THE TABLET, July 16th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6008

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patna

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 16th, 1955

NINEPENCE

The G en eva JMeeting: The Exposed Flank of Western Statesmanship M a lta and B r i t a in : Marriage or Fusion ? By John Eppstein C hurchm en fr om Russia: Spokesmen for Soviet Propaganda. By Henrietta Bower M o s c ow M o r e R ea so n ab le ? : Frustrated in both Asia and Europe P o r tra it o f R io d e Janeiro: Scene of the Eucharistic Congress. By Edward T. Long C a th o l ic ism in B r a z i l : Hopes and Fears. By Godofredo Schmieder, S.J. F ilm C on fe r en c e in D u b l in : Welcomes and Rebukes. By J. A. V. Burke B o o k s R e v i e w e d : A Classical Anthology, by L. A. and R. W. L. Wilding ; The Carlton Club,

by Sir Charles Petrie ; Dictionaries, British and American, by J. R. Hulbert ; Better English, by G. HVallins ; Notes on Punctuation, by Eric Partridge ; Holiness is Wholeness, by Joseph Goldbrunner ; Russian Wife Goes West, by Tanya Matthews ; Qataban and Sheba, by Wendell Phillips ; There Was an Ancient House, by Benedict Kiely ; The Usurpers, by Czeslaw Milosz ; The Desperate Art, by John Rosenberg ; and The Pen in Exile, edited by Paul Tabori. Reviewed by J. Lewis May, John Biggs-Davison, M.P., Gerard Meath, O.P., F. B. Elkisch, Isabel Quigly,

Alan Neame, Joseph Christie, S.J., and Erika Fallaux.

IN SEARCH OF A FUTURE

T HE Socialist International meeting in London has been a dispirited affair, for it is not only the British Labour Party that is at the parting of the ways. Mr. Attlee was a much more animated and less discouraged figure than the continental Socialists he addressed on Tuesday, telling them how far the world has changed from the days when, as romantic Socialists, they dreamed of the barricades.

He could afford to be more cheerful, for, of all European Socialist parties, the British Labour Party can most easily carry out a strategic retreat towards Liberalism. A number of its senior figures began their public life in the Liberal Party, and only moved over to Labour at the end of the first world war. But continental Socialists have more Marxian roots, and are more fully committed to State ownership and State control, at a time when both ideas are historically compromised. Between the Communists, the most whole-hearted believers in the State taking charge of everything, and the parties of free enterprise, the continental Socialists have now no clear economic programme ; and they are afraid to try to make friends with the left wing of the Catholic parties because they know that if they lose their anti-clericalism they will have very little distinctive character left.

The soft option which is open to British Labour is not open to them ; they cannot hope to attract a lot of middle-class support by acquiring a mildly progressive flavour. They set out to be proletarian parties, and in France and Italy they have lost most of the proletariat to the Communists, while in the other countries of Western Europe there is very much less of that kind of proletarian political consciousness, and all the portents are that there will be less. In Germany, the prospects of individual advancement, the memory of the bitter deceptions those Germans have known who put they- trust in political parties, are bringing about a state of affairs in which politics will exist in the margin of consciousness, while economic activities hold the centre.

Dr. Edith Summerskill told the international delegates that she had hoped another Labour Government would have been welcoming them, and went on to remind the delegates that “by removing poverty, hunger and unemployment, we removed temporarily those stimuli to political thinking which are so much in evidence in other parts of the world today.” She did not say who she considers the “we” to be, who have removed these evils, as they have been removed both over the last half and over the last quarter century. But they are not politicians. The primary reason has been an increase of productivity in the world which has maffe it easy for political parties, from the Liberals before 1914 down to today, to extend social services from an ever-growing national income.

Various trade union leaders have shown how they recognize that nationalization is judged by the electorate purely empirically ; that the electorate is not moved by the argument which weighs so heavily with professional Socialists, that each industry nationalized is a citadel captured from the enemy, even if it cannot be turned to much account. The public were told for so long that the railways and the mines would be different places,-not only happier but much more efficient, once they were owned by the State, and railwaymen and miners could reflect that they were public servants working directly for their fellows and not for the intermediary of private owners.

It is now the public experience that every State monopoly or quasi-monopoly is forever putting up the prices, and