THE TABLET, January 23rd, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5931

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 23rd, 1954

N IN E PENCE

Can C iv i l iz a t io n Be T aught ? : A Commentary on a Brussels Treaty Document R e -v i s i t in g th e U n i te d S tates : “ What Sort of a People . . . ?” By Ursula Branston

O p in io n Out o f JVlachine : The Remedy with the Public. By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

H ow C a th o l ic is I ta ly ? : II : Comparisons and Judgments

A L etter from R om e : The Twelve Days of Christmas

C u ltu re is N o t E nough : The Advice of Father Petcherin. By A. D. McLean

“ These English F ie ld s” : A Corner of Oxfordshire. By E. T. Long, F.S.A.

B o ok s R e v ie w e d : Plato's Theory o f Art, by Rupert C. Lodge ; The Musical Experience o f

Composer, Performer, Listener, by Roger Sessions ; Music and Imagination, by Aaron Copland ; English Historical Documents, 1660-1714, edited by Andrew Browning ; The Paintings o f Zurbaran, by Martin S. Soria ; Gardeners and Astronomers, by Edith Sitwell ; Swift on his Age, edited by Colin J. Horne ; Magdalen, by Barbara Montagu Scott ; Love Under Another Name, by Ethel Mannin ; Dark Enchantment, by Dorothy Macardle ; and England, Your England, by George Orwell. Reviewed by Anthony Bertram, Anthony Milner, Oliver J. G. Welch, Iris Conlay, Gerard Meath, O.P.,

Christopher Kent, Caryll Houselander and John M. Todd.

POLICY TOWARDS SAVINGS I T is an extraordinary commentary on the stupendous growth of American manufacturing capacity that the Commonwealth Ministers a t Sydney had tacitly to drop any idea of convertibility between, the pound and the dollar. The area in which the pound is legal tender is an immense one, for the sterling area is wider than British political unity. The man who has pounds can buy every sort o f thing, from the manufactures of G reat Britain to all the animal, vegetable and mineral products of Australia, New Zealand, much of Africa, much of the Middle East, and other countries besides. Yet free convertibility, to let those with pounds exchange them with dollars, would have catastrophic results, so great is the magnetic attraction of the dollar and what it stands for not only in the immediate and prompt delivery o f American goods, but equally in its desirability as a currency with which to purchase anything else not made in the United States.

normal currency of the whole of North and South America. It is probably not too much to say that the fortunes of the Conservative Party, and with them the chance o f saving G reat Britain from a return to an enclosed and insulated and declining economy, depend upon convertibility being achieved before there is another General Election. If it could be achieved, and held, it would be the end o f Socialism in Great Britain, for Britain would then find itself part of a vast international trading area, with every hope of sharing in the growth of wealth inside that area. Unfortunately, the statements o f the Finance Ministers after the Sydney meeting suggest that these hopes are very faint, while what is intended and resolved amounts to no more than a general agreement to reaffirm the desirability, which is obvious enough, o f more capital investment inside the Empire.

Soundings made in Washington a year ago showed the Americans disinclined to create a fund to ensure convertibility. Keen as the Americans are to see the end o f artificial exchange barriers checking the growth o f world trade, they judge the price could easily be too high. They would gain a temporary advantage when the competition to obtain dollars brought down the value o f sterling, but any devaluation o f the pound would make American products much too expensive in the markets to which the Americans would have greater access. Yet it is a very serious, and basically absurd, state o f affairs that the non-Communist world should be divided into dollar and sterling areas, that it should be made extremely difficult for private people in the sterling area to obtain and use the

As far as the Colonies are concerned, investment from London is going to be much less safe than investment from London and New York jointly. The new self-governing legislatures will always be tempted to connect loans from London with memories o f Colonial status, and the more international the character of the lending, the less psychological and political risk there will be about it.

The fields for British capital inside the sterling area are numerous and competitive. In Australia itself British investment in 1948, at £400 million, was £30 million less than it had been at the end o f the war, and £120 million less than it had been when the war began. Investment in New Zealand was just half in 1948 what it had been ten years before. In South Africa it was a third less. In India investment of nearly