THE TABLET, January 29th, 1955. VOL. 205, No. 5984

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 29th, 1955

NJNEPENCE

The Dangers o f the Far East Coloured ^Yorkers: The Problem of Jamaican Immigration. By John Dingle The Farm Vote: A Rising Tide of Resentment. By Jorian Jenks Cardinal Lercaro: Bringing the Liturgy to the People Poetry and Positivism: A Voyage of Discovery. By Alick Dru The Unity o f Mankind: By Mgr. r . a . Knox Reforming the Liturgy: III : Projected Reforms. By Lancelot C. Sheppard Books Reviewed: Through Malan’s Africa, by Robert St. John ; The Heart o f Africa, by

Alexander Campbell ; Must we Lose Africa ?, by Colin Legum ; Fifty Years o f Classical Scholarship, edited by Maurice Platnauer ; Fairer Shares, by John Spedan Lewis ; Atlantis, by John Cowper Powys ; We are Utopia, by Stefan Andres ; The Book o f William Morton, edited by W. T. Mellows. Reviewed by Peter Railing, T. Corbishley, S.J., Noel Hughes, Anthony Lejeune, Roland Hill and

H. P. R. Finberg.

66A STATE OF PEACE”

T HE Soviet Government’s decree, announced on Wednesday, ending the state of war with Germany, comes almost four years after Britain, the United States and France formally made that decision themselves. What would have happened to Germany if the Western Powers had waited for Soviet Russia in this matter and in others ? She was opposed to any settlement of the conditions of Germany and Europe, rejected the Marshal Plan, OEEC, the Schuman Plan and all other attempts to restore the normal political and economic state of things on the Continent. The reason was and is that Soviet Russia does not want an independent Germany within a strong and independent Europe except one which it could dominate or at least one divided and disunited. The Soviet Union has recognized that there can be no European policy and European institutions without Germany, and it is that recognition, and not the pretended argument of West German remilitarization which is at the back of all the recent attempts to mobilize public opinion in the Western world against the new West European Alliance. There need be no undue alarm over the Russian threats to retaliate by forming a heavily armed Eastern Alliance because that is already in existence and more heavily armed than NATO.

Long before a single West German soldier has been issued with his rifle, it was decided to increase the existing armed forces in Eastern Germany to 500,000 men, and within three years to forty-five divisions, which together with the Polish and Czech divisions constitutes a formidable threat to the Western German flanks, not to mention the forces of the Soviet Union organized in two further army blocs in Eastern Europe. It is illuminating in this context to recall the dates of the military alliances which have been concluded in Eastern Europe since the Soviet-Czech Alliance of 1943. There followed an alliance with Poland in April, 1945, treaties with Rumania in February, 1948, with Bulgaria in March, 1949. A Polish-Czech military alliance was concluded in March, 1947, and other military treaties followed : Albania-Bulgaria in December, 1947, Bulgaria-Rumania in January, 1949, and Hungary-Rumania in 1948, Bulgaria-Czechoslovakia in April, 1948, Bulgaria-Poland in May of the same year, Hungary-Poland in June, Bulgaria-Hungary in July, Czechoslovakia-Rumania in January, 1948, Poland-Rumania in January, 1949, and Czechoslovakia-Hungary in April, 1949. It was to all these measures, and indeed to the happenings in Germany at the time of the Berlin blockade and to Korea, that the West responded in building up NATO and the European union.

The attitude of the German Social Democrats, the German Trade Unions and members of the German Evangelical Church—some six hundred pastors—dangerously supports the Soviet campaign against German rearmament as if that were indeed primarily directed against the revival of German militarism and not, as it really is, against the very freedom of Germany and Europe. It is quite feasible, as Herr Hans Baumgarten wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine last week, to put the' question whether or not the Germans want to defend themselves. But it is illogical to ask whether the German people would prefer to be reunited or to be armed. But these illogical and wrong alternatives are now put to the Germans by the Communists, and by those among Dr. Adenauer’s opposition who consciously, if more often unconsciously, support their aims. A poster has recently been put up by the German Social Democrats on the hoardings and walls of German towns and villages. It shows a crippled soldier against a crimson background of ruined buildings and