THE TABLET, August 21st, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5961

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

FOUNDED IN 1840 Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria AUGUST 21st, 1954

NINEPENCE

T h e F r e n c h R e l u c t a n c e : Critical Days for e d c

C h i n a T u r n s o n F o r m o s a : The New Centre of Tension. By Wilfred Ryder I n d i a a n d t h e A F i s s i o n S : III. The Portuguese and French Possessions. By S. M. Shaw S c o t t i s h S u r v e y : The Report of the Balfour Commission. By Frank MacMillan C o n c e r n i n g C a m e l s : Advice to Those Unfamiliar with Them. By Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah O u r L a d y C r o w n e d : A Seventeenth-Century Devotion. By Anthony Hulme T r a n s i t t h r o u g h H u n g a r y : Belgrade to Budapest by Road. By Hugh Noyes B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The New Testament: a Translation, by J. A. Kleist and J. L. Lilly; The

Life o f Lord Roberts, by David James ; Poverty, by various authors ; The English Epic and its Background, by E. M. W. Tillyard ; The Surprise o f Cremona, by Edith Templeton ; The Leap in the Dark, by R. H. Ward ; Mark Lambert's Supper, by J. I. M. Stewart ; The Course o f Love,rby Rachel Trickett ; The Key that Rusts, by Isobel English ; and Raiders from the Sea, by Rear-Admiral Lepotier. Reviewed by A. H. N. Green-Armytage, Sir Desmond Morton, Edward Quinn, T. A. Birrell, John Beckwith,

Christopher Derrick, Maryvonne Butcher and Thomas Gilby, O.P.

PEKING

C HOU EN-LAI’S threats to liberate Formosa, and President Eisenhower’s reply that the liberators will have to fight the United States Seventh Fleet, reflect the military realities in Asia which lie behind all the cordiality and sightseeing which the British Labour leaders are experiencing in Peking, as they experienced it in Moscow.

The aim o f the Chinese Communists is to break down the defensive system which the Americans have created, resting on Japan and Formosa and the Philippines, and now urgently needing to be extended to South-East Asia. But for this American presence, the Chinese Communists would have all their Asian neighbours at their mercy, except where the British are to be found, as in Malaya, or where membership of the Commonwealth gives an undefined but real protection to Ceylon and Pakistan, and, more dubiously, to India. What the Chinese Communists have to gain from the British visit is very obvious—the isolation of the United States in Asia. We are very glad the Australian Premier spoke as emphatically as he did, and that some of the Labour delegation are to go on to Australia, as they should also take care to return by the United States or Canada.

Meanwhile, Marshal Bulganin shows that, like Bottom the Weaver, he can coo an’t were any sucking dove. He expresses the unimpeachable sentiment against war that is common to the heads of armies ; but these sentiments are coupled with expressions of readiness to fight if attacked which are also common form. To all this the state of the world provides the obvious commentary. No single act o f policy, by any Government, has more determined the appearance o f the post-war world than the maintenance by the Kremlin of the Red Army on an immense scale while the British and Americans were precipitatedly disarming and going home. Only very slowly, and with the greatest reluctance, have the

PETALS Western victors of the war that ended in 1945 faced the necessity for re-arming which Soviet policy has imposed upon them.

When all allowances are made for internal Soviet difficulties, for the convenience as well as the tradition of a big army as an instrument in the hands of a Government (for soldiers’ labour can be turned to account in many ways), the basic reason why the Soviet Union did not relax after 1945 is to be found in the doctrines that rule in the Kremlin. Preconceptions caused the proper friendship of President Roosevelt to be treated as necessarily insincere, by men who see the conflict between capitalism and Communism as fundamental, only the degree o f hostilities a matter of tactics and timing. This is the limited conception o f co-existence which MarxLeninism allows, and it points the obvious moral that the stronger the rest of the world is, the more likely the Communist tactics are to be cautious and slow. One part of strength is unity, and it is that which is being rather successfully sapped and mined.

Indonesian Independence Day was one o f the Peking celebrations, and so it is of some topical interest to recall a Peking reception in October, 1951, to members of a nonofficial foreign delegation to the second anniversary of the Chinese People’s Republic. The episode is described in Window on China, by the Indian writer Raja Hutheesing, and he quotes an Indonesian delegate putting a “sudden and direct” question, whether the overseas Chinese in the various countries of South-East Asia would “ accept the nationality of the country in which they live” o r “ be the means of Chinese imperialist expansion in Asia.” Chou En-lai, according to this report which is based on notes taken a t the time, angrily “ sought to deny the challenge and affirm the Chinese willingness to settle the question peacefully.” A t the same time he