T H E TA B LE T , M ay 7 th , 1955. VOL. 205, N o . 5998

Publish ed a s a N ew sp a p e r

THi . IABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 7th, 1955

NINEPENCE

D ifferen tia ls and C la sslessn ess: a Labour Dilemma

On Leaving Parliam ent: A Back-Bencher’s Retrospect. By Christopher Hollis, M.P.

Wales and th e C atholic: Nationalism Beyond Offa’s Dyke. By David Ballard-Thomas

Mr. B lanshard’s I r e la n d : All Guns Blazing. By Colm Brogan

Through Fifty Years : The Golden Jubilee o f the Catholic Education Council

6‘F am ily P ortrait” : The Exchange o f Letters between Cardinal Griffin and Sir Ian Jacob

R egen cy Portrait Gallery: A Duchess in London and Rome. By Alfred Noyes B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Lunacy, Law and Conscience, 1744-1845, by Kathleen J o n e s ; The Classic

Anthology Defined hy Confucius, translated by Ezra Pound ; Ezra Pound's Mauberley, by J. J. Espey ; The Australian Federal Labour Party, 1901-1951, by L. F. Crisp ; Graceful Reason, by J. V. Langmead Casserley ; The Crecy War, by Alfred Burne; Towers and Bells o f Britain, by Ernest Morris ; Hey, Y ou! by Michael Hollings ; The Verdict o f You All, by Rupert Croft-Cooke ; and An Introduction to Musical History, by J. A. Westrup. Reviewed by Letitia Fairfield, Roger Sharrock, Robert Cardigan, D. J. B. Hawkins, J. D. M. Blyth, John

Wright, Patrick Bushell, Peregrine Walker and Rowena Hamer-Jones.

AFTER TEN YEARS

T EN years have passed since VE Day, and almost to the day Germany is again recognized as a sovereign State, and the Allied High Commissioners become Ambassadors. The recovery, economic and political alike, has been remarkable, from the depths of physical and moral degradation into which the leadership of Adolf Hitler had plunged the German people. It is the crown of Dr. Adenauer’s work, and it should enhance his authority inside Germany ; but in achieving it he has by his very success exposed himself to a resurgence of nationalist feeling. All sorts of Germans who kept quiet over the last ten years of the Occupation, when the Occupying Allies held, and on occasion exercised, overruling powers, will feel that they are now free to emerge and see what support they can find in the public opinion of their countrymen.

Dr. Adenauer can point to a double achievement. His country is rehabilitated and it is also a full member of NATO and of various expressions of European unity, and in his mind this larger European integration is quite as important as the recovery of sovereignty. He embodies Cologne and the left bank of the Rhine, and his own personal exclusion and misfortunes under the Third Reich were representative of the larger historical truth, how much Cologne lost by being annexed to Prussia ; and the rubble and ruins are witness of the suffering brought on the city by the Reich.

But the Rhineland is not Germany, and the next stage in Dr. Adenauer’s fortunes will turn on re-unification. His European policy will be judged not as an end in itself but as a means to re-unification. The Communist argument will be that re-unification could come easily if only Dr. Adenauer had not tied up the country with the military preparations of the United States. There will be nationalists and Socialists, and National Socialists, to lend an ear to this specious propaganda. But Dr. Adenauer has an immense argument on his side, the whole story of the last ten years of the cold war.

The Germans when they invaded Russia threw away an immense asset that was waiting for them. In the Ukraine particularly, they antagonized a population which would have welcomed them as liberators from the yoke of the Communists, if the Germans had not made it plain that they had not come to liberate anybody, but to collect land and servants for a Herrenvolk to rule. The Russians came into Germany saying that they had come to liberate the Germans from the Nazis, and proceeded to settle down and impose Communism on all the part of Germany that they held, paying no more attention to public opinion than they have paid in Poland or anywhere else where their power has enabled them to install and maintain Communist rulers. Only the presence of the Western Allies in Western Germany has preserved the other Germans from forcible sovietization.

In the ten years of the cold war the turning-point for the better came when Britain and the United States accepted the challenge of the Berlin blockade, and organized the successful air lift, and the Germans saw very clearly on what their liberties and future hopes depended. But since the Berlin blockade the developments of thermo-nuclear warfare have transformed the general outlook, and every country that does not itself possess or hope to possess these weapons is inevitably tempted to think there might be more safety in neutrality than in membership of an alliance in which not