THE TABLET, August 6th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6011

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia D e i, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 6th, 1955

NINEPENCE

A Big Blunder: The Restrictions on Televising Political Debates The Price for Goa: Portuguese Goodwill in Africa. By Paul Rodeur Eligibility for Parliament: The Member for Mid-Ulster. By Christopher Hollis Visiting the High Authority: - Impressions in Luxembourg. By John Dingle Shortage o f Teachers: Travelling-time from Wales London Underground: An Exhibition in the Guildhall Museum. By Alex Cain Standards in Advertising: A Story of Self-Discipline. By W. J. Leaper Philosophers at Stresa: The Centenary o f Antonio Rosmini. By Roland Hill B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Bishop's Bonfire, by Sean O’Casey ; The Later Plantagenets, by V. H. H.

Green ; Utopian Fantasy, by Richard Gerber ; The Life o f Dante, by Michele Barbi ; The Perennial Order, by Martin Versfield ; Good Christian Men Rejoice, by William Lawson, S.J. ; Talks to TeenAgers, by F. H. Drinkwater ; God, Unity and Trinity, by F. J. Sheed ; The Key Concepts o f the Old Testament, by Albert Gelin ; Bavarian Fantasy, by Desmond Chapman-Huston ; The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth, by Paul-Andre Lesort ; The Malediction, by Jean Giono ; Skin Deep, by Jean-Jaques Gautier ; and When Iron Gates Yield, by Geoffrey T. Bull. Reviewed by W. J. Igoe, Michael Derrick, Colin Clark, Kenelm Foster, O.P., Anthony Woollen, Peregrine

Walker, Ann Bridge and R. P. S. Walker.

CHINA JOINS IN

I T will be a very good thing if the word “satellite” on Russian lips comes to mean a space ship tearing round and round the globe, for no very cogent reason, instead of a nation forcibly subjugated to Communist rule by the oppressive weight of Soviet power in the background. The scientific advantages which these flying satellites will bring to mankind seem to be somewhat nebulous and uncertain, just as the advantages of reaching the moon are so hard to formulate that of all the journeys men have ever taken this one will best live up to Stevenson’s dictum that “it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.” The truth seems to be that there are no real non-military advantages which justify the huge expenditures on rockets and inter-planetary travel and the rest of it, except the satisfaction of showing what the human race can do. Rivalry in building satellites, bigger and better every time, can be presented as a way of sublimating the older and more material ambition to dominate and impose ideas on the whole of mankind; an ambition which President Tito assures the world, we trust correctly, that the Kremlin leaders have now abandoned.

The Chinese Communist leaders, who bided their time during the Geneva meeting, have hastened to associate themselves with the new spirit. Chinese friendliness is less robust than Russian ; it does not run to the same kind of boisterous joviality ; but the Chinese have the oldest and most formal tradition of courtesy in the world to draw upon if they feel so inclined. It is a tradition of personal disparagement which would be an abrupt change from the brash proclamation of the achievements and superiorities of the new People’s Republic. But it has always been an instrument for the achievement of power and wealth, and so it could continue to be under the new dispensation no less than under the old.

In one very important respect politeness and friendliness, even to the renunciation of force and patient acquiescence in the survival of Chiang Kai-shek, can reward the Chinese Communists far more abundantly than similar restraint can reward the Russians. All round China are Asian peoples full of a new nationalism which they carry unsteadily. They are peoples whose leadership the Japanese aspired to, but lost. Although the Japanese went down in defeat, the European Powers have been in retreat in Asia ever since. But they have been retreating not in the face of armies but in the face of mobs, not prepared for the effort of remaining if remaining meant a prospect of perpetual repression, firing on angry crowds, Amritsar massacres and the rest of it. There was no longer any appetite, save partially among the French and partially among the Dutch, for trying to keep colonies even in the face of local hostility.

The chief country in Asia thus to have changed its status