THE TABLET, April 24th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5944

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

APRIL 24th, 1954

N INEPENCE

Past and Present Enem ies: Historical Legacies Embarrassing Statesmanship R e lig ion and Politics in th e Saar : The Future Capital of Europe? By Reginald Colby Peace in Industry: Lessons from American Case Studies. By John Fitzsimons Over Freedom Bridge : The Missionaries Forced out of China. By Paul Duchesne, M.M. How Catholic is Switzerland ? : I : The Legacy of the Past A Visit to M ount Athos: Holy Mountain of the Greeks. By Peter Whiteley

The End o f an Evasion : Thomas More or Thomas Cromwell ? By Richard O’Sullivan Sculpture in a White Chapel : The Work of Barbara Hepworth. By John Bunting Weapons o f D estruction : A Full Text of the Easter Allocution of Pope Pius XII B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development, by G. C. Allen and Audrey Donnithorne ; La Théologie Catholique au Milieu du XXe. Siècle, by Roger Aubert ; His Majesty Preserved, introduced by William Rees-Mogg ; Catherine the Great and Other Studies, by G. P. Gooch ; Voltaire to Catherine, translated by H. F. Scott Stokes ; The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil ; The Bridge on the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle ; The Strange Land, by Hammond Innés ; The Seeming Truth, byD. J. Hall ; More Murder in a Nunnery, by Eric Shepherd ; The Frightened Brides, by Marten Cumberland ; and Joseph Varin, Soldier, by M. K. Richardson. Reviewed by Colin Clark, Edward Quinn, Christian Hesketh, J. J. Dwyer, Roger Sharrock and Anthony

Lejeune.

SMALL SCOPE AT GENEVA I T is part of the American conception of democracy that policy is framed very much in public. Not only are there several policy-making bodies, but there is a tradition of free questioning by the Press o f everybody, from the President downwards, with headline treatm ent of whatever is said or not said. From a newspaper’s point of view it makes an excellent headline if the Vice-President and the Secretary of State are saying different things. Mr. Dulles, in the course of his ceaseless aeroplane journeys, has to address the Press of many other countries besides his own. But he would not long be Secretary o f State if he did not reflect, though less outspokenly than Mr. Nixon, the broad American conviction that appeasement did not pay in the ’thirties and will not pay today.

leadership at Geneva rests with the United States, little will come of it ; and the Conference will be ranked as a success, as Berlin was a success, if it solidifies and does not weaken the great alliance : if America, Britain and France, in particular, come out of it closer and not less close than they go in. The Americans have been fortified in the last few days by vigorous support from Canada and New Zealand ; and it is important that the British public shall not over-estimate what Great Britain’s part is going to be. We have played a minor role in the Korean and in the Indo-China wars, and while we are as interested as anybody can be in seeing that South-East Asia is not gained for Communism by a slow process of attrition, we cannot play the lead in deciding the future for either territory.

The Americans, from the sideline, were exceedingly critical o f British and French policy towards the Axis, and saw the attempts to save the peace proving in the event themselves instrumental in precipitating the war, making the Axis leaders over-arrogant and over-confident. They then saw the Roosevelt policy of warm friendship for Russia mercilessly and calculatingly exploited to make Russia the chief beneficiary o f the common victory. So it is now axiomatic that the policy of yielding only lands a country very shortly afterwards in a worse position, faced with bigger demands, larger ambitions, from a proportionately more powerful foe. In so far as the

The heroism o f the defenders of Dien Bien Phu, which has justly found the admiration of the free world, has enabled the French Government to avoid a parliamentary debate which might have compelled it to declare in advance what its attitude will be at Geneva. There is a tragic irony in the spectacle of this small French garrison, connected with the outside world only by radio and parachutes, which for more than five weeks has defied an enemy four to five times more numerous, while in Paris there is reluctance to disclose the conditions under which negotiations might be conducted, in case these might affect unfavourably the morale o f General