TH E TABLET, A ugust 29th, 1953 VOL. 202, N o . 5910

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 29th, 1953

NINEPENCE

The Ousting o f Dr. jviossacleq : A Struggle of Imperial Houses. By Charles P. Brown Deposing th e Sultan: The Unhappy Story of French Morocco. By Ronald Matthews Russia and ^Neutralism” : I I : The Dilemma of the Atlantic Powers. By F. A. Voigt The North German Scene: Hamburg on the Eve of the Elections The Pardon o f th e Sea: St. Anne de la Palude. By Neville Braybrooke Comedy at Stratford: The Debates of the Shakespeare Institute. By Robert Speaight Edinburgh Overtures: A First Visit to the Festival. By George Scott-Moncrieff A Church in D isp ersion : The Ukrainian Catholics. By Keith Kirk B o o k R e v i e w s : By Ruth Bethell, Christian Hesketh, Thomas Gilby, O.P., Christopher Hollis,

A. H. N. Green-Armytage, Lance Wright and Alfred Duggan. Correspondence from Dougal Duncan, John F. X. Vassalli, R. C. Atkinson, William Sewell, H. E. Calnan,

A. M. Sefi, John Melamparampil, Ulick O’Connor and Tracy Philipps.

OUT ON A LIMB T HERE was a simple, and, indeed, unanswerable logic in the original American plan for the conference which is to seek a political settlement in Korea. There had been two sides in the war, the United Nations and the Communists, and therefore, said the Americans, representatives of these two sides should sit down opposite each other, as their military representatives had done when it was a question of reaching a truce at Panmunjon, and should negotiate. By all means the Russians might come, but the Russians would have to sit with the Communists ; they could hardly have objected. The British answer to this was, in effect, that the difference between Communists and members of the United Nations is by no means always so clear in international life as it was on the Korean battlefield, since many Communist States undoubtedly hoped that the war would be lost by the United Nations of which they are themselves members ; the negotiations should therefore be conducted round a table, by the same principle which makes the French Chamber round, where political divisions are not always reducible to the simple alternative known in Britain.

But this difficulty was slight by comparison with the further question of who should sit round the table. Britain and most of the other Western Powers wanted to see India there, on the ground that India had most prominently contrived to play the part of a neutral member of the United Nations when the United Nations were at war, and now held the chairmanship of the repatriation commission : the armed forces looking after the prisoners of both sides are exclusively provided by India, whose services are readily available in pursuance of a mission conceived by Mr. Nehru as one of mediation between Communist Asia and the rest of the world. This, as Mr. Cabot Lodge remarked, would have made India both judge and jury : and the spokesmen of South Korea held strongly that India’s presence would be wholly unacceptable.

It cannot have come easily to the Americans to find themselves "out on a limb,” holding out against the inclusion of India when the rest of the major Powers and most of the minor ones were in favour of it. But the South Korean Foreign Minister insists that it is the Indians who are out on a limb. Perched on a branch of the tree of freedom, said he to the General Assembly of the United Nations, India is “constantly hatcheting at its trunk to please the enemies of freedom.” At this point he was carried away by his own eloquence, and had to be restrained by the presiding chairman. But no one knows better than the South Koreans what Communism in Asia means, and they maintain with vehemence that, even if a truce has been made in their country, for reasons of necessity on both sides, no enduring compromises can be made. They see India in a position of great peril, facing the Chinese Communists on the Tibetan frontier and separated from the Soviet Union itself only by the buffer State of Afghanistan, the constant preoccupation of the British in India up to the Bolshevik Revolution not on account of the Afghan tribes but because Russia lay beyond. ThCy see this, and they see Mr. Nehru committing the future of his sub-continent to the hope of neutrality, playing a role in the East similar to that which Dr. Benes vainly sought to play in Europe, and they are unable to feel confidence that Indian participation will serve any other purpose than the appeasement of a Communism which from its nature cannot be appeased.

It is widely said that the American opposition to the admission of India to the peace conference is a result of pressure from Dr. Syngman Rhee, and that he has threatened to break the truce if his conditions are disregarded. Whether this is true or not, it will mark a new stage in American policy in the Far East if the reassessment of Communist China five years ago has been followed by a reassessment of Mr. Nehru’s India, a country where, at the end of the war,