THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 201, No. 5884

FOUNDED IN 1840

LONDON, FEBRUARY 28th, 1953

NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

BRITONS IN EUROPE The Special Case of the Travel Allowance

ISLAM IN AFRICA Reasons for a Rapid Increase

A LETTER FROM ROME

Two Secretaries of State

NO LONGER TWO LIVES

By A . Hadshar

FEEDING THE NATION “ Level” or Seasonal Production ? By Jorian Jenks PROFESSOR TOYNBEE, “THE WEST” AND THE WORLD

Thoughts on the Reith Lectures : III. By Douglas Jerrold

TITO SOWS DISSENSION T HE language used at the Congress of the People’s Front in Belgrade is very reminiscent of the ’thirties, when the Communists were busy inveigling Socialists and Social Democrats, and even Liberals, into a common front. Then the Communists used to class all their varied opponents together as “ reactionaries,” and affect to see no difference between traditional Conservative or Liberal elements and rival revolutionary movements as hostile to the past as they themselves, like Hitler’s Nazis. Today this propaganda is no longer conducted from Moscow, but by a group of dissident Communists in Yugoslavia. But the essential thesis is the same. Starting from the common ground, the great Socialist criticism of Liberalism, that political and personal liberty is largely if not wholly meaningless without economic liberty, they then proceed to concentrate all economic initiatives in the hands of the State, and initiate the process of substituting one master for many. They are then surprised that there is less and not more liberty for everyone, precisely in proportion as the exaltation of the State is thorough-going and complete.

for autocratic over-government from which it was the great service of the Liberal movement in Europe to have emancipated some people for a time. That is why we are sorry as well as indignant that from Great Britain, the great home of legal liberties, Mr. Sam Watson, the fraternal delegate to Belgrade from the British Labour Party, should have assured Marshal Tito, with gross adulation, and in superlatives, that “no visitor could be more welcome to Great Britain" than this revolutionary Communist who is seeking to impose Marxian atheism on peoples who, whether Catholic or Orthodox, have been rooted in their Christian faith for a thousand years past. I t is a tragic spectacle, were it not that we can believe with some confidence that the man will recover from the bite—-“ the dog it was that died”—and that the whole attempt to impose this degraded nineteenth-century philosophy will prove a transient if grim episode in the long and often heroic history of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Playing Moscow’s Game

M. Kardelj, the Vice-President of the Yugoslav Government, speaking at this Congress, roundly abused reactionaries, as though they were the enemies of liberty, although his country is one from which people are still being continually shot while trying to escape by swimming the river to Austria at night.

I t is in fact inevitable, and in the logic of Socialism, that foreign trade must be a monopoly of the Government, and the relations of private citizens to the outside world most closely controlled. There was an experimental note and a barely concealed perplexity about M. Kardelj’s speech, as he groped along, as so many Western Socialists have done before him, trying to find a way of reconciling Socialism and personal liberty. For such men the clear-sighted and ruthless Lenin had the greatest contempt, because, as he said, they will the end and are not ready to will the means, because the price of the Socialist State is the sacrifice of those values, personal liberty high among them, which come down from both the Christian and the Liberal heritage. In the end a people must choose. They can either have very little Socialism or very little liberty.

The discovery of liberty as a great good came very gradually, because it has always had the weight of Governments against it. It has been a recent but also a momentous discovery, and it is always a very bad sign to find it undervalued, especially when it is under-valued from enthusiasm

That Marshal Tito and his advisors are very out of touch with the Western world is shown by their idea that they can separate the Catholics from their fellow citizens in every country of the Atlantic community. I t is very embarrassing for President Eisenhower, with the large Catholic population of the States, when Tito rants about the Vatican. I t is embarrassing in different degrees for the Governments of every country in the Western camp. Whether it is Holland or Belgium, France or Italy, Germany or Austria or Switzerland, the Catholic populations and the Catholic political parties, generally the leading elements in coalition Governments, are an essential part of the anti-Communist front. To seek to divide this alliance, still more to say that there must not be any such front, dividing the world into two blocks, is to play Moscow’s game, for that is just what the Russians desire ; confusion and disunion in the camp against them, while they maintain an iron monolithic discipline in their own.

It is a great pity that Mr. Eden is so little alive to these deeper realities, by comparison with the strategic considerations, which he grasps very clearly. The Yugoslav Government, co-operating with the Greek and Turkish Governments, gives a useful new line ; it may lead to the recovery of Albania from the Russian grasp. But Marshal Tito and M. Kardelj conducting propaganda to divide the Western countries into Christian and anti-Christian populations are importing, if