary democracy in human history ; th a t it has generally either been parasitic on something else, like the inherited cohesion and social unity o f an aristocratic society, o r has flourished in small commercial o r agricultural com munities dominated by the middle class. Whether it has any future in any p a r t o f Asia is still an entirely speculative question, and there is no reason to th ink the Japanese have done more than lie low and adopt the pose the conqueror expected o f them.

I t was so in the Germany o f the Weimar Republic which was made to please the victors. It is a mistake for Sir Hartley Shawcross to ta lk o f a democratic Germany, when even under Weimar the Germans who believed in parliam entary democracy were so very soon p u t on the defensive against Nazis and Communists. One o f the great arguments for European institutions is th a t they strengthen the believers in constitutionalism , particularly in Germany and Italy, where their constitutionalism has quite inadequate native roots. D r. Adenauer represents the forces in Germany