THE TABLET, July 9th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6007
Published as a Newspaper
THE TABLET
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
JULY 9th, 1955
NINEPENCE
The First Mark o f th e C hu r ch: The Archbishop o f Canterbury’s Charge
Peaceful C o -e x is t e n c e : The Place o f the Nations o f Eastern Europe. By K. M. Smogorzewski
Poland and th e H o ly Office : The Condemnation o f the Works o f Piasecki
The Good Parishioner: A Sermon Preached by Mgr. R. A. Knox
D id Shakespeare Read D an te ? : A Comparative Enquiry by J. J. Dwyer
B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Double Talk, by Harry Hodgkinson ; An Introduction to Italian Sculpture,
Part I, by John Pope-Hennessy ; Thomas Gray, by R. W. Ketton-Cremer ; Something o f Value, by Robert Ruark ; St. Dominic's Successor, by Marguerite Aron ; St. Brigid o f Ireland, by Alice Curtayne ; Joan, Daughter o f God, by M. A. Jeeves ; Saint Boniface, by G. W. Greenaway ; Pray fo r a Brave Heart, by Helen Maclnnes ; Where the Fresh Grass Grows, by Brian Cooper ; The Beggars in the Sun, by Paul Darcy Boles ; A Fragment o f Beauty, by Joan Medhurst and a survey o f some new reprints. Reviewed by Christopher Hollis, John Beckwith, Sir Arnold Lunn, B. C. L. Keelan, Anthony Woollen and
Anthony Lejeune.
EUROPEAN
I T is a good augury for the present Strasbourg meeting of the Council of Europe that six of the nations—the latest of them is West Germany—have agreed to allow individual petitions against themselves to be presented under the machinery of the Human Rights Convention. This is real progress on what was ever found possible in 1919 for the old League of Nations, when the nations were more complacently jealous of their sovereignty. Not in itself a very big change, it is a change all the same, just as the new German military code marks a change for the better from the old idea that a soldier’s only duty was to obey whatever the orders ; he is now entitled and expected to disobey, if ordered to commit a crime, but allowed to plead that he was not clear a crime was being perpetrated. This does introduce a new conception of the soldier’s responsibility to take note of what he is ordered to do. Unscrupulous Governments could, of course, circumvent these provisions ; as Hitler judged it expedient to have special units for specially heinous work in the wake of the army. All the same, we should be glad to see these indications of a movement to restrict the power of Governments and proclaim a law binding on them all.
These petitions, under the Charter of Human Rights, go to the Council of Ministers who will decide by a two-thirds majority not only whether there is a case for a State to answer, but what amends should be made. We should have preferred some other tribunal than that of Ministers who will be tempted to oblige each other ; but the procedure does ensure publicity, and it is the kind of thing which, like questions in Parliament, can be strangely influential, Ministers and their advisers stopping to ask themselves whether the courses to which they are inclined will result in unwelcome publicity.
Mr. Macmillan has just expressed his doubts about a Common European Market. But the partial economic integration which is now contemplated can only be a stepping stone
PROGRESS to a political goal. History will record that Western Europe changed more in the few years after the second world war than in the thirty years that went before it, and that the change has been in the direction of unity. And there has been no more than a beginning in considering the market problems and their solution in a European context.
There is a great need to revitalize the cause of European unity, which, politically speaking, has suffered a severe setback from the rejection of the European Defence Community. But on the economic plane the European Coal and Steel Community remains as a nucleus for the progressive integration of the European economics. It has not failed, but on the contrary, has, in fact, produced spectacular results. Barely two years after the establishment of the single market for coal and steel, coal trade within the Community rose by 50 per cent and steel trade by 160 per cent ; cross-frontier trade in scrap has tripled since 1952, and for iron ore it has increased by 15 per cent. Capital expenditure in these industries is rising steadily, and there is an incentive to modernize, created by competition in the single market, which did not exist in the same measure in closed markets. It was feared that within a single market some of the Community countries would become absolute beneficiaries and others absolute losers, but experience has shown that all countries of the Community stand to gain by it. Luxembourg, for instance, which exports most of its steel, is now assured of markets in France and Germany. France gains a wider market for steel in Southern Germany ; and French coal consumers can obtain coal from Germany without discrimination. Italy produces almost no coal, but gains from the single market as a steel producer and particularly as a large industrial consumer of scrap. Germany gains by being assured of a large market for Ruhr coal.
These successes have led the Benelux countries to consider integration in other fields as the natural and proper extension
