THE TABLET, September 17th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6017

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPT EMBER 171h, 1955

N1NEPENCE

M r . A t t l e e ’s A d v i c e : A New Approach to the Nation’s Business THe A n g l o -C a t h o l i c D i l em m a : Geography Triumphs over Logic. By Walton Hannah H i s t o r ia n s in R o m e : From both Halves of the World. By R. Arnold Jones T h e r e ’s N o t t o R e a s o n : Mr. Lucas’s Palate. By T. S. Gregory L i t l ir g is t s a t M .u n ich : The New German Catechism. By Sylvester Theissen On D a r w in a n d H u x l e y : “Apes, Angels and Victorians.” By Christopher Hollis W h a t B i s h o p s a re For : A Sermon at an Enthronement. By Mgr. R. A. Knox B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Tudor Family Portrait, by Barbara Winchester ; Good Behaviour, by Sir

Harold Nicolson ; The Civil Service in Britain, by G. A. Campbell ; Le Silence, by Hélène Lubienska de Lenval ; Notre Regard, by Gustave Thibon ; Greece, edited by Doré Ogrizek ; The Glass Walking Stick, and other essays by G. K. Chesterton ; and Salt in Their Blood, by Francis Vere. Reviewed by J. J. Dwyer, Sir John McEwen, T. G. Weiler, Edward Quinn, Vincent Desborough,

Colm Brogan and Thomas Gilby, O.P. The Three Choirs Festival at Hereford and the last week of the Edinburgh Festival discussed by F. X.

Rogers, S.J., and George Scott-Moncrieff.

AMBASSADOR TO BONN

T HE Russians adopted unusual methods for the publicity attending Dr. Adenauer’s visit, and the public in the Soviet Union has been given extracts o f dialogue exchanged between the visitor and his host. It is dialogue which makes it quite clear that the Russians are not interested in German unity, though they do not absolutely refuse to discuss it. They told their visitor that it is no good ignoring and not recognizing the Communist Government in Berlin, because it exists, just as the Soviet Union existed for sixteen years before the United States recognized it ; and they went on to vindicate the Communist system, as something that had to be planted and watered but that after a number o f patient years gives results. They proceeded to ask for the return of refugees from the Soviet Zone, promising they would not be very severely punished.

Communist regime in Berlin is a reprisal for Dr. Adenauer’s refusal to let Berlin Communists join the discussions about prisoners-of-war, lest that should seem a recognition o f the validity o f that Government. It might be thought that the surest way for Moscow to build up the popularity o f their Berlin Communists would be to let them take a leading part in securing the return o f German prisoners, and that this gesture could be made without conversations with Dr. Adenauer. It has not been proposed that the Berlin Government should have an ambassadoratBonn, only that Moscow should. But this is to underline the dependent, less than satellite status o f Berlin, and perhaps suggests that the Russians are still ready to bargain over German re-unification, though at no price lower than the withdrawal o f the whole o f Germany from any special defence arrangements with the West.

The chief concession Dr. Adenauer has made is to accept an exchange o f Ambassadors, and what he has in exchange is the general declaration that German prisoners-of-war will be returned. But here the Russians maintain that they have only a twentieth part o f what the Germans widely believe to be the true figure, and a tenth o f what the Red Cross has given as its conservative estimate. Far too many Germans have seen nothing o f young relatives taken prisoner in the course o f the final Russian advance. The German war criminals naturally date from an earlier period, when the German Armies were deep in Russia. The German Government obviously cannot consent to the kind o f horse-trading which is envisaged, by which Bonn is to hand back refugees, with the implication that in proportion as it does so German prisoners will come to light and be freed from an otherwise indefinite captivity in the Soviet Union.

Perhaps this emphasis on the permanence o f the German

Dr. Adenauer and his party know very well that a united Germany with an active Communist Party and an uncertain and opportunist Socialist Party could lead only too easily to a strong reaction, which would not necessarily take a parliamentary form. The threat o f a Popular Front in Germany, ruled from Berlin under the benevolent eye o f Russia, would be the whetstone on which a new nationalist sword would be sharpened, and a new kind o f National Socialism could arise. Neither in Italy nor in Germany are today’s parliamentary institutions and conventions so strongly grounded that they do not need the great support that comes to them through their present grouping with the rest o f the Atlantic Alliance. Obviously a good deal will turn on the ability o f the Soviet Ambassador in Bonn, whose post will be one o f the most important key positions, for, in the present state o f German politics, he will have plenty o f scope to pursue his business of detaching Germany from Western Europe.