THE TABLET, October 2nd, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5967

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

FOUNDED IN 1840

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

OCTOBER 2nd, 1954

NINEPENCE

Who is R ight about China ? : The Big Question that Mr. Attlee Evades

The Tocsin Sounds at Strasbourg : M. Spaak’s Warning. By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

Manila to Scarborough: The New Treaty in South-east Asia. By Wilfred Ryder

A Letter from Z ü r ic h : The Stork and the Jesuits

Richard Verstegan: Friend of the English Martyrs. By P. A. Boyan

An Augustinian Congress: II : Conferences. By Nigel Abercrombie

Books R e v i e w e d : Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent, by Henry Steele Commager ; Sedgemoor and

Avalon, by Desmond Hawkins ; Sören Kierkegaard, by Johannes Hohlenberg ; Preparation for Painting, by Lynton Lamb ; Russia, Poland and the West, by Waclaw Lednicki ; Charterhouse, by David Knowles and W. F. Grimes ; Bernadette and Lourdes, by Michel de Saint-Pierre ; This is Spain, by Ignacio Olague ; Dalmatia, by Eric Whelpton ; See You in Stockholm, by Stella Zilliacus ; The Cobweb, by William Gibson ; Ccesar's Honour, by Janet Hepburn ; and Lord o f the Flies, by William Golding. Reviewed by Colin Clark, Nevile Watts, Derek Stanford, Hubert Wellington, S. R. Seliga, H. P. R. Finberg,

A. Gregory Murray, O.S.B., David Herbert and Peregrine Walker.

AT LANCASTER HOUSE

T HE Nine-Power Conference a t Lancaster House has been under-prepared, because it was the quick improvization o f British policy to meet a contingency—the French rejection o f EDC—for which the British Government seems to have been inexplicably under-prepared. One reason for the underpreparedness was that it is impossible to discuss alternatives among the other countries without their becoming known to the French opponents of EDC. The best chance o f helping the friends o f EDC seemed to lie in assuming that, o f course, it would pass in Paris. All the same, conferences that are under-prepared are generally confused and unsuccessful, and the main reason is that it suits different parties to discuss the main topics in different orders. I t suits M. Mendes-France to bring up the status of the Saar a t the very outset, in the hope that bigger concessions will be made, to prevent the conference running to a deadlock in the first few days, than would be forthcoming after the conference had had even one success which it could proclaim to the world before handing over to standing committees.

There is a certain effrontery in the way M. Mendes-France has started talking about the Saar, because there is no other question which so obviously requires ju st th a t supra-national European solution which the French Chamber has tried to kill. After the 1918 war an attem pt similar to th a t being made today was made by the French to detach the Saar from the Weimar Republic, to give it a special regime, and to encourage the inhabitants o f the Saar to vote themselves into a future apart from the rest o f Germany. The attem pt was a complete failure. After fifteen years, and in an internationally supervised election, 94 per cent voted to return to Germany. In 1934 Hitler was already in power, though it was still the early days of his regime. It must be accepted that the people o f the Saar are Germans, and any special discriminatory treatm ent of them politically will break down, with fatal damage to FrancoGerman relations, if it is only a continuation of the rule of the victors compensating themselves.

I f the French are set on a special regime for economic reasons, the Saar must be made not an inheritance of defeat but the starting-point o f something new and hopeful, a Europeanized area, a rough parallel to the district o f Columbia, which, because it contains Washington, is not part of any one State of the American Union. It should then be the seat, instead of Luxembourg, of the European Coal and Steel Authority ; and the people of the Saar could be juridically the first Europeans. Along these lines much might be done. Very little will be done if the French propose to trade a recognition of German sovereignty for special French rights and privileges in one part of Germany.

The restoration o f German sovereignty will mean the ending of the Occupation, but it will not mean the ending of special rights to be enjoyed by Britain, the United States and France. Only the source of them will be different. It will be the first act o f the sovereign Germany to agree to them, as being highly advantageous to the German people. Thus it would plainly be disastrous if the Allies left Berlin, and disastrous if they removed their troops. There is, in fact, so much that must continue, as well as so very much that has already been transferred back to German hands, that the restoration of German sovereignty is now chiefly im portant as a gesture and a symbol. As such, it is im portant th a t Dr. Adenauer should be the man to enjoy the success, although it is not the kind of success for which he has been working.

What would really rejoice the heart of Dr. Adenauer would be the emergence of agreements by which all the countries of Western Europe, including Britain, would