THE TABLET, June 12th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 3951

Published os a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

FO UNDED IN 1840

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

JUNE 12th, 1954

N INEPENCE

Ita ly and E u r o p e a n D e fen ce : EDC and the Coming New Proposals for Trieste The Red R iver D e lta : Indo-China and the World’s Balance o f Power. By Wilfred Ryder Food and th e Fu tu re : A Sense o f Frustration among World Producers. By Jorian Jenks Cassino after Ten Years: Impressions o f a Polish Pilgrimage. By K. M. Smogorzewski Christian ity and P h i lo s o p h y : A Summing-Up. By Dorn Illtyd Trethowan

T h e O b s e r v a n c e o f S u n d a y : Theory and Practice. By Christopher Hollis T h e C a n o n iz a t io n o f P iu s X : Further Impressions from St. Peter’s Piazza

B ooks R ev iew ed : The War at Sea, Volume I, by S. W. Roskill ; Fabianism in the Political Life o f Great Britain, by Sister M. M. P. McCarran ; The Heart o f the World, by Dom Aelred Watkin ; The Path to the Heights, by Raoul Plus, S.J. ; Sanctity through Trust, by Joseph Schrijvers, C.SS.R. ; Conferences given by Father Dignam, S.J. ; Mary's Part in Our Redemption, by Mgr. Canon George D. Smith ; Handwriting Sheets, by Patrick Barry, O.S.B. ; St. Andrews, by Russell Kirk ; The Unconscious Origin o f Berkeley's Philosophy, by John Oulton Wisdom ; Bhowani Junction, by John Masters ; The Bridge o f Fire, by Denis Godfrey ; Look Not Upon Me, by Denys Jones ; Self-Condemned, by Wyndham Lewis ; and Future Indefinite, by Noel Coward. Reviewed by Thomas Gilby, O.P., Colin Clark, Desmond Schlegel, O.S.B., G. S. Bremner, George Scott-

Moncrieff, Edward A. Sillem, John Biggs-Davison and Maryvonne Butcher.

SANDS RUNNING OUT

T H E Foreign Secretary has made the journey to Geneva for a th ird tim e, but we do no t th ink th a t he will have to make it very many times more fo r the sake o f the present Conference. As he reached Geneva, a t the beginning o f this week, the French High Command announced th a t the Viet-M inh forces which to ok D ien Bien Phu were already massed on the perim eter o f the Red River Delta, only thirtyseven miles north o f Hanoi ; some o f their advance fo rm ations a re even closer, and the guns can be heard in Saigon as well as in Hanoi. M. Molotov greeted Mr. Eden’s return to Geneva with an uncompromising rejection o f all the wellmeaning proposals fo r an armistice th a t had so far been advanced. M. Chou En-lai, meanwhile, had reserved his hotel accom modation in Geneva for six months, encouraged to hope th a t he can keep the talking going long enough to enable the Viet-M inh to make a French defeat certain.

But we do n o t th in k th a t M. Chou En-lai will in fact be kept in Geneva for six months more. We th ink the whole Conference is destined to a sudden end. Events a re moving too fast, and the issues are too great to be subjected in this fashion to the fam iliar technique o f long-drawn-out wrangling for very much longer. As a w riter on another page brings out, this war is no t simply a French affair. It is a war that has much greater strategic significance th an the war in Korea had. In Korea the Western nations were fighting for a principle, but the French in Indo-C hina are fighting to prevent the whole o f the South-East Asian land-m ass from falling under th e military dom ination o f Communist China. Nothing is less likely th an that this momentous ambition will be abandoned, ju s t when it seems to be on the eve of achievement, for the sake of diplomatic bargains s truck in Switzerland.

There is no t very much more that can usefully be said about K o rea, either. If the Conference comes to a n end w ithout having decided anything, it will a t least be said in Mr. Eden’s favour th a t his patience kept it going for so long, and brought the principal opponents in to direct contact. But what will not be explained is why his efforts had so much o f the a ir o f im provization about them : why the British Government, a n d the United States Government too, appeared to be taken by surprise, so th a t there could be the embarrassing disputes about m a jo r policy in those first few crowded days last month ; why some o f the issues raised and discussed so hastily both in private and in public had no t been examined in all their implications long before. The war in Indo-C h ina is n o t an emergency o f the last few months ; it has been going on for seven years. F o r all th a t long tim e the implications o f a possible F rench defeat have been the same and the case for a South-East Asian defence organization has been the same. But no one was p repared to recognise how much difference the end o f the fighting in Korea would make, or how swiftly a n d effectively the Chinese would divert their stream s o f military supplies from the N o rth Koreans to the Viet-Minh.

There is a sense o f impotence in the face o f the supposed advance o f history ; consciences are silenced by saying th a t “ Asia is on the march” and th a t nothing can be done about it ; the same sort o f fatalism pervades the a i r to which we became accustomed in Europe nine years ago when it was Russia which was “ on the march.” An historical determinism