THE TABLET, November 13th, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5973.

THE TABLET

Published' as*a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER &

REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FO U N D E D IN 1840

NOVEMBER 13th, 1954

/

N IN EPENCE

The Authority o f the Church : Some Present-day Applications by Pope Pius XII

Programme for France: M. Mendès-France’s Next Venture

The Democrats Gain Congress : From a New York Correspondent

Reform ing the U n ited Nations: Difficulties and Possibilities. By David Johnson

Professor Toynbee’s H istory : II : “As I Sat Musing ...” By T. S. Gregory

Dr. Evatt’s D iscom fort : II. The Crisis. By D. P. O’Connell

Books R eview ed : The Works o f Sir Thomas Malory, edited by Eugène Vinaver ; The English Novel,

by Walter Allen ; Saint Bridget o f Sweden, by Johannes Jorgensen ; Piero della Francesca, by Bernard Berenson ; Northamptonshire, by Tony Ireson ; My Left Foot, by Christy Brown ; And All the Trumpets, by Donald Smith ; Always in Vogue, by Edna Woolman Chase and Ilka Chase ; Shocking Life, by Elsa Schiaparelli ; Some New Reprints. Reviewed by René Hague, A. O. J. Cockshut, Timothy Matthews, Anthony Bertram, Gyles Isham, Brian

Parvin, Isabel Quigly, M. A. Butcher.

THE TWO ROADS IN ASIA S IR WALTER FLETCHER, who speaks with a greater knowledge of China than any other Member of Parliament, underlined what is new and distinctive about Communist China. For the first time for centuries China is at once xenophobic and exclusive, and also filled with the spirit of colonial expansion. He made his point against Mr. Attlee, and it is one Mr. Attlee could not answer, by drawing attention to the very modified and limited expressions he had been careful to use on his China visit. Qualified language, the careful inserting of phrases like “from what we have seen,” or “as far as we could form an impression,” do not really offset a broad general impression of condonation and encouragement which Sir Walter Fletcher rightly finds so untimely at the present moment.

waters. It is the presence of naval power, even more than of air power, which stands in the way of Chinese ambitions.

Britain and America find it much easier to use ships and planes than to help the threatened Asiatic communities against internal subversion, which is the natural method, the most economical and least dangerous, for the Communists to employ. Almost all Asia is now governed by new and shaky political parties, much under-prepared for the kind of ordeal confronting them. Their governments are filled with men who grew up on the agitators’ side of the field, and they find it very difficult to know how to be policemen, how to avoid the feebleness to which liberal rulers are naturally prone, or the excessive repression which, while less immediately fatal, is a quite undesirable extreme, and one which leads naturally to bad government.

The point Mr. Attlee has seemed to miss is that Chinese Communists need to be shown that the price for a relaxation of tension is somewhat higher than the Labour delegation suggested by their presence, as guests, so very soon after the absorption of Tibet and with a policy of outward expanding pressure in full activity. If the Chinese Communists do not mind what the outside world thinks, then it is undignified and useless to go among them as guests. But if they do mind, if their calculations incline them to mind, then it ought to be made much clearer that if they want to be part of the civilized order of mankind they must behave better, both to persons and to property, must kill less freely and confiscate less ruthlessly. The most dangerous and the most likely possibility of all, Mr. Attlee does not seem to consider ; it is that the Chinese Communists are working remorselessly for their own programme, but in the meantime want to divide, confuse and enfeeble the peoples whose absorption and domination they intend. This policy requires the isolation of the United States, and the chief value of SEATO is that it is a joint undertaking of America and Britain, the two naval powers in Asiatic

Nothing helps the Communists more, or plays more into their hands, than the widespread assumption that poverty can be abolished very quickly and, as it were, between elections. The present nationalist governments have all used this lever with their electorates, all suggesting that a widespread prosperity could come much more quickly if the European overlord ceased to be there. They have since discovered what a slow business the conquest of poverty is. It can be done ; but it cannot be done very quickly. It involves persuading people who are intensely conservative in their farming, even when they are advanced and forwardlooking in their voting, to go to school to the exponents of new techniques. It involves finding the money to bring in such teachers, it calls for new agricultural machinery. In a word, for capital which none of these peoples can themselves supply. It is therefore clear that they must try, at any rate, to supply the confidence which will make other people, in America and Europe, ready to provide the capital, as they will not do if they fear that every bridge and every factory they