T H E T A B L E T , M a r c h 21st, 1953.

THE TABLET

A W E E K L Y N E W S P A P E R A N D R E V I E W

PRO ECCLESIA D E I , PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 2 0 1 , N o . 5887

FOUNDED IN 1840

L O N D O N , MARCH 2 1 s t , 1 9 5 3

N IN EPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

TWO SIDES OF THE ADRIATIC Marshal Tito, Trieste, and the Coming Italian Election

RUSSIA, GERMANY AND RAPALLO The Heritage o f Radek and Rosa Luxemburg. By Godfrey Scheele

FOOD AND THE FUTURE “ Prophecy o f Famine,” discussed by Christopher Hollis, M .P .

LIVING AND LEARNING The Jubilee o f the Workers’ Educational Association

WITHIN AND WITHOUT Two Views o f the (Ecumenical Movement. By E . I . Watkin

THE SPIRIT OF LENT The Medieval English Lyric. By Gordon Albion

EASTERN APPROACHES T HE Supreme Soviet has ratified the appointm ent o f Malenkov and the other changes th a t followed the announcem ent o f the death o f Stalin, and the Bundestag in Bonn now addresses itself to the ratification o f the European Defence Treaty. Malenkov continues to declare th a t all problems can be resolved by peaceful negotiation, and th a t Soviet policy is based on respect for the sovereign rights o f all countries, great and small, and on the observance o f in te rnational law—in o ther words, to use th a t eminently respectable bourgeois language th a t so often characterizes Soviet speeches, especially when they are in tended for. ears in o ther countries. Just as so much o f the official atheism o f the Communist countries carries the dreary echoes o f the nineteenth-century, so also much o f the political language, reactionary to a degree, talks earnestly about the sacred nature o f political sovereignty ju s t when the Western countries are beginning to learn about the transcendance o f sovereignty.

Observers in Berlin are favourably placed to gauge the real direction o f Soviet policy. As the Berlin correspondent o f the N eue Ziircher Zeitung p u t it on Tuesday :

which any policy is as good as any o ther, in which all political and social groups can be appealed to a t one moment and dropped in th e next, and in which alternative plans can be held in readiness and possibilities o f infiltration tested. The Importance o f Herr Pieck

The Berlin correspondent o f the Swiss jo u rn a l compares the West G erm an Federal Republic to a ship drifting on political waters which can be stirred w ithout any great risk. The Soviet strategy for Western Germany is based n o t only on Communist organizations and their fellow-travellers, but, much m ore widely, on the inherent Germ an tendency to wishful political thinking and mystification. Stalin showed much foresight and knowledge o f the Germany mentality in 1949 when he wrote to President Pieck th a t experience had shown th a t the German and Russian peoples were the strongest power in Europe, and th a t these peoples together could decide the political future o f the continent. These words have now again been given wide publicity in Eastern Germany, and they do n o t fall upon deaf ears in the West. Some of their historical setting is discussed by Mr. Godfrey Scheele in an article elsewhere in these pages.

“ The Berlin observer least o f all can agree with the popular thesis according to which Soviet policy is dictated by the needs fo r security. H e will note again and again th a t Soviet policy is based on a self-confidence visible in many concrete forms. W ith the least cost to themselves, the Russians have obtained unm istakable results both inside Germany and in the Western world. The notion th a t the West is confirmed in its ‘M aginot mentality’ is p a r t o f th a t policy, as well as the conviction th a t the continuation of a ‘policy o f wear and te a r ’ will lead to the desired results.” This policy appears to be based on the view th a t “holding half, we a re always holding more th an half. We can wait longer, because we can hold out longer.” The obstinacy of Soviet policy in Germany in the last few months has n o t met its equal in Western policy. I t is a policy in tended prim arily to meet and foster the sense o f political uncertainty which prevailed in Western Germany until the all-clear was given for ratification in Bonn last week. The aim has been to keep Western Germany, Western Berlin, and, indeed, the Soviet zone itself, in this political cloud o f unknowing, in

Outside Germany there is an inclination to concentrate quite one-sidedly on the danger o f a re-emergence o f Nazism. The Germ an correspondent o f the Manchester Guardian, Mr. Terence Prittie, has recently given renewed p ro o f o f this a t titu de on th e Third Programme. But this danger is only p a r t o f a very complex situation which the experience o f the past naturally tends to influence. In fact, the danger lies much deeper, and D r. Adenauer has shown himself to be one o f the few Germans who appreciate it realistically.

Soviet policy is very intelligently based on such misapprehensions, both inside and outside Germany. In supporting these various trends it succeeds in its ultim ate object. I t can prom ise to Germ an industrial elements a unified economic area from Vladivostock to Essen, and an inexhaustible source o f tra d e in China, which to many Germans may appear more advantageous th an the opportunities held ou t to them by projects o f European unity in their present form o f development. I t can appeal to military circles in holding out to them the old Prussian dream o f a military Russo-German alliance.