THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW VOL. 201, No. 5891 PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA LONDON, APRIL 18th, 1953 FOUNDED IN 1840 NINEPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

“ IN A NEW DIRECTION” The Great Merit of M r . Butler’ s Budget

DIVIDED GERMANY

Cross-Currents at an Anglo-German Conference. By Douglas Woodruff

OVER-POPULATION OR NOT ? The Gloom of the Neo-Malthusians. By Audrey Donnithorne

CROATIA AND THE HABSBURGS A Note on Marshal Tito’s History. By Béla Menczer

A LETTER FROM SCOTLAND

By Frank Macmillan

B.D. OR D.D. ?

By B . C . L . Keelan

MAURRAS AND THE POPES A Book Written in Prison. By Montgomery Belgion THE GREAT CHARTULARY OF GLASTONBURY The Transcription by Dorn Aelred Watkin. By Laurence Dopson

TACTICS OF CONFUSION M VYSHINSKY’S speech a t the United N ations last •week gave some indication o f what lies behind the Soviet peace offensive. He warned th a t the rearm ament of Western Germany was a th rea t to France, th a t the Schuman Plan was a th rea t to Britain, and th a t NATO was a th reat to all its members. And he went on to speak o f what the world would gain if the money now spent on arm aments were only spent in creating a higher s tandard o f living for all nations. There is, indeed, more continuity in Soviet policy than is apparent. In 1925, M. Chicherin, then Commissar for Foreign Affairs, declared :

“ could furnish no better p ro o f o f their good will th an by perm itting genuinely free elections in the Soviet-occupied zone o f Germany and by releasing the hundreds of thousands o f G erm an civilian deportees and war prisoners still in Soviet hands,” the Administration in Washington should be in volved, as i t was last week, in fumblings on foreign policy matters. A T ria l Balloon ?

“We have made i t plain th a t we consider the question o f disarm am ent o r o f the reduction o f armaments as urgent, and th a t we consider it necessary th a t this question be posed immediately.” After the Soviet refusal, when the war ended in 1945, to disarm and to subm it atom ic weapons to international control, and after the aggression in Eastern Europe and in the F a r East, M. Vyshinsky cynically proposes to go back to old policies. The challenge to the statesm anship in the West has never been greater, and the moves in K orea evidently foreshadow a reopening o f the problem o f a German settlement. The prevention o f Western unity has always been the K rem lin ’s aim, which the spectacular end o f the Stalin era has merely served to disguise.

Here is the dilemma for the Western nations, and the talk in Washington and the European capitals o f reducing the defence efforts is one o f its symptoms. I f it was difficult to maintain the burdens o f rearm ament a t the height o f the cold war, it will be even more difficult now, when the members of NATO meet in Paris next Thursday. The Soviet tactics aim a t such a process o f disintegration o f the Western alliance, and to keep the Western nations in successive atmospheres of certainty and uncertainty about their political and economic future. The reaction o f stock-m arket prices to recent moves in K orea is one example.

I t was a pity th a t a t a moment when President Eisenhower and D r. Adenauer were agreeing th a t the Soviet rulers

A statem ent a t a Press conference and then its subsequent denial th a t President Eisenhower would accept a Korean settlem ent based on a division o f the peninsula ninety miles no r th o f the 38th Parallel and was considering a United N a tions trusteeship for Form osa, caused confusion in the United States and abroad. The other issue was the plan a t trib u ted to Mr. Charles E. Wilson, o f cutting the defence programme and foreign aid which would seriously undermine the NATO programme. The prestige o f both Mr. Foster Dulles and Mr. Wilson are involved in these issues. Senator Knowland, who is one o f the foremost defenders o f the Chinese nationalists in Washington has shown himself satisfied, after ta lks with President Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles, th a t the alleged American plans for the F a r East are w ithout foundation. The question remains whether or no t this was merely a “ tria l balloon” intended to test the American reactions.

President Eisenhower is holding a difficult position, in herited from the preceding Administration, on United States policy in the F a r East. His election campaign was fought largely on his promise to end the Korean war. H e said recently th a t personally he was no t opposed to the admission o f M ao ’s China to the United Nations, provided this could contribute to peace in Asia. The fate o f Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is again in the balance, and the Soviet Union can today speculate on the probability th a t the small concessions recently granted to the nationalist Governm ent in Form osa form no obstacle in Western minds to the admission o f Communist China to the United Nations, especially in view o f the recognition already accorded to the Chinese regime by the British Government. The Asian conflict is,