THE TABLET, August 14th, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5960

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

FOUNDED IN 1840

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

AUGUST 14th, 1954

NINEPENCE

S ep a ra t io n O rders : Colonial Policy under Mr. Lyttelton In d ia n N a t io n a l ism and th e M i s s io n s : n. in Madhya Pradesh. By s. m . Shaw Part o f P o r tu ga l in In d ia : City of St. Francis Xavier. By V. M. Ferrers A S o v ie t P an th eon : Mummies in Alphabetical Order ? By K. M. Smogorzewski

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St. P iu s X in h is L e tters : A Pattern of the Christian Priesthood. By Kenelm Foster, O.P. Feasts and F irew ork s : Santa Catalina Remembered. By Isabel Quigly L itu rg ic a l In n o v a t io n s in France : What is Permitted. By Clifford Howell, S.J. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Le Role du Laicat dans VEglise, par G. Philips ; Elizabeth Barrett to Miss

Mitford, edited by Betty Miller ; Young Hitler, by August Kubizec ; Domenico Scarlatti, by Ralph Kirkpatrick ; Conquistador, by Stephen Clissold ; The Collected Poems o f Mary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler ; The Land First, by Ralph Whitlock ; Thirty Stories, by Elizabeth Myers ; The Honeyed Peace, by Martha Gellhorn ; and The Exam. Secret, by Dennis B. Jackson. Reviewed by Desmond Schlegel, O.S.B., A. O. J. Cockshut, Rosemary Hughes, Edward Sarmiento,

Sir John McEwen, E. W. Martin, David Herbert and Anthony Lejeune.

BRUSSELS : AUGUST 20th

A UGUST 24th— St. Bartholomew’s Day—will be the day on which the fate o f the European Army will be sealed in the French Chamber. But before that day, eagerly awaited for the last two years, the six Foreign Ministers o f the European Defence Community will meet in Brussels, where five o f them will make a last effort to sweeten the bitter pill which EDC is for the French Premier. He will be going to Brussels armed with some twenty amendments to the treaty which suggest the hand o f General Koenig, the present Minister o f Defence and a fervent advocate o f the preservation o f a French national Army.

solution o f the German question, ft would also be the last chance for Moscow and the French opponents o f EDC to win their own case. And he, the Premier, could arbitrate between them.

If these are the views o f M. Mendès-France, they suggest that, even if he is able to find a m ljority for EDC, that plan would still not come into force until the Russians have rejected once more the holding o f free elections in Eastern Germany. A Four Power Conference would, therefore, according to L'Exprès, be regarded as the condition for French ratification, and, should the Soviet Union agree to free elections in both parts o f Germany, France would give up EDC in exchange.

While the Premier’s own attitude remains, to say the least, obscure, a leading article in the weekly L'Exprès perhaps gives a hint o f it. The Editor o f that paper, M. Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber, is the Premier’s personal friend, and it is highly improbable that this article could have been published without his knowledge, it anticipates that on August 24th the National Assembly will reject EDC by 301 against 287 votes with forty-five abstentions, but goes on to suggest that M. Mendès-France, whatever his own views, could not accept this defeat, but must try and find a positive solution. This should be done by modifying EDC and at the same time taking account o f the changed international situation. But the chief point o f the article is this passage :

“The decision to rearm Germany should not be carried out unless a serious attempt has been made to obtain an international settlement o f the German problem—that is, free elections in the Soviet Zone.” M. Mendès-France, the article suggests, is in a strong position. Such a proposal would be the last chance for the American and French supporters o f EDC to get their European

The well-calculated haste with which two Soviet Notes advocating such a Conference have been issued by M. Molotov could not have had a better response. It is not within M. M olotov’s power to grant free elections and thus write o ff the East German satellite State. But he can pretend to make such an offer, in the certain belief that he may further postpone a decision on the defence o f Europe. His primary aim remains the weakening o f the Western alliance, and, after the deplorable spectacle o f Western weakness in Geneva, he may hope to be able to repeat this spectacle at a new Berlin conference, where German rearmament could be made the ostensible Communist theme, while his real aim would be to widen the divisions between France, America and Britain.

That policy has already made considerable headway, and it is irrelevant to M. Molotov’s purposes if the British and United States Governments are now about to reject his offer. The waves o f strikes throughout the Federal Republic could