THE TABLET, May 8th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5946

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 8th, 1954

N INEPENCE

China’s Aionroe D octrine : The Question-Begging Cry of Asia for the Asians Mother Bermondsey and Miss N ightingale : a Footnote to a Centenary The Jesuits in Switzerland: I : The Constitutional Problem

SPRING BOOK SUPPLEMENT B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Life o f John Stuart Mill, by Michael St. John Packe ; Ægean Greece, by

Robert Liddell ; Fair Greece, Sad Relic, by Terence Spencer ; The Spanish Temper, by V. S. Pritchett ; From an Antique Land, by Julian Huxley ; The Adventures o f John Wetherell, Edited by C. S. Forester ; Brother to Dragons, by Robert Penn Warren ; Mediceval Mystical Tradition and St. John o f the Cross, by a Benedictine of Stanbrook ; The Legacy o f Luther, by E. W. Zeeden ; The Righteousness o f God, by Gordon Rupp ; The Early Vicars Apostolic o f England, by Dom Basil Hemphill ; Jubilate Agno, by Christopher Smart, edited by W. H. Bond ; Blake's Illustrations to the Divine Comedy, by Albert S. Roe ; Jungle Prison, by Leigh Williams ; The Tigers ofTrengganu, by Lt.-Col. A. Locke ; Reflections on the Cinema, by René Clair ; Dieu au Cinéma, by Amadée Ayfre ; Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse ; The Sword o f God, by René Hardy ; The Acrobats, by Mordecai Richler ; The Art o f Ancient Mexico, by Irmgard Groth-Kimball and Franz Feuchtwanger ; Roman Imperial Money, by Michael Grant ; and Portrait o f Josephine Butler, by A. S. G. Butler. Reviewed by Christopher Hollis, Vincent Desborough, Edward Sarmiento, Illtud Evans, O.P., Thomas

Gilby, O.P., Roger Sharrock, David Knowles, Outram Evennett, Michael Derrick, Elizabeth Sewell, Jane Davies, B. C. L. Keelan, Maryvonne Butcher, John Biggs-Davison, C. A. Burland, Michael Dolley and Yvonne ffrench.

DIEN BIEN PHU

M MOLOTOV failed in February, when European • issues were being discussed by the Foreign Ministers, to elicit any response from the French to the suggestion that the interests o f France are different from those of the other two G reat Powers of the West, and th a t the F rench should detach themselves from the Atlantic Community in order to reach a special if perhaps unwritten understanding o f their own with the Soviet Union. The suggestion was that France and the Soviet Union, the two major Powers which have suffered most from German invasion, should jo in in resisting any form o f German rearmament. Now in Geneva the alternative suggestion is that the war in Indo-China is the circumstance that sets France apart from her allies. M. Molotov came to Geneva still seeking to force the French into a reorientation of their policy, which might be sealed, if not over the abandonment o f EDC, then over the partition of IndoChina ; and it seems d e a r that it was for this reason that the massive assault upon Dien Bien Phu was mounted in the early part o f March, little more than a month before the Geneva Conference was due to begin. I t was thought by M. Molotov and his Chinese partners and their associates in the VietMinh that if Dien Bien Phu could be overwhelmed while the Conference was in progress the French Government might find itself with no alternative to political capitulation ; that in the face of this pressure trouble could be made between

Britain and the United States over their differing views o f the possibility o f intervention in Indo-China to save not only Dien Bien Phu but perhaps the policy o f the Atlantic Community in Europe as well ; and th a t France, the Government o f M. Laniel brought down a t the critical moment by the disaster a t Dien Bien Phu, might be alienated from both.

This great design o f the Communist Powers has come within sight o f achievement during the past week ; it may even yet be achieved ; and if the whole disastrous programme has been disarranged that is due, more than to any other man, to General Christian de la Croix de Castries, whose epic defence o f a small and exposed encampment has done so much to rally the French nation as well as the soldiers under his command. By the weekend the Government o f M. Laniel will have faced its vote of confidence. Whether the Government has fallen, whether Dien Bien Phu has fallen, time has a t least been gained for the other Western statesmen to recover from the embarrassments of the first week a t Geneva, and for Mr. Dulles in particular to reconsider what can be done in a grave situation.

The Americans, striving to bolster the resolution of the French, performed a doubtful service by making public, as though in justification o f their own inability to intervene, their view that Dien Bien Phu should never have been