TH E T A B L E T , J u n * ISM, JPSS

THE TABLET

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

PRO ECCLESIA D E I , PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

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

L O N D O N , JU N E 13th, 1953

N IN EPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE ITALIAN RESULT The Serious Prospect o f Instability PAYING FOR POLITICS IN THE FAR EAST China and India Needing Economic Aid. By Wilfred Ryder

THE CASE OF THE FINALY CHILDREN A Survey in the Light of the Past Week’s Developments

A CENTURY OF SPIRITUALISM “ Tea and Table-Turning.” By Humphrey J . T . Johnson

A PROTESTANT LEADER A New Evaluation of Carson. By Christopher Hollis

LITTLE TO CHEER ABOUT T HOSE who lead coalitions are always a t a disadvantage against a single enemy. They have to ask themselves, when there is ta lk o f a truce and an armistice, whether they will be able to reassemble their coalition i f the enemy should, after a convenient interval, restart hostilities. The United Nations were only able to take up the Korean challenge three years ago th rough the blunder o f the Russians in absenting themselves from the Security Council. The Russians need no t do this a second time, and, if they can secure the admission o f their Chinese Communist Allies, they will be all the better able to paralyse the United Nations next time.

whatever reminds it o f its past subjection to European rule. The problem fo r Western statesm anship is th a t the presence o f this feeling now makes it very difficult for the Western world to take the active interest in Asian defence and Asian development which needs to be taken, if the new N ationalist Governments are to maintain themselves when they are lacking in so much—lacking in political and economic experience as well as in capital resources. They are like young people who cannot bear to be helped by their parents, because th a t suggests they are not fully adult, but who need help and have no one else who will help them. As You Were

The extreme agitation felt by the South Koreans is not difficult to understand. Much more im portant even than the military considerations are the psychological ones, how a truce will be regarded th roughout Asia, where men are watching to see which is really the stronger force in their p a r t o f the world. The United N ations, primarily by American resolution and exertion, have defeated the Communist project to make a Communist satellite out o f Korea. So far so good. But equally, after three years, they have failed to create the conditions they meant to- establish for the whole o f Korea, which would have enabled the Koreans to breathe freely. I t accordingly matters very much that, even with a truce o r an armistice, the U n ite d Nations shall continue to keep soldiers and aviation in Korea, o r Japan, o r Formosa. Otherwise the Chinese Communists will be able to exercise the same powerful and baneful influence th a t the Red Army exercises over Eastern and Central Europe, merely by being on the spot, and being the only great force on the spot.

A t this moment the British Government, when it invokes the voice o f the Commonwealth, hears the voice o f Mr. Nehru, whose Republic has the most tenuous link with the o ther Commonwealth countries, but whose voice is not for that reason a t all less influential. I t came as a great surprise to the peoples o f Western Europe when they realized, a few months ago, th a t, when the British Government talks o f its Commonwealth obligations keeping it out o f European unity, it is largely concerned, no t with Canada, Australia, o r New Zealand, but with India, and the Indian feelings about F rance as an old-fashioned Colonial Power.

N o one disputes th e tru th o f Mr. N eh ru ’s observation th a t Asia must not be seen in terms o f Communism and anticom m unism , a l though th a t is one line o f cleavage. There is the more im portan t cleavage o f Asiatic nationalism against

I f the K orean Armistice becomes effective—and this will n o t be established when the guns have ceased to shoot, but later, when the term s o f a political settlem ent are draw n up —the situation in K orea will resemble closely th a t of. June 25th, 1950. Two powerful and undefeated armies will face each other across a two-and-a-half-m ile neutral zone near the Thirty-eighth Parallel. The Cairo Declaration o f 1943, subsequently reaffirmed a t Potsdam in 1945, prom ising a “ free and independent K o re a ,” remains an empty phrase. Just as in the case o f Germany after 1945, so in th a t o f K o rea an a rb itra ry frontier has become a perm anent line th rough the dictates o f military convenience. Just as in the case o f Germany, all attem pts to advance the economic and adm in istrative co-ordination o f the Koreas were rejected by the Soviet Union.

The Paris and London Conference on Germany suffered a fate sim ilar to th a t o f the Jo in t Commission set up in K orea in 1946. N o rth and South Korea went their several ways. After free elections under United Nations control the Republic o f K orea was established in August, 1948, and followed by the setting-up o f a “ People’s Republic” in N o rth Korea. Some tim e between 1948 and 1949 United States and Soviet troops withdrew, b u t a Soviet-trained K orean army o f about 60,000 people remained in N o rth Korea, and so did the whole mechanism o f Soviet controls on trad e and industry, foreign affairs and the secret police. N o r th K o rea became in fact the model satellite because local institutions, always im portant however ineffective in Eastern Europe, played no p a r t whatsoever in the F a r East. N o rth K orea was made to conform completely to the Soviet pattern. Like Herr U lbricht in Eastern Germany, the Deputy Premier