THE TABLET, September 10th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6016

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEM BER 10th, 1955

N1NEPEN CE

Sober Thoughts at Southport: Work as the Only Recipe for Prosperity

Grave Problems for JV1. Faure: North Africa and the Pressure for Higher Wages

Agricultural Reforms in I ta ly : Good Results from Far-Sighted Policies

The Handicapped Child: Fruitful Work of the Ministry of Education

The Hungry Sheep: Sir David Kelly’s Analysis. By Douglas Jerrold

GaUgUin in Edinburgh: Tumultuous Pilgrimage. By George Scott-Moncrieff

At the British Association : Impressions of an American Visitor. By Patrick H. Yancey, S.J.

Into a Promised Land: A Sermon before the British Association. By Mgr. R. A. Knox

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : A History o f British Mountaineering, by R. L. G. Irv in g ; The Way o f

Deliverance, by Shinso Hanayama ; Too Late to Lament, by Maurice Browne ; Up Funnel, Down Screw ! by Geoffrey Penn ; Inspiration and Poetry, by C. M. Bowra ; Christian Letters on Sex and Marriage, edited by John Fox ; The Meaning o f the Religious Life, by Benoit Lavaud, O.P. ; The Devil, by Giovanni Papini ; Living in the Present, by John Wain ; That Uncertain Feeling, by Kingsley Amis ; and The Cruiser, by Warren Tute. Reviewed by Lady Chorley, R. P. S. Walker, Anthony Lejeune, Peter Bethell, Christopher Kent, Anthony

Woollen, D. J. B. Hawkins and Christopher Derrick.

DR. ADENAUER IN MOSCOW D R. ADENAUER arrives in Moscow exactly six years after the formation of the first German Government since the war, and his own nomination as Federal Chancellor, by a majority of one. That one vote has made a great deal of difference to the fate of Western Germany. There are many who see in the former mayor of Cologne only the skilful and autocratic statesman who has dominated German affairs since 1949, and who has impressed upon them the simple and one-sided principles of his own policy, regardless of objections from Right or Left. Yet without them the structure of the new Federal Republic might not have been as strongly entrenched as it now is. Politically the Germans need a strong man, and since the Bismarck inheritance has proved of little duration, though entailing bitter consequences for Europe and for Germany herself, there is hope that the Adenauer experiment, despite all prophecies to the contrary, may prove more lasting.

The Adenauer experiment is, moreover, widely significant for the whole of the post-war history of Europe, and it is worth recalling today how it happened that German and Western policies came to coalesce in the past six years. The cold war has an older history, dating back to the Western realization in 1946 of how the Yalta Agreement was being interpreted by the Soviet Union. Again, the Berlin Blockade in 1948 revealed the trial of strength which confronted the Western Powers. But it was the Korean war that fully opened their eyes to the danger threatening from Soviet aggression. That was the moment also when the plan for a German contribution to the common defence of the Western world was first mooted as a possibility. At that time, in the autumn of 1950,

Western Germany was in the throes of a grave psychological crisis. It seemed doubtful, then, whether, in view of the Far Eastern war, the United States would be able to maintain its troops in Germany ; but at the same time East German political and military pressure increased. A German Korea was in sight, and the Western Powers had to consider seriously the strategical necessity of defending their position in Germany if Germany was not to suffer the fate of the South Korean Republic. The psychological necessity of making the Germans immune against the threats from across the border of their divided country was of added consequence. When this contribution was finally agreed upon, at the end of September, 1950, the Western Powers issued their declaration promising support for the Federal Republic and Berlin in case of a Soviet attack. Three months later, at the Brussels meeting of the Atlantic Council, it was decided that the Federal Republic should somehow be linked with the common Western defence system. After four years and many delays this decision has now, at last, taken concrete shape in the Paris Treaties and Western Germany’s admission to NATO and the West European Union.

However, there is a danger for the Western Powers, under the impact of new Soviet tactics, of relapsing into a preKorean mentality, and finding universally applied the Ohne Uns principle first coined by the younger German generation some years ago. If that is allowed to spread the material and psychological weakening of the North Atlantic Alliance will be the inevitable consequence. Already there are signs that Continental member nations of NATO are neglecting to fulfil their obligations. As the Manchester Guardian