THE TABLET, January 8th, 1955. VOL. 205, No. 5981

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Recjina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 8th, 1955

NINEPENCE

“Co-Existence” and th e Cold War: The Message of Pope Pius XII. Early Leaving: The Case for Grammar School Fees. Britane’s D istem per: Miss Wedgwood on the Civil War. By Christian Hesketh The Faith on Eriskay: The Island of Father Allan. By George Scott-Moncrieff Miss iVlitford at Frior Park: Her Admiration for Bishop Baines. By Marguerite Fedden A New Scottish C atechism : At Once New and Old. By Philip Prime, S.J. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Citeaux and her Elder Daughters, by Archdale King ; God Save the Queen /,

by Percy A. Scholes ; The Priest in the World, by Josef Sellmair ; John Bunyan, by Roger Sharrock ; British Railway History, by Hamilton Ellis ; The Postman, by Roger Martin du Gard ; The Brute Streets, by John Prebble ; How Dear is Life, by Henry Williamson ; Bell from a Distant Temple, by Ronald Fraser ; El Greco, by Antonine Vallentin ; and Cheshire, V.C., by Russell Braddon. Reviewed by Bruno S. James, Anthony Wright, Edward Quinn, Gerard Meath, O.P., Thomas Gilby, O.P.,

Robert Cardigan and F. M. Godfrey.

ACCEPTING A DEFICIT

T HE report of the Court of Inquiry on the railway wage dispute lays down the important principle that in nationalizing a public service the State undertakes to maintain not only a good service for the public, but good conditions for those engaged in the work. It criticises the Transport Commission rather severely for stone-walling with mutually exclusive arguments that offers were fair and reasonable and that they were not what the Commission would have liked to be able to make had its hands not been tied by the Transport Act of 1947. In effect the report unties the Commission’s hands, says that they were never really tied, and plainly invites it to increase its offers. It calls on the National Union of Railwaymen to revoke the strike notices while new offers are being framed. It is a reflection on the Commission, and perhaps on the Ministries concerned, that strike notices should have been necessary to bring matters to this present stage. It is an important stage. The principle of national responsibility means that nationalized industries, unlike private ones, are under no compelling need to organize themselves for solvency. They can incur deficits and look to the Government to meet them. But the Government which is asked to meet them must obviously impose conditions to ensure that they are as small and temporary as possible.

The strength of the railwaymen’s case is that there has been so much depreciation in the purchasing power of money that the real wages are low by comparison with the general averages, even where the work is both strenuous and skilled. The weakness of their case is that one of the great reasons why the industry is losing money—the deficit this year is expected to be over £20 million—is the unwillingness of the union to see fewer men employed, or employed differently. It is an impossible claim to make, to say that, whatever changes affect the earnings of an industry, all the people employed in it have a right to go on being employed, and employed with wage increases to meet and to improve upon the cost of living. It is true that the railways used to make great play with the argument that few occupations were more secure, that a job on the railways was a job for life ; and that this in the past was a consideration which off-set the higher earnings in industries where employment fluctuated. There is accordingly a quite special reluctance, bred of long habit, to consider reductions in the numbers as readily as reductions are considered in manufacturing industries. But it is a vital consideration for the Government and the public, which cannot admit the claim in the form in which it is being made, because it is an attempt to establish a principle which would be destructive of the economy of the nation. There is an attempt to impose a rigidity, whereas material progress comes from a shifting pattern of employment. The number of men employed will vary with the quality of the service offered to the public. There could be a solvent but quite insufficient service of trains, just as there could be a very convenient but exceedingly wasteful one. Somewhere between the extremes the mean must be found.

The great railway age, which seemed so final between 1830 and 1880, has proved in the event to have lasted rather less than a hundred years, and the interval was very short between the successful displacement of road transport, in the form of the horse-diawn vehicle, and the successful return of the road with the internal combustion engine. All the indications are that the road will continue to offer more and more advantages for many kinds of goods, and for passengers wherever there is a party of two or more. Government loans or subsidies which would be indefensible if tendered as danegeld, corroborating the impression of a bottomless public