THE TABLET, February 26th, 1955. VOL. 205, No. 5988
THE TABLET
P ub lis h ed as a N ew spaper
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
FEBRUARY 26th, 1955
NINEPENCE
C laim s o f th e A g e in g : To Work Longer and be Better Cared For
A Second In du s tr ia l R e v o lu t io n : Nuclear Power. By Peter E. Hodgson.
“M assive P reponderance” : The White Paper on Defence. By Philip Bell, M.P.
The Future o f M a l t a : Issues in the Present General Election. By John Eppstein
Cult o f th e V ic to r ia n s : The Hinge o f the Nineteenth Century. By Colin Clark
L iv e rp oo l C a th ed ra l : An Illustrated Account o f the Modified Designs
M ed i ta t io n s in L e n t : II : Purification after Death. By Romano Guardini
B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Novels o f I. Compton-Burnett, by Robert Liddell ; Mother and Son, by
I. Compton-Burnett ; A Stranger in Spain, by H. V. Morton ; The Layman in the Church, by Michael de la Bedoyere ; The Theology o f the Spiritual Life, by Joseph de Guibert, S.J. ; St. Ignatius’s Idea o f a University, by George E. Ganss, S.J. ; The Darkness, by Evan John ; The Bond and the Free, by Charles Dunscomb ; The Same Scourge, by John Goldthorpe ; Is the Priest at Home ?, by Joseph Tomelty ; and a selection o f reprints o f religious books. Reviewed by Illtud Evans, O.P., T. F. Burns, Lancelot C. Sheppard, Edward Quinn, Joseph Christie, S.J.
and A. H. N . Green-Armytage.
QUALIFIED CONFIDENCE
T HE vote of confidence is being taken in the French Assembly even as we go to Press, and confidence in M. Faure seems likely to be given. But it is a formal use of that term. The trouble with French politics is that no one has much confidence in anyone. Only the Communists have any confidence in their own party. The conflicts both within the Assembly and within the various parties make it highly unlikely that the new Prime Minister will survive the fifteen months which remain before the Assembly’s mandate expires and there are fresh elections. In fact, since one of the main questions to be settled during those fifteen months concerns the method of voting in the elections—whether under a system of proportional representation, as at present, or whether under the Third Republic’s system of single-member constituencies with a second ballot—the last great crisis of the present Assembly will come over that decision : and that, it is to be feared, is what the average deputy is really interested in.
This latest crisis has brought in some ways the most exasperating interregnum since the war, for it has been the first since the passing of the constitutional amendment to allow a Premier-designate to be invested by a simple majority of the Assembly instead of the previous absolute majority. The President and the country were therefore hoping that the accession to office of a new Cabinet could be achieved very quickly and that the humiliating delays and party hagglings which harassed M. Vincent Auriol’s Presidency would now be obviated. Even the Assembly itself may have hoped, by passing the amendment, to be saved from itself to some extent.
The successive renunciations of M. Pinay and M. Pflimlin, followed by the defeat of M. Pineau, have shattered that illusion : and M. Edgar Faure must have contemplated his task glumly now that the Assembly has found new bad ways which are worse than the old. It was possibly a mistake on M. Pinay’s part to revert to the practice of the Third Republic and attempt to constitute his Cabinet before going to the Assembly before his investiture vote. The theory behind this vote is that it would strengthen the hand of the “invested” Premier in his subsequent negotiations with the various groups of the Assembly before he forms his team. But a Premier who now comes to the groups backed by only a simple majority of those voting for his investiture would be in a very weak position vis-à-vis those groups which had abstained —and thus held the life of his Government in their hands before the team even took office.
So the Premiers-designate are back in the position of the Third Republic, and must seek to form a team which will command a widely-based majority from the start—unless they attempt to imitate M. Mendès-France, and try to govern “from weakness,” hoping that the Assembly will not dare to overthrow them before a decent interval has elapsed ; and thereby committing themselves tacitly to immobilisme.
In fact the present position is worse than during the Third Republic, which had at least one great Party, the Radicals, on whose opposite wings a variety of Centre-Right or CentreLeft Governments could be constructed. Now there is no one party—or even two parties—whose support can assure
