THE TABLET, January 9th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5929

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

F O U N D E D IN 1840

J A N U A R Y 9 t h , 1954

N IN E P E N C E

The Apostolate o f Television: Opportunities and Dangers of the New Invention

Government or Care and Maintenance: Strange Doctrines. By Douglas Jerrold

Wage Demands Impending: Three Factors in a Difficult Future

After Beria’s D ow n fa l l : The Army and the Party in Soviet Russia. By Franz Borkenau

H ow Catholic is France ? : II : Conclusions and Judgments

The Essential Vonier: A Vision o f the Whole. By the Abbot o f Prinknash

Catholics in Ancient A gra: In the Shadow of the Taj Mahal. By Humphrey Bullock

The Pope on Toleration : An Allocution on Co-Existence in the Modern World

Books Reviewed: Selected Letters o f Pope Innocent III concerning England, edited by C. R.

Cheney and W. H. Semple ; Soviet Empire, by Olaf Caroe ; Leopardi, by Iris Origo ; The Golden Echo, by David Garnett ; The Impossible Adventure, by Alain Gheerbrant ; The Rebirth o f Austria, by Richard Hiscocks ; Zen in the Art o f Archery, by Eugen Herrigel ; Nine Rivers from Jordan, by Denis Johnston ; and What the World Showed Me, by Per Host. Reviewed by Professor David Knowles, Godfrey Scheele, Yvonne ffrench, Christopher Hollis, Edward

Sarmiento, Edward Quinn, Joseph Rykwert and B. C. L. Keelan.

THE CLOUD

I T is a serious feature of Signor Pella’s resignation that it is not about anything of obvious moment. No new decision has been called for since he formed his Administration in June. The trouble goes much deeper, and the disagreements over individual appointments of Ministers are only an occasion for it manifesting itself. The heart of the trouble is that the Christian Democratic Party has only achieved and maintained its mammoth size by embracing under the same label Italian Catholics with widely differing, and often opposed, ideas about the proper economic and social policies to be pursued.

In the parliament from 1948 to 1953 the party had an absolute majority. There was no need for Signor de Gasperi to govern with a coalition. But he chose to do so in order to teach his party the habit of coalition, for the days when it might not have an absolute majority. The allies he chose were secularist groups, the small Republican and Liberal parties, and the Saragat Socialists. Much of this was distasteful to the more conservative of his own supporters. On the other hand, they saw his Government following the ideas of Signor Einaudi, pursuing an orthodox financial policy which was highly successful. The policy of the Government was much less to the left than the composition of the coalition. With the losses in June, the party returned to find that these small groups had paid a heavy electoral price for sitting in the coalition. Few electors saw much point in them, and the choice for the Christian Democrats, lacking an absolute

OVER ITALY majority, was, and is, to work with the Monarchists, who returned to the Chamber with fifty-four members. The Monarchists were unwilling to accept Signor de Gasperi ; but it is more important that the left wing of the Christian Democrats, which has the majority of the younger and more ardent spirits, very much dislikes the whole Monarchist alliance. They argue, with a good deal of force, that the Christian Democratic Party will not be able to stand up to the propaganda of the Communists and Nenni Socialists ; that it is not a worker’s party at all ; and they fear that this second innings with the Monarchists will end in another election, in which the party will lose even more, and the Marxist parties will then come to power legally in Italy.

It is this ugly possibility, of which the Vatican is very conscious, that makes the need for a basic unity of Catholics as strong as ever it was. It is no good saying that they cannot afford the luxury of dividing according to whether they want more or less Socialism or State control. Men can be convinced of the danger of Marxism and of the importance of unity against it—the Monarchist leader Signor Lauro has now called on Signor de Gasperi to lead a united anti-Communist front—and the same men can quite sincerely and reasonably believe that that front can only win its battles by following the policies they advocate. There is very little common ground. There are those whose approach is primarily political, who ask themselves what they can say or offer to the Italian worker that he will prefer to what the Marxists say, and