THE TABLET, October 9th. 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5968

Published as a Newspaper

TH ETABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER &

REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 9 th , 1954

N IN E PENCE

A European P ow e r : The Great Decision of Britain

6tA t ta ck On H e a v en ” : The Revival of “Anti-God” Propaganda in Moscow. By Walter Kolarz

E n g lish and Am e r ic an C on servatism : I : The Basic Principles. By Colin Clark

Saving th e C rofters : A Long-Awaited Report. By Frank MacMillan

P h i lo so p h e r s a t B o lz a n o : A Rosminian Revival in Italy. By Roland Hill

A t th e Frankfurt B o ok Fair: The Award to Carl Burckhardt. By Ruth Bethell

C ézanne’s P i lg r im a g e : The Exhibition at the Tate. By F. M. Godfrey

A v e P raeclara M aris S te lla : From Herimannus Contractus. By W. A. P. Martin B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Nine Troubled Years, by Viscount Templewood ; Report from Malaya, by

Vernon Bartlett ; The Memoirs o f Aga Khan ; Mitsinari, by André Dupeyrat ; Vorkuta, by Joseph Scholmer ; Why Judceo-Christian Studies?, by John M. Oesterreicher ; Matto Grosso, by Waclaw Korabiewicz ; Croquet Today, by Maurice B. Reckitt ; and Forsaken Altars, by Marguerite D ’Alvarez. Reviewed by D.W., R. P. S. Walker, B. C. L. Keelan, Christopher Derrick, Uvedale Tristram , Irene

Marinoff, Mervyn Phipps, E. Antony Roper and Isabel Quigly.

A CONCESSION FROM MOSCOW? L AST week saw a major reversal of British policy. The scale, the duration, the conditions o f Britain’s military commitment on the mainland o f Europe all mean that the Government has bowed to the logic of facts and accepts the tru th th a t we are, for better or worse, a European Power, and had better play the part fully, as the other European peoples are only too eager th a t we should. The further implications o f this abrupt break with old tradition are discussed in the leading article.

While the Nine Power Conference was going on in London, the Minister o f State, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, was answering M. Vyshinsky, telling him that the new Soviet proposals for disarmament will be considered on their merits. Those proposals mark a change for the better. The Kremlin is no longer trying to exclude atomic weapons before coming to grips with other weapons. The whole process, it is now suggested, should proceed a t the same time, and inspection for all kinds o f weapons is declared acceptable in principle. It is a very long story, going back to the active days o f Litvinov, twenty and more years ago, this use by the Soviet Union of large, sweeping proposals which look designed to support the propaganda against rearmament in countries other than the Soviet Union. These proposals have often been raw material for peace campaigns which are designed to leave the Soviet Union alone in command of immense strength. But for that same reason the only answer is to take these things step by step and point by point, on their merits, and in the broad framework of the relations which the Soviet Union maintains with the rest o f the world.

Today all countries have much stronger reasons than they ever had in the past not to go in for armament races with each other. The cost is prodigious, and the weapons are such that it would be disastrous for anti-Communists and Communists alike if they are ever used. M. Vyshinsky seems to want to start reduction from the present levels, which would leave the Soviet Union far ahead in certain kinds of arms and formations simply because the Western Powers disarmed thankfully and promptly after 1945 and the Soviet Union did nothing of the sort. It remains unexplained in Russian propaganda why the American Imperialists ever disarmed. The fact is concealed, and the West has much more reason to ask if there is not something sinister in the way the Russians have so readily continued to give priority to armaments and arming against what they must know to be a non-existent danger. The Marxist doctrine that wars are inevitable and right corresponds too closely with what the disciples o f Marx and Lenin have been and are doing for the rest of the world to feel at all comfortable that this huge concentration is all due to nervousness and not to ambition. We cannot pretend to know if these are the last years o f a period devoted to recovery and minute preparation for the further extension of Communist power in a world appropriately divided and softened up. We can only be sure that the more competently we organize our defence the less likely will M. Vyshinsky and his associates be to try adventures, and the more advantages they will find in a policy o f going slowly. Then it will be a lifelong métier to which bright young men in the Foreign Office will be asked to devote themselves—the discussion o f disarmament proposals with the Russians.