THE TABLET, April 10th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5941

A WEEKLY

Published as a Newspaper

TABLET NEWSPAPER & REVIEW Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

A PR IL 10th, 1954

N IN E PENCE

Warding o f f Armageddon : Real and Illusory Precautions

Russia’s Econom ic Offensive : Consumer Goods in the Cold War. By Robert John

Two-Way Traffic ? : Divorce and Conversions to Protestantism in the United States

Mere Words ? : Wittgenstein and the Care of Language. By T. S. Gregory H O W Catholic is Belgium ? : II : Consequences of the Occupation

DrOSS o f a Golden A g e : A Villain on the Spanish Stage. By James Brodrick, S.J.

Lenten M ed ita tions : VI : Which Am I ? By Gerald Vann, O.P. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The First Decadent, by James Laver ; The Revolution in Physics, by Louis de Broglie ; Two Stories, by Janet Trevelyan ; The Painter's Workshop, by W. G. Constable ; Vagrant Viking, by Peter Freuchen ; Robert Owen o f New Lanark, by Margaret Cole ; Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales ; The Spirit o f St. Francois de Sales, by Jean-Pierre Camus ; Meditations and Devotions, by John Henry Newman ; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury ; Indian Ink, by H. E. Beal ; A Passage in the Night, by Sholem Asch ; and Last Crescendo, by Owen Francis Dudley. Reviewed by Lancelot C. Sheppard, P. E. Hodgson, Isabel Quigly, Hubert Wellington, Gerald Walker,

Noel Hughes, Edward A. Sillem and John Biggs-Davison.

he have made it plain that he minds, that he does not think the present proportions right or wholesome, or capable of indefinite continuance without sapping the basic sources of economic energy. On the contrary, the whole cast of mind and choice o f words showed how far modern Chancellors, whichever their party, have come to think in terms o f one great national income which is theirs to collect and spend, saying how much they will allow to remain in the private sector of the economy for people to keep and spend for themselves. This is a complete reversal o f the proper attitude to taxation, that the Commons grant to the Crown for the public necessities what they agree is necessary and right.

THE THOUGHT BEHIND THE BUDGET I T was less what the Chancellor failed to do than what he failed to say which made his Budget Speech a disappointing affair. Certainly he has done little enough. He announced one or two small concessions, of which the most im portant is the introduction o f an investment allowance, the welcome opposite o f the taxing o f undistributed profits. I t is a concession which will only cost the Inland Revenue four millions this year, but will increase sizeably after that, and is a more positive encouragement than the present initial allowance to companies to improve their productive efficiency. There is a modest concession over post-war credits, which serves to throw into relief the harshness o f the existing practice by which an elderly person dying and leaving these credits has only been leaving something which has become payable when the beneficiary in his turn reaches sixty-five or sixty. That will change, and it is high time, as it was also high time that something was done to relieve small family businesses of devastating death duties calculated on all their assets. The great companies have most o f them begun as family businesses in easier days, and it is as im portant th a t the process by which sound businesses are built up should be encouraged as that there should be a steady formation o f new capital. But all these changes are very slight. The concession on post-war credits will cost under £20 million, in a Budget running well over £4,000 million.

What was discouraging was Mr. Butler’s apparent complacency about the general pattern and proportion o f spending, th a t he expects Government expenditure to increase and therefore has to arrange that private spending shall not increase. The less he found it possible to do in the way of relief to any class or category, the more emphatically should

Modern Budget statements are radically different in kind from statements in the past, before the last war. I t is now the whole economy that is surveyed. When Socialist Chancellors survey it, their constant interest is to find new ways of siphoning off more and more o f the private wealth into official hands ; and it is a depressing outlook if the best that can be hoped for is that Conservative Governments will keep the proportions as they are, merely providing the breathing pauses between fresh Socialist inroads. What the Conservative Party needs is to get out o f the groove which the necessities o f the war years, and the five years of Labour Government, have worn both in the Treasury and in the minds o f politicians. They need to stand back and see with what a dangerously lopsided and top-heavy structure they are involved. They should consider both how the burdens can be lightened and what responsibilities can be progressively handed back to individuals, who would then be better equipped to carry them.

A hundred years ago, a t the time o f the Crimean War,