THE TABLET, October 16th, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5969

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 16th, 1954

NINEPENCE

Invitation to Malenkov ? : Solidarity Must Come First Trade Unions and their Members: Overtime, and the Right to Choose a Union English & American Conservatism : II: The Opposing Philosophies. By Colin Clark A Clothing in Singapore: The Ascetic Appeal to Asia. By C. B. Acworth

AUTUMN BOOK SUPPLEMENT B o o k s R e v i e w e d : English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, by C. S. Lewis ;

Painting in Britain : The Middle Ages, by Margaret Rickert ; John Ruskin, by Joan Evans ; The Parting o f the Ways : Judaism and the Rise o f Christianity, by The Rev. Dr. A. Cohen ; The King M y Brother, by Cyril Hughes Hartmann ; The Warrior Saint, by R. V. C. Bodley ; Portugal and Madeira, by Sacheverell Sitwell ; Sweet is War, by Malcolm Munthe ; Ghost Cruiser HK 33, by Jochen Brennecke ; Royal A ir Force, 1939-1945, Volume III, by Hilary St. George Saunders ; A Prisoner’s Progress, by David James, M.B.E., D.S.C. ; Prisoner's Bluff, by Rolf Magener, translated by Basil Creighton ; Captivity Captive, by James B. Chutter ; Points fo r Parents, by Elizabeth Pakenham ; Thoughts o f M y Cats, by Bruce Marshall ; Never Victorious, Never Defeated, by Taylor Caldwell ; The Naked Risk, by Phyllis Gordon Demarest ; M y Brother's Keeper, by Marcia Davenport ; The Iron Maiden, by Edwin Lanham ; Marco Polo, by Manuel Komroff ; The Three Pebbles, by Richard Parker ; The Eagle o f the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff ; Knight Crusader, by Ronald Welch ; and Polly and Oliver, by David Scott Daniell. Reviewed by Roger Sharrock, Anthony Bertram, Arnold Lunn, B. C. Butler, Christian Hesketh, Lancelot

C. Sheppard, Ann Bridge, Peter Bethell, Hilary J. Carpenter, O.P., John Biggs-Davison, Nicolete Gray, Edward Quinn, Anthony Lejeune, and Janet Bruce.

BREATHING SPACE

T HE vote which M. Mendes-France has secured is substantial ; but it is only for his continuing negotiations. Decision will come up later, next month, and in the meantime he will be under great pressure to seek changes to which the other powers o f the Nine Power Conference will not be disposed to agree. We cannot at this juncture say more than that the French Chamber has given Western Europe a breathing space while the battle o f opinions continues to be fought out in France.

According to M. Francois Mauriac, M. Mendes-France has “ invented a style which, God willing, will survive him .” But his style has had a considerable number of enemies in the National Assembly last week, and the vote o f confidence which he received on Tuesday must not be taken as an approval o f the Nine Power London Pact but merely as a mandate for the Premier to continue for the time being. The postponement o f the debate by four days gave the opposition a chance of regrouping its forces. The support of the divided Socialists’ front was obtained by the Government’s promise to raise the basic wage for workers in Paris, with some proportionate improvement for the provinces. The possibility of the Socialists entering the Government was also a t the back o f the debate.

N o more enthusiastic has been the support of the Premier’s own Radical Party which is holding its Party Congress at Marseilles this week-end to decide on whether it will continue to back M. Mendes-France o r assume a more flexible and, in terms of electioneering, more promising attitude. The

MRP abstained and, making his own massive contribution to the debate, M. Schuman was able to criticise the London Agreement as not going far enough on the road of integration, but creating merely an artificial defensive system from which a Germany tempted to take her fate into her own hands might easily break away. M. Teitgen and M. Paul Reynaud, as the leader of the moderate Right, conjured up the ghost o f a resurrected German General staff forging the new German army and penetrating the permanent committees o f the Atlantic Pact organization and even perhaps soon replacing a French General in command o f the Central European NATO forces. The applause which these warnings found in the Assembly, applause in which the Premier himself joined, served to emphasize the helplessness of this opposition and the skill with which he was able to guide the debate in the desired direction, firmly defending the principle that foreign policy is a responsibility o f the executive which Parliament can but approve or reject but not otherwise seek to influence.

In Bonn the Nato-Brussels Agreement has received the approval o f the Federal Parliament. The Socialist opposition has been strengthened by the near-support o f the Free Democrats, and by the German Trade Union Federation’s refusal to accept any German defence contribution at all. The Ohne mich mood o f 1950 seems to have returned, or rather the deeply-ingrained pacifism of the German Left which by the mere fact o f its existence has always made it so much easier for the militarists to assert themselves undisputed in their own sphere.