[H E TABLE7!? 20th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. !

Published as a iNewspupoi

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER &

REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MARCH 20th, 1954

NINEPENCE

R om e and Social M o d e r n i sm : The Centre and the Ex-centrics R e d e m p t i o n o r R e v o l u t i o n : An Account o f Two Articles in the Osservatore Romano

W e lfa re and T axation : IV : Restoring the Voluntary Social Services. By Colin Clark

M.. M a r ita in ’s ./E sthetics : “Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.” By Anthony Bertram

H ow C a th o l ic is H o l la n d ? : I : The Setting

The B a t t le o f th e L o rd s : “ Mr. Balfour’s P ood le .” By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

Lenten M ed ita t io n s : III : “Ab Occultis Meis Munda M e” : By Gerald Vann, O.P.

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Church and Infallibility, by the Abbot o f D ownside ; The Memoirs o f

Herbert Hoover, Volum e III, 1929-1941 ; Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy M itford ; The Laughing Hyena, by D . J. Enright ; The Dark Tarn, by A . V. Stuart ; Halcyon, by Rob Lyle ; Songs o f Spain, by Robert Stokes ; Peter's Progress, by Geoffrey Parsons ; Reach fo r the Sky, by Paul Brickhill ; My Life in the Bush o f Ghosts, by Amos Tutuola ; Black Argosy, by Mercedes Mackay ; Oxford Triumphant, by Norman Longmate ; and A Field Guide to the Birds o f Britain and Europe, by Roger Peterson, Guy Mountfort, and P. A . D. Hollom . Reviewed by Mgr. Gordon Wheeler, B. C. L. Keelan, J. J. Dwyer, Christopher Kent, Christopher Derrick,

M . Bellasis and Dom in ic de Grunne.

MR. DULLES’ ASSURANCE

O NE should not look a gift hydrogen bomb in the detonator ; but there have been instinctive and natural reservations to British satisfaction when Mr. Dulles announces that a bomb on London would immediately be answered from the United States, and that the reply would be inconceivably devastating.

The expression of solidarity is excellent. There could not be a more pointed and emphatic assertion th a t in this great matter we of the Western world are one community. The chief safeguard which we all possess is the American power o f retaliation, part of which is American peripheral defence, stretching to Pakistan, because the Soviet Union could not hope to put all the centres of retaliation out o f action simultaneously. This must continue to be the great principle of strategy in the atomic age, and it must lim it the rights of local Governments to be needlessly obstructive where quite small stretches o f land are needed for the common defence. It is an anachronism and an absurdity that Egyptian feeling should be what it is about a small area o f desert country; but the physical realities are one thing, historical and emotional memories another, and they can invest anything with a symbolic meaning. Where the symbolism is concerned with human pride, it becomes a main political factor, i t is much easier for countries like Britain to provide bases for their allies than for peoples with a recent history o f dependent status. We must recognize this, but they in their tu rn must recognize that there will be no clearer proof to the world that they have rid themselves o f feelings of inferiority than their ability and readiness to look a t questions o f bases simply in terms o f the present a i d the future and the common interest.

Where there are reservations about Mr. Dulles’s statement is that he did not say enough about consultation. The Canadians were quick to point out this omission, and Lord HoreBelisha made it the point of his maiden speech in the Lords. There was, it is true, a very good reason why Mr. Dulles said nothing about consultation. I t is the tradition of sovereign States to avoid committing themselves definitely until the very last moment ; but here is a case where from the nature of things consultation could not be left until afterwards, yet the other Governments are very reluctant to give a prior consent to anything so momentous. There is a feeling o f uncertainty as to who would finally make the decisions in the United States : a recognition that the Americans, with all their profound love of peace, are quite capable of a singular ruthlessness. A decision to drop atomic bombs—not one, but two— on the Japanese, a major decision in world history, was taken quite quickly by a handful o f men in Washington, some of them, like the then President, quite new to great international responsibilities.

The Americans are always prepared to do something. I t may be something they will quite quickly revise, but in the meantime they have done it. I t is one of the chief morals that emerges from the history o f the late war, how many precipitate American decisions there were, o f huge consequence, that were taken in 1944 and 1945, with a quite imperfect appreciation both of British and o f Russian intentions. All over Europe there are people who feel that terrible tragedy might ensue because Americans, Russians, and Germans might make the kind of mistakes about other people to which they are all particularly prone. We have suffered very severely from American preconceptions about British imperialism as something predatory towards other countries