THE TABLET, February 6th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5933

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

FEBRUARY 6th, 1954

NINEPENCE

Governments in Germany : a Possible Next stage What Kind o f Compromise?: Reflections on British Diplomacy. By Douglas Jerrold

Pegs for the Holes: The Juvenile Employment Service in Practice. By John Fitzsimons

How Catholic is Germany ? : I : The Scale o f the Problem

Students from Overseas: A Responsibility o f the Catholic Laity

Archives o f the Faith : The Records Available at Westminster

A Nest o f Singing Birds : Music for Candlemas. By Rosemary Hughes

Father Paul Nevill: The Address delivered at the Requiem by Mgr. R. A. Knox

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Thirteenth Century, by Sir Maurice Powicke ; The Golden Honeycomb, by

Vincent Cronin ; Questions o f East and West, by G. F. Hudson ; The Collected Poems o f Charlotte Mew ; Lavallette Bruce, by Ian Bruce ; Muffs or Morals, by Pearl Binder ; Lady into Woman, by Vera Brittain ; Richmond, by Kathleen Courlander ; The Way, by Joseph Mary Escriva ; and The Oxford Dictionary o f Quotations.

Reviewed by René Hague, John Beckwith, William Teeling, M.P., Elizabeth Sewell, Godfrey Anstruther, O.P.,

Rosemary Haughton, Derek Stanford and Mgr. Gordon Wheeler.

BRITAIN FOR QUALITY

M R. BUTLER is to be much commended for boldly restoring a proper sense of proportion to the Conservative Party about Imperial Preference. The scale of the sterling area’s activities, the need to regard as much of the world as possible as an export market, make it wrongheaded to pursue any further the ideas to which Lord Beaverbrook clings with the obstinacy of a man determined to go on saying what he has always said for forty years. There remains a place for preferences, to nurse particular infant industries, or to protect people who have been encouraged to sink their capital and energies in making something for which the markets are limited—Empire wine is a good case in point. But the broad general principle must be different from that adopted at Ottawa twenty years ago. The notion that the Colonies can be kept as a sheltered market for British manufactures, to be sold there at a higher price than the Colonies would need to pay if they were free to buy anywhere, is quite incompatible with the political evolution in those Colonies to which both parties here have committed themselves. It would be a great mistake to encourage British manufacturers, of textiles or anything else, to imagine they had a much more secure market than would be the case.

The Conservative Party can be seen on a fifty years’ survey to have been greatly attracted by Protection, but never to have accepted it wholeheartedly. It is now rediscovering the great basic truths about Free Trade, more rapidly than the Socialists. There has been an exchange of weapons, as in a Shakespearean duel. The Labour Party, which down to 1930 was as Free Trade as the Liberal Party, is now highly Protectionist, though its chosen instruments are not tariffs but much more drastic regulations, import quotas and exchange control. The Conservatives are coming more and more to see that this country has no choice about whether it will run risks or not. It has to run risks, but its best prospects in the future lie in being a quality exporter to the largest possible world market. Instead of trying to suppress or exclude Japanese competition in cheaper goods in Asiatic or African markets, we must see that our opportunities will come as the standard of living is raised both in Japan and in the countries in which Japanese goods make their contribution to a higher physical standard. Our commercial interest is the sarrte as our moral obligation, not to keep anybody poorer in goods than he need be.

The one great field where there is a strong case which rests on non-economic grounds for interference with what would otherwise take place is in the acquisition of noneconomic and existing assets by foreigners. The Randall Report on what the future foreign trade policy of the United States ought to be gives a good deal of ground for alarm at the kind of assets the Americans will acquire in Britain. New capital expenditure is one thing ; the taking over of existing assets, especially of a non-economic or partly economic kind, like houses and land, is a different thing.

Those who have hailed the Japanese Agreement as a black act have been unwilling to face the fact that the alternative to admitting Japanese goods to the sterling area is to compel the Japanese to restrict their purchases of anything they have to pay for with sterling. This would mean, in fact, that what sterling they command they would use to buy raw materials, in preference to manufactured goods from here. The Agree­