THE TABLET, December 11th, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5977

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Rec]ina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

DECEMBER 11th, 1954

N IN E PENCE

P op e P iu s XII: The Holy Father at the Close of the Marian Year

E ducation in S ou th A fr ica : The Church and the Attempted State Monopoly

B a la n c e -S h e e t fo r M . M endès-F ran ce : His Government’s Chances of Survival

A M a r sh a ll P lan fo r A sia ? : The Pattern of 1947 Repeated. By Wilfred Ryder

P o r tr a it o f L lo yd G eorge : Mr. Frank Owen’s Biography. By Christopher Hollis, M.P. P o r tu g a l , In d ia and Goa : I : The Portuguese View. By Antonio de Oliveira Salazar

II : A Roman View. By Adrian Hastings

England and th e Im m a cu la te C o n c e p t io n : m : By william Burridge, w .f .

M e d i ta t io n s in A d v en t : “ Rejoice in the Lord.” By Sebastian Bullough, O.P.

“ O Y on g e Fresshe F o lk e s” : “TroilusandCressida” at Covent Garden. By Rosemary Hughes B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Sir Philip Sydney and the English Renaissance, by John Buxton ; Ben Jonson o f Westminster, by Marchette Chute ; Introduction to Still-Life, by Allan Gwynne-Jones ; The Regularis Concordia, edited and translated by Dom Thomas Symons ; The Age o f Worth, by Edith Saunders ; The Fourteenth o f October, by Bryher ; Colum o f Derry, by Eona. K. Macnicol ; and Ten Novels and their Authors, by W. Somerset Maugham. Reviewed by Hugh Dinwiddy, Hubert Wellington, Dom Adrian Morey, Yvonne ffrench, and Renée Haynes.

FISHING FOR VOTES

M MENDES-FRANCE’S approach to the Soviet Govern• ment on Austria is, as The Times wrote on Wednesday, like the throwing out of a thin line and a tiny hook. It is difficult to catch anything with it. But perhaps he is merely anxious to show his Assembly at home that he is sitting fishing. Whatever the object, it is fishing in troubled waters. The cause of Austrian independence will not be served if it is invoked to alleviate French political difficulties. This is not the time for offering to negotiate on Austria, with the London and Paris Agreements not yet ratified.

There is need for a better Western understanding of Austria’s position, and it was one purpose of Chancellor Raab’s recent American visit to stress this necessity. Austria has been too long regarded as an appendage to the problem of Germany. Failure to understand the difference in 1938 played into the hands of Hitler, just as failure to understand the significance of a non-German and supra-national Austrian Empire for Central and Eastern Europe was responsible for the evil consequences following the destruction of that Empire at St. Germain and Trianon.

Austria is today a separate State, with a strong will to live its independent life ; and that is more important to her, and rightly so, than sovereignty. Recently judgment was given by a German court that some twenty thousand persons, Austrian citizens in 1938 but resident in Germany now, are German citizens by virtue of the Anschluss laws unless they have specially claimed back the nationality of which they were deprived. That judgment has caused astonishment in Austria.

It is natural that, linked with Germany, the Austrian problem should seem to many people in the West of secondary importance, and one to be solved after the bigger obstacles have been disposed of. But the fate of the countries in the Danubian area teaches a different lesson. Austria still has a role to play in that part of the world, and it is in the measure in which these countries, now living under a worse oppression than they have ever before experienced, remember the unity of Eastern and Central Europe that was once supplied by Austria, that the Austrian idea will continue to live. It was only when the Austrian Empire discarded that idea and submitted to becoming “German” or “Hungarian” that its fate was sealed.

The Vienna Catholic weekly Die Furc/ie wrote recently : “Austria is not the prisoner of the Soviet Union ; she is the victim of the relations between the Soviet Union and the West.” It went on to say that the position of Austria should not on that account be used as a hostage to ward off further and bigger demands, as was done in 1938. That is also the reason why the Austrian Note rejecting the invitation to the Moscow Conference of the satellite States emphasized the need for a Conference in which all those States should participate whose occupation forces are kept in Austria. This formula is meant for the Western Powers as well as for Moscow, and represents the view of the Austrians that a nation’s unity is preferable to sovereignty. A separate Conference on Austria after the ratification of the Paris treaty may offer the opportunity for a fresh attempt to solve the Austrian problem. But there must be no side-stepping now.