THE TABLET, November 21st, 1953 VOL. 202, No. 5922

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

NOVEMBER 21st, 1953

NINEPENCE

Free Trade in th e IVlodern W orld: I : The Historical Background. By Colin Clark Ending a JVlonopoly: The White Paper on Television. By Christopher Hollis, M.P. Germany and th e G enerals: “The Nemesis of Power.” By Edgar Stern-Rubarth The Terrible Crystal: The Diary of Virginia Woolf. By Elizabeth Sewell L iberty in Education : Impressions of a Recent Congress at Bruges. By P. J. Dowling “One in Voice and H eart” : The Motu Proprio after Fifty Years. By Joseph Connelly A ld burgh R e v i s i t e d : The New Production of “Peter Grimes.” By Rosemary Hughes o f Spain : The Cardinal Primate and his American Critics

Books R e v i e w e d : Two Worlds for Memory, by Alfred Noyes ; Pan-Slavism—Its History and

Ideology, by Hans Kohn ; Saints and Ourselves, edited by Philip Caraman ; A Share o f the World, by Hugo Charteris ; The Image and the Search, by Walter Baxter ; A Single Pilgrim, by Norman Lewis ; A Pocket Full o f Rye, by Agatha Christie ; Act o f Passion, by Simenon ; Etched in Violence, by Marten Cumberland ; The Empire and Commonwealth Year Book, edited by Ronald S. Russell. Reviewed by J. Lewis May, Bela Menczer, B. C. L. Keelan and John Biggs-Davison.

NO REAL RESPITE F

Berlin that terror and repression, have increased in Eastern Germany during the past few weeks.

i e l d -m a r s h a l Mo n t g o m e r y ’s iii-judged reference to the ten or fifteen years of respite which he believes the world may still have before it expressed a feeling that the pressure has been relaxed which is more widespread in less well-informed circles. It is not fair to the pacifists in the Labour Party to say that it is because they share this sense of greater security that they were ready on Tuesday to vote against the continuance of National Service for another five years, for it was only with much difficulty that their acquiescence was secured when a Labour Government asked three years ago for the last extension of National Service. But the fact is that, whatever the foundation for the prognosis attributed to Lord Montgomery, there has proved to be no substance in the hopes aroused when Stalin died by those who speculate about Soviet policy as though the purposes of the Kremlin were of their nature flexible and subject to more than merely tactical and temporary modifications, and as though “policy” were a proper word to use.

After the risings in Eastern Germany in June and the following period of Communist caution in dealing with the Germans, and after such relatively minor enigmas as the sudden demotion of M. Rakosi in Hungary had been left unanswered, there were many who were ready to say that Soviet policy was being relaxed. Yet the banishment of Cardinal Wyszynski in Poland was a step which would only have been taken by a Party ready to outrage its subject populations and not at all interested in the popular goodwill ; and if Germany and Austria are taken as a test of Soviet intentions, as they may well be taken, then nothing is better than it was before Stalin died. The negative character of the latest Note, the renewed refusal to negotiate for a treaty for those countries, is now followed by the assertion of the American commandant in

The return to Eastern Germany of Field-Marshal von Paulus, and reports that he has agreed to assume command of the People’s Army which is in process of formation there from the cadres of the People’s Police, indicate one line of new development in Soviet policy. Another is the recent emergence into political prominence of the National Democratic Party. This party was founded in the summer of 1947 with the object of appealing to former Nazis belonging to the artisan classes, and to the East German Kleinbürgertum and the large number of former German officers with pro-Soviet leanings. In a sense the National Democrats represent a modern revival, in a different form, of the old German national-bolshevist movement, which looked to Bismarck and von Seekt’s Germany Between East and West for inspiration. The very condition of the Soviet occupation make it more than difficult to repeat that experiment today, but it is not so much the foreign policy of this movement—such as the acceptance of the Oder-Neisse frontier—as its inner political tendencies which are of immediate interest today. For these East German National Democrats combine a tactical submission to Soviet strength with the propagation of their own nationalist ideas.

The West German elections have no doubt made their impression in the East and proved to the Communist strategists that the Kleinbürgertum and the bourgeoisie remain the politically decisive section of German society. Dr. Adenauer’s achievement in Western Germany was to have won its support. The same policy is now being attempted in Eastern Germany with the help of the National Democrats, who always held that these classes could become friends of the Soviet Union,