THE TABLET, December 12th, 1953 VOL. 202, No. 5925

T! IE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia D e i , Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED TN 1840

DECEMBER 12th, 1953

NINEPENCE

S l u m p : Democrats and-the Republican Revival. By Douglas Jerrold aganda Free Trade in the Modern World : IV: Britain Becomes Protectionist. By Colin Clark

Depravity and Unbelief: The Christian Tradition and Unnatural Vice

Bentley’s Masterpiece : The Building o f Westminster Cathedral. By Michael Derrick

The Cathedral’s Jubilee: Only Fifty Years. By Mgr. R. A. Knox

The Unity o f Europe : A Study o f Medieval Internationalism. By René Hague

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Grace o f Forgetting, by Geoffrey Winthrop Young ; The Victorian

Mountaineers, by Ronald Clark ; O Lovely England, by Walter de la Mare ; Lost Splendour, by Prince

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Felix Youssoupoff ; The French Theatre o f Today, by Harold Hobson ; The Violins o f St. Jacques, by Patrick Leigh Fermor ; The Holy Foot, by Robert Romanis ; Infidelity, by Richard Chase ; The Second Curtain, by Roy Fuller ; The Saturday Book 13 ; and a further selection o f Children’s Books. Reviewed by Sir Desmond Morton, Lady Chorley, Maryvonne Butcher, Julius Lada, M. Bellasis and

Isabel Quigley.

COMMUNITY OF ATOMIC GOODS P RESIDENT E ISENHOW ER’S proposal to Moscow th a t there should be a Bank, under the United Nations, where the different countries would deposit the basic materials out o f which atom ic energy, and atom ic bombs, are m anufactured is designed to avoid the deadlock which has hitherto brought to nothing proposals for in te rnational control. Such control involves a thoroughness o f international inspection which is totally repugnant not only to the Communist bu t to the Russian national tradition. I t could only be thorough, within its own terms o f reference, if it destroyed all military and industrial secrecy, to the point th a t we can say th a t countries th a t could accept it would not need to organize it, because there would be no dark mistrust between them.

whole. But this is exactly where any Russian acceptance must mean an inconceivable abandonm ent o f orthodox Communist propaganda, by which the Americans, the British and the rest o f us have to be depicted as inhum an imperialist exploiters, continually planning military aggression. This fearful bogey is essential for the maintenance o f Communist rule over non-Communist peoples, who are allowed no voice in policy and have continually to sacrifice their share o f the annual product o f agriculture and industry in o rder th a t the Government may dispose o f the maximum resources.

The Soviet proposal o f a ban on the use o f such weapons does n o t reach the heart o f the matter. There have been too many disregarded international affirmations fo r any such solemn statements to be able to mitigate the pace o f the atom ic arm s race.

The merit o f President Eisenhower’s present proposal arises from the lim ited and costly character o f the minerals like uranium which it is proposed to deposit under jo in t control. There is not, there cannot be, any dem and for to ta l surrender o f these weapons. But as everybody in the world would be so much happier if they had never been invented, what is proposed is a first step towards behaving as though they had not been. There is then the further advantage that, under jo in t control, atom ic energy can be turned to peaceful and productive purposes. In the hands o f national Governments it is primarily devoted to military uses. But under in te rnational control it could be used to do th e work no t o f swords bu t o f ploughshares.

President Eisenhower framed this proposal against reminders o f how much the United States had done both for the material and the political progress o f the world as a

The Communist rulers o f so much o f thé world are in a false position, for they have to justify their arbitrary and highhanded rule by proclaim ing and preaching a class war. This class war bears less and less resemblance to the realities o f hum an life with each decade, since Karl Marx propounded it as an explanation and criticism o f one part o f nineteenthcentury capitalism . A tom ic energy harnessed to peaceful purposes will give the coup de grâce to any propaganda which tries to argue th a t as wealth increases the poor only grow poorer, and the gulf between rich and poor widens. This is what Karl Marx enunciated as p a r t o f his justification of violent revolution and proletarian dictatorship. It was never true. The tru th was the opposite, that, perhaps with a greater o r lesser time-lag, the benefits o f increased productivity reach everybody, all the way down the economic scale : and that, with all its a t tendant harshnesses and injustices, the great movement o f nineteenth-century industrialism gave mankind wholly new standards o f material well-being, a quite different sense o f the minimum which could be and should be provided for the most unfortunate. So much came out o f the age o f steam and coal, much more out o f the age of electricity, and vastly more can come again from the age o f atom ic power.

What is prim arily im portan t is th a t, as men go in to this new age, they shall not go in to it as the emotional prisoners