THE TABLET, September 12th, 1953 VOL. 202, No. 5912

Published as a Newspaper

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 12th, 1953

NINEPENCE

Decision For Europe: A Report from Bonn on Dr. Adenauer’s Triumph

Conference on Korea.: Small Chance o f Success. By Wilfred Ryder

Free City o f Trieste: The Refugee Camp. By Bruce Renton Edinburgh and Scotland: Judgment on the Festival. By George Scott-Moncrieff

The People o f Ireland : An Analysis o f the Census Returns. By Thomas Harper Niels Stensen o f Denmark : Scientist and Servant o f God. By Gustav Scherz, C.SS.R. Lincoln and the Union: The Tragedy o f the American Civil War. By Christopher Hollis

Evening .Mass : Singapore: Garrison Church and City Church. By C. Acworth

Book Reviews : By Martin Turned, John Beckwith, D. McNeelance, Edward Sarmiento,

Sir John McEwen, and Lancelot C. Sheppard. Correspondence from John P. Murphy, E. B. Flower, A. D. Ross, Daphne Hereward, Keith Kirk,

Jeremy N . B. Keating, and John H. MacCallum Scott.

Europe feels much relieved by the signs of strength among the people who, under a different order, so nearly produced a tyrant’s unity in Europe only eleven years ago.

NEW HOPE FOR E.D.C. F RANCE and Italy have Governments headed by Prime Ministers of personal distinction, but both are men politically little known, who could only become Prime Minister for that very reason. They can only govern because they have no strong political associations to embarrass them in one quarter or another. Dr. Adenauer, on the other hand, emerges from last Sunday’s elections as by far the most effective figure, politically, among the continental Powers represented in the Council of Europe. Less than six weeks before the date proposed by the Western Powers last week for a conference of Foreign Ministers a t Lugano to try to settle the future of Germany, Dr. Adenauer has strikingly confirmed his position as a man who will himself play a considerable part in settling the future of Europe. His telegram of congratulation from Sir Winston Churchill reached him only eight years after the British military authorities judged him an unsuitable man to be Mayor of Cologne.

When the fifth session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe is resumed in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the West Germans will arrive in a mood of much confidence. The French, attaching perhaps excessive importance to the eclipse of the small political groups on the extreme right, on the whole seem pleased with the result of the German election, although the difficulty of judging between their divided minds was illustrated on Tuesday by headings which appeared on the same day in The Times and the Manchester Guardian : “French Satisfaction,” said the former, and the latter : “ French Anxiety Revived.” They cannot make up their minds whether they are relieved at the much better prospects for the military defence of the West or full of chagrin at the thought that they seem increasingly likely to have to follow where the Germans lead. But Signor Pella and Signor de Gasperi have sent telegrams of warm congratulation to Dr. Adenauer from Rome, and the Austrian Chancellor, Herr Raab, has sent one from Vienna, and there is no doubt that

The German election was fought almost entirely on external policy. Dr. Adenauer can claim to have found a handsome majority in favour of a European Federation and a European Defence Community, and his representatives will come to Strasbourg armed with this mandate. If it is found necessary to revise the Constitution before Germany can participate in a European Defence Community, he can reasonably expect to find in the new Bundestag the two-thirds majority that that would require. But the French and the Italians will once again come to Strasbourg with one eye nervously on massive sections of their home electorates which vote for the Communist Party at election-time, whereas the West Germans will come confident in the knowledge that they have no Communists a t all to embarrass them ; even Max Reimann has lost his seat. When the announcement is made, as it is expected to be made during this session a t Strasbourg, of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Germans will be able to point to a Bundestag from which the would-be dictators o f both left and right have been voted out, and will be able to feel more confidence than either the French or the Italians th a t no internal conditions will develop which might make it necessary for a constitutional Government to take special powers in peacetime, or to suspend normal liberties in the interest of the public security.

The Daily Herald struck its individual note about the West German elections, saying that Dr. Adenauer “may live to regret the methods used,” and speaking o f his “plentiful funds supplied by the big industrialists,” although there is no German political party that does not get funds from the big industrialists, who like to insure themselves impartially against every