THE TABLET, January 16th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5930

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 16th, 1954

NINEPENCE

The G reater G ood: The Pope’s Recent Allocution on Tolerance

The P ro te s ta n ts in C o lom b ia : Allegations of Persecution. By Michael Derrick

R ep o r t o n East G erm any: No Relaxation in the “New Course”

H o w C a th o l ic is I ta ly ? : The Abiding Strength of Religious Belief

The Latin T rad it io n : Medieval Language and Medieval Literature. By Eric John

P o p e P i l l S XII On T e l e v i s io n : A Translation of the Letter to the Italian Bishops

The C hurch U n i ty O c t a v e : A Special Significance in the Marian Year

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : T h e Changing L aw , by S ir A l f re d D e n n in g ; A H i s to r y o f F rance, by L u c ie n

Romier ; The Faith and Modem Man, by Romano Guardini ; The Winged Life, by Richard Rumbold and Margaret Stewart ; A New Testament Commentary, by Mgr. Ronald Knox ; New Testament Studies, by C. H. Dodd ; The Onslow Family, by C. E. Vulliamy ; Michael Angelo, by Wilfred Noyce ; Persian Adventure, by Anne Sinclair Mehdevi ; and The Savoy o f London, by Sir Compton Mackenzie. Reviewed by Richard O’Sullivan, Q.C., Sir John McEwen, Edward Quinn, Robert Speaight, A. H. N.

Green-Armytage, R. D. Jebb, Anthony Bertram, Sir Rupert Hay and A. J. Brooker.

BEFORE BERLIN

M R. Eden seems optimistic when he publicly expresses the hope that the Russians are going to agree to free elections for the whole o f Germany, as the only way of getting a representative German Government. But his broadcast made it plain that he is as much in the dark as everyone else about Russian intentions, and he recognizes that, if there is no willingness to compromise, time is against us. This must suggest th a t the Russians consider it to their interest to prolong the uncertainties, not to compromise, and to let things go on while they continue to try to digest Central Europe, including a large part o f Germany.

They and their German agents have no hope o f doing a t all well in any all-German elections, and all that would happen would be th a t an anti-Communist German Government would have rights and authority in what has hitherto been the Soviet Zone. The frontier between Communism and anti-Communism would then become the Oder-Neisse Line. The whole flank o f Czechoslovakia would be uncovered and exposed to Western influence, and all for what, from the Russian point o f view ? For nothing, unless it was certain that the result in Germany would play no part in the defensive arrangements o f the Western world. This, admittedly, would be a great thing for the Russians, if they could secure it, but it is not really on the agenda a t all. I t has been expressly reiterated th a t we cannot dismantle our defensive arrangements, any more than we ask the Russians to dismantle theirs. In effect, to ask to unify Germany is to ask the Russians to retreat, without there being any comparable withdrawal from the Western side. We cannot leave the Germans without an Army, preferably European, because we cannot leave the Red Army as the only large Army in Europe.

We have the history o f Weimar, and the history o f Austria after 1918, to remind us that when a country is deprived of armed forces there is an invitation to political parties to arm themselves. Austria was brought to the verge o f civil war because the two main parties, although composed in the main o f moderate and reasonable people, developed para-military formations—first the Viennese Socialists and then, as a counter measure, the Catholic agricultural Volkspartei. In Germany, the Nazis in the years o f disarmament built up their own storm troopers, and the Communists in the Soviet Zone have shown the shape o f things to come by developing police forces which are military in all but name. Communist minorities came to power in the smaller European countries because the shadow o f the Red Army stood behind them, and nothing parallel could be discerned behind the anti-Communist majority. I f Britain, France and the Low Countries represented military power waiting in the wings, in a way that Russia does in the East, the position would still be quite as dangerous as the present division o f Germany.

An article elsewhere in this issue brings out how little conciliatory the policy o f the Soviet Union has been towards the religion o f East Germany, either Lutheran or Catholic ; how little what has been and is being done can be fitted to any interpretation except the idea th a t the hold o f Communism is intended to be permanent and uninterrupted. This, we must remember, is the classical idea o f Marx and Lenin, that, because religion feeds an anti-Communist resistance, it