THE TABLET, December 18th, 1954 VOL.|204, No. 5978

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

DECEMBER 18th, 1954

NINEPENCE

The Encroaching Tide: The Threat of Rising Prices

Cross-Currents in Germany: After the Local Elections. By Roland Hill

Before Ratification: Strasbourg and the Paris Agreements. By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

Automatic Factories: A Second Industrial Revolution ? The Optimism of the 1840s: Before the Irish Potato Famine. By Ronald Chapman

Our Lady in Stone: Her Representation in Christian Iconography. By W. L. Gunton Meditations in Advent: IV : “Prepare Ye the Way.” By Sebastian Bullough, O.P. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Man and the State, by Jacques Maritain ; Calling and Country, by W. K.

Hancock ; Vanished without Trace, by Antoni Ekart ; Top Secret Mission, by Madeleine Duke ; The Man Behind the Mask, by Robert Furneaux ; The Bulls o f Parral, by Marguerite Steen ; The Mango Season, by Kathryn Grondahl ; The Candle and the Light, by Hilda Vaughan ; The Following Wind, by N. Brysson Morrison ; The Imperfect Marriage, by Edith de Born ; So Sweet a Changeling, by Ruth Adam ; Twenty-one Stories, by Graham Greene ; Humble Powers, by Paul Horgan ; Last Recollections o f my Uncle Charles, by Nigel Balchin ; Round Many a Bend, by Austin Lee ; Troilus and Cressida, An Opera by William Walton and Christopher Hassall ; This Day, A Christmas Cantata by R. Vaughan Williams ; and books in the Herder Art Series Reviewed by the Bishop of Brentwood, D.W., Robert Cardigan, J. C. Marsh-Edwards, M. Bellasis, John

Biggs-Davison, B. C. L. Keelan, Rosemary Hughes and A. Gregory Murray, O.S.B.

BRITAIN AND FORMOSA

A LTHOUGH Sir Anthony Eden has told the House o f Commons that Britain is not a party to the new treaty between the United States and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government on Formosa, the logic of events is plainly forcing Britain to come ever nearer to the American policy in Asia, where the threat has been developing as an immediate result o f the Korean and Viet-Nam armistice.

The Chinese Communists have the will to expand, but, at present, limited resources for modern war. They have manpower in abundance, but their equipment is easily outclassed in the air and sea. Their aim is to eliminate the latent threat that, if they invade on any part of their frontier, they might in their turn be invaded. If Formosa could be captured and the army of Chiang Kai-shek dispersed, that threat would be removed, and they would be free to strike as and when they pleased without fear o f retaliation. F o r this reason the retention of the island in anti-Communist hands has long been regarded as of primary strategic importance. But the psychological importance of Formosa is equally great, at a time when the American position in Japan is becoming difficult.

What the Communists are saying to the Japanese is closely parallel to what they are saying to the French, that they are offered peace and prosperity, on condition they agree not to defend themselves, but if they enter anti-Communist alliances and fronts they immediately intensify the risk o f war in which they will be the most exposed o f people?. In Japan this propaganda is supported by the exploitation of antiAmerican and anti-European feeling, something not difficult among the Japanese, for i t was their own theme between 1941 and 1945. The Chinese Communists have made themselves the heirs to the mission the Japanese had then assumed, of acting as the militant Asian Power which would come liberating other less strong or valiant Asians from the white yoke. The Chinese Communists can offer the Japanese what the Japanese, who came market seeking, could not offer to anybody—the prospect o f a huge internal market.

All this tension in the East is peculiarly dangerous because of the importance both sides must attach to not losing face in the presence o f the observing Asian peoples, who are watching to see who is the stronger and which way the wind o f history is blowing. This is the great weakness of the conciliatory policy o f the Government o f India, that it is proclaiming to the Indians how little the Communists have to fear, outside or inside India, from Congress India, while a t the same time the Communists show by deeds in Viet-Nam how dangerous it is not to be listed among their friends.

I f something else was needed to underline the growing seriousness of the international position, it is the spectacle of the United States reciprocating British support over Formosa with support over Cyprus ; and it is ironical that, after we have been so long denied support in so many parts