THE TABLET, October 30th, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5971
THE TABLET
Published as a Newspaper
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
FOUNDED IN 1840
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
OCTOBER 30th, 1954
N IN E PENCE
Saarlanders and Europeans: Agreement along the Right Lines American M id-Term E le c tion s : Testing-Time for the Republicans Rack, Rope and Reform ation: Fr. Hughes’Third Volume. By the Bishop of Brentwood English and American Conservatism : IV : Rationalism and Faith. By Colin Clark South African Im pressions: a visit to Natal. By m . Beiiasis Ad Coeli Reginam: The Encyclical Announcing a New Liturgical Feast of Our Lady Musicians in Congress: The Issues Raised in Vienna. By Michael H. Law R o o k s R e v i e w e d : Joan o f Arc, by Lucien Fabre ; Science and the Common Understanding, by
J. Robert Oppenheimer ; The Settlements o f the Celtic Saints in Wales, by E. G. Bowen ; Ghosts and Witches, by J. Wentworth-Day ; The Spirituality o f the Old Low Countries, by Stephanus Axter, O.P. ; The Confessions o f Jacob Boehme, edited by W. Scott Palmer ; Don Quixote o f the Microscope, by Harley Williams ; Comedy Films, by John Montgomery ; A Tree is a Tree, by King Vidor ; Tents Against the Sky, by Robert Ekvall ; Smith, by Kate Christie ; and Lease o f Life, by Frank Baker. Reviewed by Sir John McEwen, P. E. Hodgson, Illtud Evans, O.P., Derek Stanford, Timothy Matthews,
J. S. Cummins, Maryvonne Butcher and Christopher Derrick.
THE RUSSIAN DILEMMA
T HE party of Members o f Parliament has returned from Moscow, and, whatever the Russians may have learned, these British visitors seem to have learned one very useful tru th , th a t their hosts really are Marxists, looking out a t the world through strongly coloured distorting lenses. I t is proverbially difficult for Englishmen to believe th a t men can be so theoretical; and it was particularly hard for the Labour members to appreciate how completely they are identified in Soviet eyes with their political opponents at home. To Russian Communists the world is divided into sheep and goats ; into Communists, who are their friends, to be helped, and anti-Communists, who are their enemies, slowly but surely losing their strength and grip because the Marxian analysis teaches th a t they must. War is not necessary, but, wherever the world revolution can be helped forward, the opportunity should be taken.
The Russian hosts must be engaged in many recriminations, most of which can be passed to the account of the dead Stalin, th a t the present phase o f visits and candid speech has been left too late to avert the drawing together of the Atlantic community. For so many years so many people in the West only asked to believe that it was not necessary to rearm, asked to believe th a t they need no t do any o f the costly and unwelcome things to which they have found themselves driven, culminating in the drastically revised policy towards Germany.
So far Dr. Adenauer has succeeded in a part, but only in the lesser part, o f his policy. A man looking a t Western Europe might quote the lines about two worlds, “ one dead, the other powerless to be born” ; for the Western European mind has partially detached itself from its old, settled political habits, has gone far enough to bring various embryo organizations into being, a t Strasbourg and Luxembourg, but the French have shrunk back from the European Defence Community because we were not there, and the present arrangements are still much more a permanent alliance of neighbouring sovereign peoples than anything parallel to the coming together o f the original thirteen colonies to form the United States.
We have had nearly ten years, with the Germans waiting, passively or eagerly, their own Reich completely discredited and dissolved, and we should have used those years, with this country leading and the Americans keenly and effectively supporting, to create in Western Europe a larger political society, full of local autonomy and not interfering with national ways, but a true society for certain key purposes o f currency and trade and military defence. The restoration o f German sovereignty would then have come a t the end, as quite a minor happening. I t has come quietly enough, because nobody quite knows what it means. The occupying troops will change their status to that of guests—welcome guests, the visible pledge of the determination o f Britain and America to keep Western Germany in the Atlantic Community ; but troops are only welcome guests where men feel they want allies and support.
The German Social Democrats continually look to the East for signs o f such a change in Russian policy as could transform feeling in Western Germany and in France. And the Russians would no doubt dearly love to be able to effect that transformation, if the price was not a very high one— the abandonment o f their forward position in Eastern
