THE TABLET, August 15th, 1953 VOL. 202, No. 5908

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

F O U N D E D IN 1840

A U G U S T 1 5 th , 1953

N IN E P E N C E

F ran ce D i s o r d e r e d : The Mood behind the Present Strikes

F r e e d om in C h in a : The Political Education o f a Missionary. By Clemente Dutto, S.J.

E u rop e a t A l t e n b e r g : Foundations o f Peace. By John M. Todd

Less J o in t C o n s u l t a t io n : Industry less Certain o f its Value

C an o e s o n th e A d ig e : A New Sport. By Sir Arnold Lunn

G r o s s e t e s t e t h e S c i e n t i s t : A Father o f Physics. By Edward A. Sillem

S in g in g t h e I V l a S S : Plain Chant and its Alternatives. By Rosemary Hughes

B o o k R e v i e w s : By Hubert Wellington, U lick O’Connor, J. J. Dwyer, Roland Hill,

G. S. Bremner, Rosemary Hughes, Godfrey Scheele, W. A. Pritchard, Mary Jackson and Pamela Whitlock. Correspondence from George Koether, Marius Chassot, F. E. Harrison, W. D . Buckley, Ursula Branston and Colonel J. D. Waters.

MALENKOV SPEAKS P ERHAPS the best p a r t o f M. Malenkov’s speech to the Supreme Soviet was th a t forecasting more consumer goods for Soviet citizens. Such promises cannot be made with impunity i f they are not kept, and it is reasonable that they should be kept. Just as the Western world wants relief from the strain o f the very high cost o f modern armaments, so also the people in the Soviet Union need to consume and enjoy a little more. I t is true th a t their standards are very much lower th an those we consider modest, and have been lower fo r centuries. But it is also true th a t material goods are not w ithout influence, th a t they preach their own philosophy and spread their own ideas ; and material com fort, as it can be bad for the higher spiritual life, is also bad for the lower spiritual life. I f the word “ spiritual” is used, as it should be, as the opposite o f material, it includes the bad passions as well as the good, the hatred o f o ther men as well as the love o f G od and men. I t is because o f m an’s spiritual nature th a t vanity is a t least as powerful a motive as cupidity.

on to the fu rther pleasures o f public emotions and public feelings, nationalist demonstrations and all the rest o f it.

The despotism o f a small group like the Communist Party is most easily maintained where fear is most present, and one o f the effects o f material well-being is to diminish servile fear. Anything that will enable the subject population o f the Soviet Empire to live better is in the world’s interest. Where a Government has a monopoly o f foreign trad e it is quite easy to test the genuineness o f its intentions by its readiness to adm it goods for consumption. If it merely wants to buy the raw materials o f greater military preparedness o r o f more intensive industrialization, we cannot feel the same interest as we would in complementary trade to serve the purposes of private human happiness.

People who can live com fortably lose any crusading fervour for bad as well as fo r good crusades. N o t th a t the Kremlin has been able to draw any positive encouragement in its in te rnational a t titu de from its home population. No doubt ordinary Russians want peace, as most men do. But they have so far acquiesced in ignorance and in being iso la ted ; and with more material plenty all this will become more irksome. The Politburo will have to reckon no t merely with the desire for peace o f people who suffered a ruthless invasion twelve years ago, but with the restiveness o f people who will find the Government discipline increasingly burdensome the better off" they are in other ways. We have learnt this in so many Eastern countries, th a t when people are preoccupied with getting enough to ea t o r keeping their employment against eager competition they are much less political than when they begin to have a margin, and can go

The less useful part o f M. Malenkov’s speech was when he spoke o f the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as something for which there could be no justification. In the same speech he claimed that the Soviet Union knows how to make the hydrogen bomb. The phrase th a t America has no m onopoly is deliberately ambiguous ; for something which can only be made with apparatus o f a fantastic costliness, it is one thing to be given the formulae by spies and tra ito rs and quite another to be able to create the scientific cities where an H -bom b can be built. But the Western world must obviously assume the worst, and make its dispositions accordingly, and the only answer to the H -bom b is extension in space, the creation o f so vast an area o f sea and land in which the instrum ents o f counter-attack are carefully spread and spaced th a t even H-bombs could n o t pu t them all out of action by one sudden stroke. That, and th a t alone, makes the certainty o f reprisal a great deterrent for people who first came into the world as a party and commanded atten tion as throw ers o f bombs.

I t is an extraordinary and macabre piece o f history th a t a