THE TABLET. December 2?&, 1954 VOL. 204, No. 5979

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Reqina et Patria

F O U N D E D IN 1840

D E C E M B E R 2 5 th , 1954

N IN E P E N C E

A Boy Born to Us : A Fulfilment of Advent. By Sebastian Bullough, O.P. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh: The Magi and their Gifts. ByJ. C. Marsh-Edwards Where Flis M.Other W cIS : A Page of Verse for Christmas

Credo in Virgilium : The Fourth Eclogue and the Nativity. By Edward Hutton

Three Christmas Masses : Paris, Essen, Singapore. By C. B. Acworth

The Christmas Grail: A Miracle in Galicia. By Nina Epton

The Popish Priest: A Newly-Discovered Eighteenth-Century Poem

An Examination Paper : For Diversion on Boxing Day

Books Reviewed : Medieval Political Ideas, by Ewart Lewis ; Acton on History, by Lionel

Kochan ; South from Naples, by Roger Peyrefitte ; The Vale of Pewsey, by H. W. Timperley ; Ionia, by Freya Stark ; The Plain and the Rough Places, by Mary Gough ; The Way of My World, by Ivor Brown ; An Autobiography, by Edwin Muir ; The Century of the Common Peer, by Lord Kinross ; While the Humour is on Me, by John D. Sheridan ; How to be Topp, by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle ; The Intelligent Teacher’s Guide to Preferment, by Marius Rose ; and a further selection of books for boys. Reviewed by Professor David Knowles, Nigel Abercrombie, Phyllis Holt-Needham, Christopher

Devlin, S.J., Thomas Gilby, O.P., George Scott-Moncrieff and Aubrey Noakes.

TURN OF THE YEAR

A S the year draws to its end, it must be looked back upon as one whose second half has not seen the early hopes of a relaxation of tension between the Communist and anticommunist camps which was hoped for in the first half. But there is a very adequate reason for this. The Western world has been consolidating its defence, which involves in Europe a measure of German participation, and this the Russians are still doing all they can to prevent. The Western hope is that when NATO has been carried to a higher pitch of efficiency, and the two camps face each other with more military equality than exists at the moment, the Russians may judge it to their interest to modify their ideas about what is meant by co-existence, particularly in regard to Central Europe and Eastern Germany.

There is an extreme inconsistency in the combination of a Russian propaganda which talks of the Central European market, and the iron-curtain techniques which seek to insulate the peoples of Central Europe, to cut them off from their natural associates and mobilize them for Soviet imperialism. An arbitrary frontier now divides peoples who have lived inside the same European society since Europe first emerged. It is a highly unnatural state of affairs, which from the Western side is not and will not be regarded as permanent, and we can go further and say that the real prerequisite of co-existence is that the iron curtain shall go, so that there shall be a great intermediate area where, even though Communist Governments continue to maintain themselves in power with Russian backing, the populations are in social relations with their Western neighbours.

When the Soviet Union threatens to denounce the special treaties signed in the war years with both France and Britain, the British reaction is to recall as a distant memory that there was such a treaty signed in 1942, that it expressed hopes widely entertained at the time, but that much has happened since to make the document unhappily of very little interest. No sooner was that treaty signed than the Soviet Union began to unfold its designs on the independence of Poland, from 1943 onwards ; and the signing of a special treaty with Britain looks in retrospect as all part of the same policy of securing a free hand to impose Communism in the countries from which the Germans were pushed back.

As the year closes, Formosa remains the great centre of interest, the proof that the international position has to be looked at in strategic rather than in any other terms, and that in both camps men are thinking in terms of the future of South-East Asia with the realities of military, naval and air power underlying juridical arguments about Nationalist and Communist China. M. Mendes-France has carried his budget, but his position grows weaker as the Geneva settlement begins to be seen in perspective, as an abandonment of French interests in Indo-China, a cutting of losses that has been allowed to go so very far. This, the great Western reverse of the summer, led to an immediate intensification of the pressure against Formosa, and, for reasons of prestige