THE TABLET, A p ril 9th, 1955. VOL. 205, N o . 5994

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

APRIL 9th, 1955

NINEPENCE

A Great Aiinister Goes: Sir Winston Churchill Lays Down the Premiership City o f Our Lord: The Tradition o f Holiness in Jerusalem. By J. P. Han by R e s u r r e x i t S l C U t D i x i t : Early Representations o f the Resurrection. By W. L. Gunton Medieval Economics: The Demand for Fixed Prices for the Farmer. By Colin Clark Unesco’s World H istory: Taking More Satisfactory Shape. By A. C. F. Beales B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Essays in Christian Unity, by Henry St. John, O.P. ; Voting in Democracies,

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by Enid Lakeman and James D. Lambert ; A Retreat fo r Lay People, by Ronald Knox ; Sancta Sanctorum, by W. E. Orchard ; The Stations o f the Cross, by Caryll Houselander ; The Feudal Kingdom o f England, by F. Barlow ; Dylan Thomas, by Derek Stanford ; The Fool Killer, by Helen Eustis ; No Sleep fo r Macall, by Gerard Fairlie ; The Mayor o f Roccabianca, by Frank Headland ; and The Anatomy o f Prose, by Marjorie Boulton. Reviewed by the Abbot o f Downside, Reginald J. Dingle, Timothy Matthews, A. Gregory Murray, O.S.B.,

Eric John, Uvedale Tristram and Anthony Lejeune.

THE NEW PRIME MINISTER S IR ANTHONY EDEN is one o f the survivors o f the lost generation o f the 1914 war, in which two o f his brothers were killed. He entered public life with a resolution to work for peace which, through great discouragements, has never weakened.

While politics are increasingly dominated by the standard o f living—and the general election will turn on it—the new Prime Minister has had a quite exceptional lack o f experience o f any of the Ministries concerned with the condition of the people. He is an old parliamentarian, a member for over thirty-two years, but his history has been extraordinary. He has been in the Government, or attached to it to the point of being precluded from the activities o f a back-bencher, for most of the time that he has been in the House and his party has been in the Government, and concerned with foreign affairs. An immensely hard worker, he has concentrated on subjects about which most o f the electorate do not care to inform themselves very closely, so that, while he is very well known from pictures in the papers, it is as a figure busily moving about the world in the conduct of international agreements which are met with suspended judgments. The greatest decisions since 1945, like the decision to keep troops on the Continent, to let the Americans have air bases in this country, or to make the Hydrogen Bomb, have not been party questions, and have aroused surprisingly little real discussion, and Sir Anthony is adept at keeping matters above or outside party politics.

But people should be under no illusion : here is one Conservative statesman with a great sense that his opponents are disastrous figures, obsessed with the wrong ideas, and incompetent o f carrying them out ; people who must, at all costs, be kept from winning general elections. He sat in the War Cabinet and the coalition Government, but he has never lost his Conservative convictions, though their intensity is masked by his amiability and good manners, any more than a similar experience made Mr. Attlee abate his Socialist views,

which are much stronger than his mild demeanour suggests. It is always important, in both parties, to know which o f the Ministers are naturally rather predisposed to coalitions and which do not like them. Those like them who do not care so much about their parties, especially when their parties are thinking and feeling as parties, regardless o f whether what they are saying will win them friends in the floating electorate.

In many ways Sir Anthony Eden will be able to turn to advantage his lack o f domestic political background. He can start afresh, for everyone has forgotten the abortive attempt, after his resignation in 1938, to produce him, in conjunction with the Liberals, as a vaguely progressive figure. He was at that time vastly less experienced than he is today, and he comes to the leadership o f a party which is united and fairly sure of itself, now that it has recovered from the period o f defeat and defeatism, when some o f its members even wanted to change its name. It is a party which will have to be led with respect for what its members believe in, and that we believe its new generation o f chiefs will be predisposed to do ; and we can write this with much more confidence than we could have done ten years ago.

Whoever is Foreign Secretary, it will be an advantage that there will be more than one expert at the top o f the Government. Perhaps Sir Anthony Eden is a little predisposed to take short views, to live thinking a few months ahead, where the higher statesmanship requires rather longer views ; but his temperament is admirably suited for the international life in which such great exertions have often to be made for very slight advantages, and where, if men insisted on being certain that the long-term effects as well as the immediate relief were going to be good, they would never be able to agree to anything. A French statesman o f the last century said that in politics it was necessary to take everything seriously and nothing tragically : and that, perhaps, sums up Sir Anthony Eden’s approach.