THE TABLET, July 3rd, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5954

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 3rd, 1954

n i n ê Ve n c e

“ S p ir itu a l S tr e n g th ” : The Temptation to Relaxation

The C hurch and th e G u a tem a la n R e v o lu t io n : The History o f Ten Years

S o v ie t W r ite rs in T rou b le : Moral Depravity or a Desire for Freedom ?

Our O v e r -C row d ed P r ison s: Why Not Transfer Them Abroad? By Colin Clark

D o r s e t sh ir e S anctuaries : Home of the Chideock Martyrs. By E. T. Long

The L anguage o f E n c y c l ic a ls : A Rejoinder to Mr. Flew. By Peter A. L. Wood B le ssed J ohn S o u th w o r th : A Tercentenary Panegyric. By Mgr. R. A. Knox B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Manzoni and his Times, by Archibald Colquhoun ; Forerunners to Everest,

by René Dittert, Gabriel Chevalley and Raymond Lambert ; The Journal o f William Beckford in Portugal and Spain, edited by Boyd Alexander ; The Chantry Certificates for Cornwall, edited by Lawrence S. Snell ; A Galaxy o f Governesses, by Bea Howe ; A Ride on a Tiger, by David Stacton ; Fact, Fake or Fable ? by Rupert Furneaux ; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole ; The Quaker Approach to Contemporary Problems, edited by John Kavanagh ; Sailing in Irons, by Guy Cole ; Gerhwal Painting, by W. G. Archer ; The Curious Traveller Through Lakeland, by Jessica Lofthouse ; Devices and Desires, by E. Arnot Robinson ; Johnny Forsaken, by G. B. Stern ; and No Barrier, by Eleanor Dark. Reviewed by Kenelm Foster, O.P., A. C. F. Beales, Aubrey Noakes, Patrick McGrath, Anthony Lejeune,

Noel Hughes, John M. Todd, A. H. N. Green-Armytage, John Bunting, M. Bellasis and Caryll Houselander.

MR. CHOU’S SUCCESS

T HERE is something profoundly symbolic in the visit of British statesmen to Washington and Ottawa just when Mr. Nehru is giving expression to a sense of common purpose with the Premier o f Communist China, and speeding that Premier on his way to Burma. Behind the bland oriental courtesies, the tru th stands starkly out that India has no defence, and th a t China is today the one great military Asian Power, moving continually and remorselessly nearer to the Indian frontier, installed in Tibet, and causing increasing alarm to the Burmese ; so that the Burmese Socialist Party has awakened to the simple tru th that today it is not the European who is the danger to Burmese liberty but the Asian Communist neighbour.

The large purpose of the Chinese Communists is to use the emotional strength of Asian nationalism to exclude Europe and America from Asia, before bringing the helpless Asian peoples under the Communist yoke. There are still a number of obstacles o f this grand design : there is Japan, there isForm osa, theBritish are still in Malaya, the Americans are accepted in Pakistan. But it has been a very good summer for the Chinese Communists, and a great if not wholly unexpected disappointm ent for the British Foreign Secretary. The policy o f inducing the Asian Dominions, and primarily India, still associated with the Commonwealth, to agree to what would seem the elementary common sense of a common front against a very real and obvious and imminent danger, has failed. Mr. Nehru is not blind to the dangers, but he prefers to shut his eyes ; and to accept from Mr. Chou En-lai language very similar to that which was the stock-in-trade of the Japanese when they were making their abortive bid for a supremacy which Communist China has a much greater chance of achieving—an appeal to Asian feeling or a proclamation o f an Asian Monroe doctrine that neither Europeans nor Americans should have anything to say in that continent.

Non-Communist Asia cannot conceivably afford to let itself be separated from the powerful peoples who are its natural allies in the struggle a t the present hour. Not only in a military setting are they helpless without Americans and Europeans, but all their long-term plans to raise the standard o f living in their own countries, and with it their public revenues and ability to maintain themselves under the conditions of modern war, require the alliances, and the alliances require a public recognition and a courtesy which Mr. Nehru is so pointedly declining to give.

In many ways Mr. Nehru has made a great and commendable effort not to remain the prisoner of his own past, as an anti-British agitator frequently in the gaols o f the British Raj. He deserves much of the credit for the continuity o f administration and the friendly and easy association o f the new Indian officials and diplomats with the British. But he has failed to rise to the height of argument with which the world situation confronts him. He is still thinking far too much about diminishing what remains of the European presence, ejecting the French or the Portuguese from the