THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA D E I , PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 2 0 1 , N o . 5 8 7 9

FOUNDED IN 1840

L O N D O N , JA NUARY 24th, 1 9 5 3

N IN EPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

“NOT HELPLESS PRISONERS OF HISTORY”

Reflections on President Eisenhower’s Inaugural Address

THE MOSCOW PLOT An Equation with Three Unknowns. By Victor S . Frank

FREEING OUR FOOD SUPPLY Problems of Decontrol. By Jorian Jenks

THE TRIAL AT BORDEAUX THE CAUSES OF CRIME

By Frank Macmillan

By Illtud Evans, O .P .

THE CHURCH IN SOUTH AMERICA

I : The Shortage o f Clergy. By John Tracy Ellis HERMITS TODAY DUSTING OUR TRADITIONS By Lancelot C. Sheppard By Hilary Armstrong

THE PATTERN OF PERSECUTION

The Yugoslav Bishops write to Marshal Tito

FOG IN STRASBOURG T HE experim ent o f an extraordinary three days’ session o f the Assembly o f the Council o f Europe can hardly be voted a success. Certainly it was not a personal success from the point o f v iew o f the delegates. Strasbourg is one o f the m ost insalubrious tow ns in Europe, and it was at its most unlovely during these bitterly damp, raw and foggy days. A number o f the delegates were seriously ill. There was hardly one who did n o t suffer from at least a cold, and certainly none who went so far as to claim to be well. When pessimists glibly prophesy the death o f the idea o f European unity, it cannot be denied that, as things now are, such a death is alm ost as likely to com e about through the literally physical death o f the delegates as through any defeat o f their ideas.

present undeveloped state a favourable balance with the United States. The Paley Report had warned Americans that they were likely soon to be dependent to a much greater extent than at present on imported raw materials, and therefore- there was every hope o f solving the dollar gap by the triangular trade o f American export to Europe, European export o f manufactured goods to overseas territories, and overseas export o f raw materials to America. An Identity o f Purpose

But it is very doubtful whether any useful purpose could, as things have turned out, have been served by this special three days’ session. The purpose o f the session was to give the Assembly an opportunity o f expressing an opinion on the method o f association between the Assembly and the new European Political Authority. But, as with every day that passed it became increasingly doubtful whether that Authority would ever com e in to existence, and absolutely certain that it will never com e into existence in its present form, detailed debate on how to associate with som ething that is certain never to exist is a metaphysical exercise o f a som ewhat abstract nature.

Meanwhile, though there is n o t in reality tim e to discuss more than one subject in three days at the Strasbourg pace, yet the Bureau insisted on injecting into the political debate half a day’s discussion on the recent O .E .E .C . report. It was indeed m ost reasonable that the Assembly should discuss this Report, for it is in the econom ic field that it has won its first substantial practical success. While there is less and less prospect that its political debates will ever lead to anything, the Assembly did at its September meeting adopt the Strasbourg Plan, in which it committed itself to the proposition that there was no hope o f solving the dollar gap by bilateral trade between Europe and America, but that on the other hand the overseas territories had even in their

The great problem for the developm ent o f the overseas territories was the problem o f capital. Europe could play her part—-the more so i f we understand that som e o f the countries in Europe with the most capital to spare— Switzerland, Sweden, Germany— are countries w ithout overseas territories. I f we can give to the peoples o f those territories the guarantee, which the British Government has now given, that if they invest capital they will be able to get it out again, there is good reason to think that we shall be able to attract European capital, and there is good reason also to believe that the American fear o f a raw material deficiency will attract American capital to the developm ent o f those lands.

A t all events, that was the Strasbourg Plan o f the Council o f Europe last September, and that Plan, save only for the complicated detail o f the two-tier preference, has been adopted en bloc by O .E .E .C . The Consultative Assembly, which had for so long complained that nobody consulted it, has at last had its complaint removed.

The O.E.E.C. adopted the Strasbourg Plan, fortified it with statistical data, and sent it back to the Council o f Europe for comment. There could have been no greater feather in the cap o f the Council. But, most unfortunately, the Bureau, by so rushing the debate that most o f the delegates, only having received the lengthy report o f four hundred pages tw o days before they were asked to approve it, never discovered what the report was about. Even o f the speakers in the debate, the greater number had clearly not mastered the report, while other delegates contented themselves with a protest that they