TH E TABLET, July 17th, 1954 VOL. 204 No. 5956

THE TABLET

Published a s 'a N ew spaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 17th, 1954

N1NEPENCE

The German Lutherans : Their Place in German and in European Unity Indo-China Background : I : The Strength of the Missionary Church

II : Two French Analyses

Econom ics and Ideology : The Great Work of Professor Schumpeter. By Cyril A. Zebot Christendom D iv id ed : The Ninth Centenary of the Eastern Schism. By E. I. Watkin W ell-M eant Interference : French Catholics and English Problems. By Michael Richards Film Conference in Cologne : The Importance of Moral Classification. By J. A. V. Burke B o o k s R e v i e w e d : A History o f Political Thought in the English Revolution, by Perez Zagorin ;

Black Popes, by Archbishop Roberts ; The Home Letters ofT. E. Lawrence and his Brothers ; Novels o f the Eighteen-forties, by Kathleen Tillotson ; Fifteen Famous English Homes, by Randolph S. Churchill ; The Spiritual Letters o f Dom John Chapman, edited by Dom Roger Hudleston ; God and the Supernatural, edited by Fr. Cuthbert, O.F.M.Cap., The Sacraments, by A.-M. Roguet, O.P. ; O f Learned Ignorance, by Nicolas Cusanus ; The Unseen and Silent, by Paratroops of the Polish Home Army ; Escape from Paradise, edited by C. A. Smith ; Return from Hell, by Jules Roy ; and Tell Freedom, by Peter Abrahams. Reviewed by Patrick McGrath, Illtud Evans, O.P., W. D. Hogarth, A. O. J. Cockshut, Christian Hesketh,

Timothy Matthews, Edward Quinn, B. C. L. Keelan and Uvedale Tristram.

taking the initiative and seeking to put the Kremlin on the defensive.

IT TAKES TWO TO CO-EXIST S IR WINSTON CHURCHILL, giving the House o f Commons a cheerful account o f his Washington visit and underlining truly and aptly that disagreements have much more news value than agreements, omitted from his survey, otherwise quite a full one, any treatm ent of the question whether it takes two to co-exist. He contrasted “peaceful co-existence vigilantly safeguarded” with “ the mood o f forcibly extirpating the Communist fallacy and heresy,” exclaiming what a vast ideological gulf there is between the two ideas, but adding that the' fearful consequence that war now brings with it go “even beyond the,difficulties and dangers of dwelling side by side with Communist States.”

It is that expression “side.by side” which is so questionbegging, because it gives the impression o f a static juxtaposition. Can there be co-existence with people whose mood is “ forcibly to extirpate what they call the capitalist fallacy and heresy ” ? I t is not a question merely o f restraining the Americans, so that if they are restrained peaceful co-existence is the result. There can well be an invitation to aggression in too passive an attitude, and the real dispute between Britain and America is about what degree of toughness or passivity is most likely to serve the cause of co-existence. Every successive disclosure, like the Australian spy disclosures, shows that the other side o f the Iron Curtain is buzzing with far-reaching activities, with agents burrowing into the entrails o f every remaining non-Communist State, and the American feeling is that it is absurd for what is still the great majority of mankind to acquiesce in all this hostility without ever

The sad fact about the last phase of the Geneva Conference is that M. Molotov and M. Chou En-lai are in a position to decide whether or not France is to have a new Government. That is the net result of the “honourable liquidation” upon which M. Mendes-France has embarked. In the Paris meeting with Mr. Dulles he has been concerned to impress upon the American Secretary of State that this liquidation is in fact necessitated by the military situation in Indo-China, and that all may not be lost if there is American support for those areas which are to remain under Franco-Vietnamese control and an American guarantee of a cease-fire agreement that may be concluded with the Communists. If M. MendesFrance wins his race by Tuesday, the situation in Indo-China will look like a diplomatic patch-work unprecedented in the history o f armistices.

The Buddhist kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia will be neutralized, and Viet Nam will be partitioned somewhere between the Fourteenth and the Eighteenth Parallels, with Viet Nam and Viet-Minh enclaves both in the North and South. This involves the surrender to the Viet-Minh of many people who are not Communists but happen to live in those areas. In a small way the future Indo-China will show what kind o f “co-existence” has been devised for them, and whether the principle enunciated a t the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, cuius regio, eius religio—can find a modern application. The whole history of Communism, and the particular