THE TABLET, May 2nd, 105-3.

THE TABLET

VOL. 201, No. 5893

FOUNDED IN 1840

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

LONDON, MAY 2nd, 1953

NINEPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

DR. SALAZAR’S TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A Moral from Portugal for the New Democracies

THE FRENCH IN INDO-CHINA The Mounting Difficulties. By Frank Macmillan

THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF Their History reviewed by Godfrey Scheele CATHOLIC PSYCHOTHERAPISTS IN ROME

A Full Text of the Address by Pope Pius XII THE ELIZABETHAN PARLIAMENT Prof. J . E . Neale’s Researches, reviewed by J . J . Dwyer

THE ITALIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN

A Letter from Rome

DR. JOHNSON’S CLUBS BRITISH PORTRAIT PAINTING

By Christopher Hollis

By David Sylvester

AID RATHER THAN TRADE? O NE thing is clear from such answers as the Russians have so far made to President Eisenhower, that we shall do well to bear in mind the course of the Korean armistice negotiations as the model which any larger negotiations could follow. They will be exceedingly lengthy, tedious, frustrating ; and it will be continually uncertain whether they are ever likely to lead anywhere. This is normal Russian procedure, the tradition of the oriental bazaar where time is of no account; what matters is the ultimate price or bargain obtained, i t is not unreasonable to hope that for various converging reasons the Soviet Government is prepared to tack and change course and see what results can follow from a relaxation of tension, perhaps not unreasonable to hope that, little by little, as concrete concessions are reciprocated, they will discover the much greater ease and pleasantness of the life open to them : as so often happens in the second and third generation of a dynamic movement when the asceticism and the sense of driving purpose become less urgent. We can hope that this may be so, that human nature will assert itself even in the Russian Communist Party, that men will long to be able to live a little more naturally and end the long sequence of liquidations and of the Revolution devouring its children, or the tyrant jealous of any merit or deficient subservience. These are possibilities, but nothing more and, up to now and in every satellite Communist Government, the Party is still running true to form and the obvious conclusion emerges that, while we should be ready to discuss anything, we shall discuss all the more effectively if in the meantime we do not relax either our political or our material plans for putting the Western world in a strong military position.

won for the recovery of the world’s economy is not jeopardized so that favourable international developments are accompanied by unfavourable economic ones. The world has learnt a great deal in the last quarter of a century since the great slump at the end of the ’twenties about what government finance can do to maintain demand, especially a government commanding the huge resources which modern American governments control. President Eisenhower indicated this when he set out in his appeal to the Soviet Union the physical equivalents of modern armaments, how many houses go to a bomber, and so on. The condition for the avoidance of a slump, if rearmament could be relaxed even little by little, is that pari passu, more should be done and not less to provide capital investment for undeveloped countries. At the beginning much of this could be and would have to be provided by the American Government, and such a policy would only be acceptable to the American public opinion which has installed the Republicans in power if they believe they are making solid and secure investments overseas which will help the American investor, as well as the countries in process of development. Where that condition is fulfilled the idea of overseas investment is more acceptable than the idea of allowing a more intensive foreign competition in the American home market. Senator Taft’s comment on the British slogan “Trade Not Aid,” that he agrees with the second half is all too widespread, if seldom so candidly admitted by Republican protectionists. The Fear of Cheap Competition

This prudence will also have the advantage of allaying the fears that, if the United States ceases to buy raw materials for stock-piling, the dollar gap will rapidly grow wider again ; and the sterling countries and the other countries of Europe will all find themselves unable to pay for things that they must buy—the raw materials of their industry—that there will follow unemployment, and with it a contraction of home demand and, in short, a slump. A great responsibility rests on President Eisenhower and his Cabinet so to conduct the economic policy of the United States that the ground so far

Strong American business interests argue that they must keep the American market for themselves, and not allow other countries with a lower standard of living and a desperate need of dollars to come in undercutting. It is an argument with which we are familiar when the Board of Trade excludes Coronation souvenirs which Germans or Japanese would make more cheaply and would be very glad to exchange for sterling. But we have seen the spectacle of the most protectionist newspapers in Britain being most indignant when the Americans seek reasons for not giving a contract to the British tender, although it was much lower than the American.