THE TABLET, October 3rd, 1953 VOL. 202, No. 5915

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 3rd, 1953

N IN E PENCE

P e r s e c u t io n in P o l a n d : I. The Banishment of the Cardinal Primate

II. The Sentencing of Bishop Kaczmarek. By Julius Lada

G e rm a n y a n d E u r op e : A Debate in the Strasbourg Assembly. By Christopher Hollis, M.P. F am i ly D o c t o r i n g : After Five Years of the Health Service. By a General Practitioner

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E d u c a t in g t h e A d o l e s c e n t : I I : By Charles r . a . Cuniiffe T h e D u k e o f A lb a : A Tribute. By Sacheverell Sitwell C h r i s t ia n i ty a n d War: The Diagnosis of Professor Butterfield. By Colin Clark FulgenS C o ron a : The Encyclical Letter Announcing a Marian Year B o o k R e v i e w s : By Edward A. Sillem, J. C. Marsh-Edwards, Derek Stanford, Gordon Albion,

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H. D. Hanshell, S.J., Tudor Edwards, Ulick O’Connor and Neville Braybrooke Correspondence from Thomas Harper, Dorothy Hamilton Dean, Charles Pridgeon, S.J., F. H. Drinkwater,

J. M. C. Toynbee, Alan Rye and Ritchie Calder

SPAIN INCLUDED T HE agreement between the United States an d Spain, by which naval bases and airfields in Spain become available to the United States, is a m a tte r for general congratulation, for i t is to the advantage o f everybody on this side o f the I ro n Curtain. The agreement protects Spanish sovereignty more fully than British Governments have p ro tected British sovereignty, for American troops will be judged in Spanish courts for offences against Spaniards. Obviously there are dangers o f incidents, so far a p a r t are many modern American conventions from the much stricter Spanish standards.

against Portugal. But in fact the Portuguese had no doubts th a t the Spanish Civil W ar was between two sides o f which neither stood for the ideas o f parliam entary democracy, and th a t General F ran co ’s movement, o f which he was not a t the beginning the chief, aimed a t arresting the rap id decline o f Spain in to Red revolution, in which the Communists played from first to last a leading role. I t was International Communism which recruited the International Brigade, Soviet tanks which reached Madrid before the N ationalists h ad any aid from the Axis beyond a small number o f Ita l ian aeroplanes ; and when he signed this Agreement with the United States, General Franco was acting with a full consistency from those days to this.

The agreement brings a t long last money to Spain, a country which has hitherto been denied the American aid which other much richer countries have found so indispensable. I t will provide employment, and this is a great recommendation, no less th an the way it proclaim s to the world th a t th e foolish and small-minded boycott o f Spain is rapidly breaking down. Spain is no t a member o f the N o rth A tlantic Treaty Organization, but the shifts to which those who uphold this exclusion a re driven were well illustrated in The Times’ leading article in the agreement, which quoted the purposes o f NATO as being the defence o f democracy, and then went on to trea t it as quite natural th a t Portugal should belong, although the characteristic democratic institutions, particularly the free activity o f workers’ syndicalist organizations, have been found no more reconcilable with public o rder in Portugal th an in Spain.

The present Government o f Portugal, faithfully reflecting public opinion and the national interest, was invaluable to the N ationalist cause in the Civil War. I t m eant a great deal th a t a friendly Portugal was behind the Nationalists through all the first stage when they only held the West o f Spain. In so far as the idea is still current th a t what happened in 1936 was the wicked and gratuitous destruction o f th e kind o f constitutional left-wing Government th a t would be in NATO today, the charge o f being an accessory to its destruction lies

I t would have been much better if The Times, instead o f suggesting th a t Portugal is a democratic country in a way th a t Spain is not, had frankly recognized th a t what stands in the way o f fuller Spanish participation, whether in NATO o r in the United Nations, is the profound unwillingness o f Socialist politicians to adm it the disingenuousness o r the gullibility o f their propaganda in the Civil War. They were in those days much less inform ed th an they have since become about Communist methods. The Communists, taking charge o f the propaganda from Red M adrid, found American and British Socialists and Liberals with no so r t o f immunity, like South Sea Islanders before a new disease. Some o f the AngloSaxon politicians who visited Spain had more th an a shrewd suspicion th a t the war was one th ing in Spain and something quite different in the British and American press ; th a t the Anarchists and the Caballero Socialists no more intended th a t there should be parliam entary government, o r religious to le ration or Christian education, th an the Communists did, and some o f the visions o f those years have since described truthfully the revolutionary extremism which was concealed from the d istan t public by talk o f a “ legally elected Republican Government.”

There would be no point in reviving this history if it were