TH E TABLET, January 15th, 1955. VOL. 205, N o . 5982

THE TABLET

Published as a N ew spaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 15th, 1955

NINEPENCE

The H o ly See and th e Defence o f Europe : Dr. Micklem’s Needless Disquiet The Future o f the Railways : A Matter of Confidence The Tragedy o f Edouard B en es: Whistling in the Dark. By Edward Raczynski Reform ing th e Liturgy : I : The Background to Recent Reforms. By Lancelot C. Sheppard Ireland and th e English: The Seventeenth Century Relationship. By Christopher Hollis Mass at H a z lew o od : A Venerable Sanctuary in the West Riding. By E. T. Long The Church U n ity Octave: A Note on the History. By William d’Andria, S.J. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Dialogues o f Alfred North Whitehead ; German Marxism and Russian Com­

munism, by John Plamenatz ; “O Rare Amanda /” , by Jack Loudan ; Being and Becoming, by D. J. B. Hawkins ; Portrait o f Barrie, by Cynthia Asquith ; Have You Been to Rome ?, by Augusta L. Francis ; Rome, by Martin Hürlimann ; Log Hut, by Thomas Firbank ; and Shane and First Blood by Jack Schaefer. Reviewed by Frederick C. Copleston, S.J., Colin Clark, M. Bellasis, Mark Pontifex, O.S.B., George Scott-

Moncrieif, E. W. Martin and Anthony Lejeune.

FRENCH OVERTURES

T HE chief purpose of the French Prime Minister’s visit to Italy and Germany is to seek friends and supporters for a policy over which the French themselves are no less divided today than they were last summer over the European Defence Community. The French plan for a European “Armaments Pool” which was handed to the eight other member States of the new defence community before the departure of M. Mendes-France is to be the basis of his negotiations. He has not gone to Rome or Bonn empty-handed. There is watchfulness in Rome over Franco-German relations, when for several years after 1943 specially close Franco-Italian relations seemed possible. Now M. Mendes-France hopes to obtain the Italian agreement to his Armaments Pool in exchange for Italy’s admission to the economic development of North Africa.

This is a prospect that will interest Signor Vanoni, the Italian Budget Minister, whose ten-year plan of development for increasing Italy’s production in order to find employment for four million workers, has just been published. The Plan is based on greater investment in Italy, but M. Mendes-France may offer employment for Italian labourers and skilled workers in North Africa. North Africa could also make good use of German technicians and German machinery. The capital and the control are to be provided by France, and Italy has already been assured that there is no French intention of admitting German capital as well. With the backing of Italy and Germany he presumably hopes to deal more effectively with his own parliamentary opposition. But next week, on January 17th, a conference of the nine members of the new defence community will be held in Paris to discuss the co-ordination of the European armaments industries.

It is not at all the Saar problem, but this question of coordination, which M. Mendes-France himself has now put into the forefront of the discussions. It is difficult to see why this should have been necessary. One might, indeed, wonder why, after rejecting the supranational European Defence Community, the French should want to fall back upon the very principle of a supranational authority to ensure the unity and standardization of these forces. Even if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has not been too efficient in the past in achieving such standardization, it is certainly the appropriate body to deal with these measures, and the antifederalists everywhere made this clear when M. MendesFrance submitted a similar proposal at the London Conference last October. Then he met with the opposition of the Netherlands, and the United States is unwilling to give up its control over the distribution of American financial assistance and off-shore orders of war materials, while Britain will not contemplate surrendering her power of decision in defence matters.

It is possible that M. Mendes-France has been persuaded that the controls of German rearmament would in fact have been much more effective under the European Defence Community than they are now ; but he will hardly find supporters in Europe for such an astonishing volte face. The Germans in particular are suspicious of the new French plan, and of the constantly renewed attempts to get round the larger agreements by new demands. The Frankfurter Allgemeine, which is usually very critical of Dr. Adenauer’s European policy, wrote on Tuesday :

“It is precisely these demands which make it apparent that the national antagonisms upon the European Conti-