THE TABLET, May 21st, 1955. VOL. 205, No. 6000

Published as a Newspaper

HE TABLET WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 21st, 1955

NINEPENCE

Socialism in D e c l in e: Left Behind by History

B e lg rade A w a i t in g M arshal Bulganin: a Report from the Yugoslav Capital

For a H in du C a th o lic ism : A Benedictine writes from Bangalore. By Bede Griffiths, O.S.B.

B read -and-B u tter P o l i t i c s : The Election and the Cost o f Living

Film Festival at Cannes : More than One Kid for Two Farthings. By Maryvonne Butcher

W estern O r th o d o x y : Professor Hodges’ Proposals. By Michael Richards

M o s lem s and C h r is t : A New Attitude shown in Some Recent Moslem Writing

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Nature o f Power, by Louis J. Halle ; Christ and the Caesars, by Ethelbert

Stauffer ; The English Countryman : His Life and Work, 1500-1900, by G. E. and K. R. Fussell ; Chastity, by various authors ; The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves ; The Sea Heritage, by Admiral Sir Frederic Dreyer ; Brothers in Law, by Henry Cecil ; Not Honour More, by Joyce Cary ; and Valley Beyond Time, by Vaughan Wilkins. Reviewed by John Coulson, Michael Dolley, E. W. Martin, M. O’Leary, V. R. Desborough, Thomas

Gilby, O.P., R. L. McEwen and Illtud Evans, O.P.

A TREATY SIGNED

T HE Belvedere Palace in Vienna, where the Foreign Ministers signed the Austrian State Treaty on Sunday, has been the scene of many great historical events. Some of them are better forgotten today : Ribbentrop and Ciano adjudicating the frontier dispute between Hungary and Czechoslovakia in November, 1938 ; Goering signing the German Alliance with Rumania’s Premier, Antonescu, in March, 1941 ; and, in the same month, Yugoslavia joining the Axis Powers by a treaty which was hardly signed in Vienna before it was repudiated in Belgrade. But the graceful baroque palace has witnessed other scenes which are more directly part of Austria’s history. It was the home of the heir to the Emperor Franz Joseph, Franz Ferdinand, who was waiting there for the realization of his own great plans for the Austrian Empire which, but for Sarajevo, might have changed the history of Central and Southern Europe. It witnessed the farewell ball given by the Empress Maria Teresa for her daughter Marie Antoinette, about to be married to Louis XVI. But the man whom many Austrians remembered last week was the builder of the Palace, Prince Eugene of Savoy, the saviour of Vienna from the Turks, and his meeting at the Belvedere with the philosopher, Leibniz, when they discussed plans for the restoration of the unity of Christendom.

The Austrians asked themselves whether those plans are relevant today to the restoration of Austrian freedom, and whether that freedom will leave the country indeed free to exercise that balancing influence between East and West for which the spirit of the Austrian people and their capital are justly renowned. But a somewhat uncanny significance attaches to Sunday’s historical event in view of the sudden and amazing reversal of fronts which the Soviet Union has shown over the Austrian issue. All the objections which the Russians had previously put forward against the Austrian Treaty were dropped as if they had never mattered at all. The European bien peasants, thinking that these objections were really due to Western intransigeance, received the same unpleasant shock which they had received at the time of the Korean Armistice negotiations early in 1953, when the Chinese similarly waived the great obstacle, the problem of the repatriation of prisoners of war.

In the case of Austria the Russians dropped intricate problems like the ownership of former German properties, the alleged threat of a new German Anschluss. They waived Article 16 of the draft treaty, which would have forced certain displaced persons to return to their homes behind the iron curtain. The clause referring to Austria’s responsibility for fighting on Hitler’s side was withdrawn by all the four Powers. The Western Powers, who had passively witnessed the fall of Austria in 1938, had in any case no strong moral title to that reproach. But from the economic provisions of the treaty, which take up by far the largest space, it emerges that all the Soviet concessions will be more than compensated by the obligation which Austria has taken upon herself in regard to the Soviet Union. She will have to continue to pay for the Soviet Occupation long after the departure of the troops. The Soviet Union will receive goods and profits from investments for several years, as well as a lump sum of $150 million. Moreover, Russia will continue to share in the profits of Austrian oil production for the next thrty years, and will take over the property of the Danubian Shipping Company in Eastern Austria, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. It is very questionable whether shipping on the Danube will ever