TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FO UNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 8 th , 1953

N IN EPENCE

Rakosi ill Cold S to ra g e : Relaxations in Hungary. By K. M. Smogorzewski

The W itn ess o f W h ittak er Chambers: Communist Penetration o f American Life

Breach w i th G ladstone: Joseph Chamberlain’s Own Account. By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

H ila ir e B e llo c : The Prophet’s Role. The Panegyric Preached by Mgr. Ronald Knox

St. Clare o f Assisi: A Seventh Centenary. By Nesta de Robeck

The Glass o f France: What is to be Seen in Paris. By Derek Patmore

Book R e v ie w s : By Bela Menczer, Thomas Gilby, O.P., Gerard Slevin, A. H. N. Green-

Armytage, T. G. Weiler, B. C. L. Keelan, A. J. Brooker and John Biggs-Davison Correspondence from His Excellency Mar Gregorios, Michael Riddle, T. S. Blakeney, the Earl of

Lytton, Jerome Burrough, V. M. Ferrers, E. M. Liston and a group o f American Students

A LIBERAL WARNING I N a famous letter, Edmund Burke explained to a young French noblem an why the English were politically so much wiser th an th e F rench. H e gave as one main reason that th e English retire to the country every summer for several months and survey from a d istan t perspective what they have been saying and doing in Parliam ent. I t is the season for this which has now begun, and it will last until October 20th. This reflection is helped, as it was no t in Burke’s day, by the wisdom o f th e Summer Schools. Here th e Liberals have s ta rted off in fine style a t Oxford. There is a special field open to Liberals. Now th a t they are no longer a political party in the running for power, there is no reason why they should no t set out to educate both the main Parties, enunciating the hom e tru th s which most need to be said precisely because both front benches hesitate to adm it them, fo r they are tru th s which easily lend themselves to parody and misrepresentation. Yet they are singularly vital tru th s fo r the British electorate to absorb and digest and be guided by.

co-operatives, lim ited liability companies, self-governing professions, clubs—there has been a strange and sudden acquiescence in a mood o f centralization, in the creation o f great national boards, the extension o f the direct authority o f Whitehall, the continual d im inution o f the effective responsibility o f local authority. I f Professor Jewkes needed any fu rth e r illustration o f this tendency it was being provided for him, a lm ost sim ultaneously with his lecture, as the House o f Lords debated the Colonial Development Corporation, in all the range o f its dubious and expensive projects.

The Professor o f Economic Organization a t Oxford, Mr. John Jewkes, set ou t many o f these in the Ramsay Muir Memorial Lecture : th a t our whole economy is in danger of becoming like a water-logged vessel, slowly but steadily foundering, because British industry is n o t allowed to save enough to follow up its ideas. The English im agination is as active and fertile as ever it was, b u t the difficulties have become very form idable in the way o f translating new inventions and new techniques in to practical results. More th an most nations, we need a singularly flexible economy, and we are settling down in to a stiff-jointed and a r th ritic one, singularly ill-fitted for th e competition o f in te rnational trade.

A Liberal audience was particularly suitable to hear Professor Jewkes wondering a t the extraordinary volte-face o f this country in the last generation. After being for so long and so successfully a nation th a t believed in the principle o f voluntary association, in great numbers o f small societies organized each for a specific purpose—o f independent foundations, universities and gram m ar schools, trad e unions,

But Professor Jewkes showed th a t he knows very well what is the cause o f this change o f a ttitu de. I t is the belief th a t the electorate likes and wants uniform ity, because it likes and wants equality o f condition. I t has no t yet reached the point o f putting first things first, and understanding th a t the great business o f any Government must be to help the nation to pay its way and earn its living ; and th a t nobody gains when, in the nam e o f fair shares o r social justice, such obstacles and difficulties are organized as make it certain th a t there will be less and less to share.

I t was no accident th a t the period o f great economic advance in this country was the period when the philosophy o f F ree T rade, in all its meanings a t home and abroad, the instinctive antipathy to the idea o f Government-imposed barriers and restrictions, was dom inant. Today we have drifted back in to protectionism as between different occupations inside the national community, as well as in in te rnational trade, a n d the danger is th a t a succession o f protective measures designed to safeguard this o r th a t group o f workers, o r this o r th a t industry, are adding up in their sum to ta l to a state o f affairs in which there is no flexibility a t all. The economic life o f the natio n is becoming th e sum to ta l o f a number o f protected activities, each driven to charge more and more, and concerned to prevent a t all cost the competition which will reduce costs.

This is a serious prospect facing the country, mainly through the a t tem p t to make by legislation the rewards o f unskilled