TBE TAB L E T , N n e m i t t 8» , 1M2.

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5868

LONDON, NOVEMBER 8th, 1952

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

REPUBLICAN VICTORY

Some Overseas Expectations EGYPT AND THE SUDAN Basic Considerations in the Nile Valley

THE FUTURE OF THE MISSIONARIES FROM CHINA

Further Opportunities for their Apostolate in South-East Asia WAGES IN INDUSTRY TWO VIEWS ON EDUCATION

The Continuing Pressure

By Christopher Hollis

VIRGIL IN MODERN DRESS The “ zEneid” o f Professor C. Day Lewis. By Colin Hardie

THE SECOND YEAR

E LATED by the High Wycombe result, Mr. Churchill’s Government embark on the new Session w ith good news about the rise in the gold reserve, and good progress to report in housing, but with otherwise an appearance o f entering on their second year o f power in all too complete and full continuity with the legislation and administration under which the country has lived since 1945.

Partly this is because so much that the Labour post-war Government did had been prepared, i f not enacted, by the Coalition o f which Mr. Churchill was the head. It is really since 1940 that life has been drastically changed along lines on which neither party apparently finds much to quarrel with, whatever Mr. Churchill said in opposition. The broad character the country has borne since 1940 is that there is vastly more government, that government takes and spends a much greater share o f the national incom e, and spends it in ways so complicated and involving such departmental continuity that the civil servants have gained enormously at the expense o f the politicians, and both at the expense o f the public. In the war years Mr. Churchill, preoccupied with the war itself and the need for harmonious coalition, let his Labour Party colleagues make the running in the domestic field.

These special circumstances have to be remembered to explain the sight, in itself so incongruous, o f a Conservative Prime Minister finding so little to amend in the Town and Country Planning Act, although it abounds in bureaucratic frustrations for the ordinary citizen. These Ministries, the new and the old , acquire a mystique, a life and a purpose o f their own to which the politicians soon find they have very little to say, unless they enter office with a clear philosophy o f their own which is distinct from the planned paternalism o f Whitehall.

We believe that Mr. Churchill and his principal colleagues are aware how much the Conservative Party, in the country even more than in the H ouse, feels, in fact, disenfranchised at the present time. It prefers him and his colleagues to the Socialist alternative, but finds them apparently in such broad, substantial agreement that they could easily make a coalition together ; and there is in the Conservative Party something o f the ground swell o f discontent with unrepresentative leadership which in the Labour constituency parties makes Mr. Bevan so form idable. He is the authentic Socialist, and the party-leaders have to take note o f it. There is no equally strong developm ent in the Conservative Party, which has more instinctive and voluntary discipline, but something parallel must be expected, because the leading half-dozen figures in the present administration do not collectively reflect the outlook o f the Party they lead. A Theory Divorced from Reality

The new predominance o f senior civil servants means that accepted constitutional theory, by which they are th e anonym ous secretarial staff o f the responsible minister, is increasingly remote from the Whitehall reality. It is true, a.s Mr. Eden said when defending Sir William Strang from a new spaper attack, that civil servants should not be attacked by name, since they cannot reply. But it is also true that the public has the right to know what manner o f men they are, and, while individuals should be excepted from direct criticism, the Press should pay more and not less attention to the great Ministries as the collective entities that they are, and lo o k past the polite fiction that the minister in charge is the author o f what is done. It has lon g been understood that Admirals and Generals are servants o f the State whose characteristics as well as their technical competence are o f the first importance. This is also true o f less spectacular figures at the head o f the Treasury and Foreign Office whose outlook and idiosyncracies are matters o f great public moment. An Amending Bill for the Voluntary Schools

It w ill have been a source o f satisfaction to Catholics in particular to read in the Queen’s Speech :

“A B ill w ill be introduced to make certain changes, w ith in the framework o f the Education Acts, in the law affecting voluntary schools.” Mr. Logan welcom ed this announcement, and congratulated the Minister o f Education on her courage. Such a Bill, he recalled, had been formulated by the Labour Party tw o years ago, but that party had not had the courage to take action. The Labour Party’s statement o f its intentions before la s t year’s election was follow ed soon afterwards by a similar in tim ation from the Conservatives, so that what is now to be expected is n o t a party measure and w ill not, we may hope, arouse any great controversy.

W hat is to be expected is the introduction o f an Amending B ill which, far from disturbing the 1944 settlem ent, w ill rather implement its intentions more fully, giving the voluntary schools in one important respect what they were meant to receive but did n o t in fact receive. It may be presumed that what is chiefly in question is the extension o f the definition o f