THE TABLET, October 15th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6021
TH E TAB LET
Published as a Newspaper
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
OCT OBER 151h, 1955
NINEPENCE
The Labour Party’s F u tu r e: The ch an ce to ch ange
Cyprus and A rchb ish op JVLakarioS: Elected Spokesman. By David Peppercorn
Portugal o f Salazar: The Coming State Visit to London. By David Walker
The Party L eader: Mr. Blake’s Life o f Bonar Law By D.W.
The Khrushchev Line: A Bargain with the Russian Church. By Walter Kolarz
R e ferendum in th e Saar: Impressions o f Local Opinion. By E. Hinterhoff
Mr. Garnett’s Pacifism : The Flowers o f the Forest. By Christopher Hollis B o o k s R e v i e w e d : England under the Tudors, by G. R. Elton ; Norman Douglas, edited by
Black Box, by Shakuntala Shrinagesh ; Living in the Window, by John Hearne ; and The Young Traveller
D . M. Low ; A Creed Before the Creeds, by H. A. Blair ; The Coloured Quarter, by Michael Banton ; Festive Papua, by André Dupeyrat ; The Little Clouds, by Charles Humana ; Voices Under the in Italy and Portugal. Reviewed by J. J. Dwyer, Sir Arnold Lunn, A. H.
N . Green-Armytage, Letitia Fairfield, J. McDonald,
Christopher Pemberton and Michael Derrick.
GETTING
T HE Foreign Ministers when they meet will have a much more difficult time than the Heads of Government had at Geneva in July, for one of the short cuts to amicability then was to agree to refer everything difficult and contentious to the Foreign Ministers. They will meet with a little uncertainty about M. Molotov’s present standing. He is the last survivor of the triumvirate of Malenkov, Beria and himself who were proclaimed the successors to Stalin’s large mantle. Beria is dead and'Malenkov has been shunted, and now Molotov has found it necessary to make a public apology for doctrinal error.
As late as last February he reminded the Supreme Soviet of the Titoist crimes, which by then had been consigned to oblivion. Last December he said that there could be no negotiation on Germany or Austria after the ratification of the Paris Treaties. But the Austrian Treaty has been signed since, and closer relations with Western Germany are now being started. All this must have been very galling to M. Molotov, and it was not surprising that he was not included in the Soviet delegation to Belgrade in May.
He remains formally in charge of foreign affairs ; but that his position is not what it was has been illustrated again by the confession he has found it necessary to make in Kommunist. It seems irrelevant enough to Western eyes that he said that “the foundations of Socialism have already been built in the Soviet Union,” instead of, as Kommunist points out that he ought to have said, that “ the foundations were laid by 1932, and the Soviet Union is now at the later stage of the completion of Socialism and the transition to Communism.” But the difference goes beyond party theory, and touches on M. Molotov’s conduct as Foreign Minister. He is being criticised, in public and by an important party publication, for nothing less than “dogmatism” and “infallibility” ; for being a Stalinist rather than a Leninist. The
TO GRIPS
criticism, appearing as it does at the eve of the new Geneva conference, is a warning to M. Molotov, not an indication of any change of policy.
Mr. Dulles goes to the Conference a little weakened by the illness of President Eisenhower and by the consequent uncertainty how long the Eisenhower-Dulles control of American policy is going to last. But he goes confidently, having declared emphatically that the liberation of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe will be achieved by the force and pressure of world opinion. This is the best policy that can be pursued at the present time : to underline the extremely unnatural and anomalous character of what is going on ten years after the war, to insist upon it on every occasipn, and to treat these unrepresentative Communist Governments as arbitrary and temporary phenomena imposed by Stalin, but phenomena on which Stalin’s successors will be very imprudent to insist. They are no part of Soviet security ; on the contrary, they create a belt of permanent ill ease and friction, with the Soviet Union aiding and abetting the cliques in power and the West being bound alike in honour and interest to maintain as much sympathetic contact as it can with the suppressed nationalities. We only wish the British Foreign Secretary had spoken as forthrightly as Mr. Dulles on this issue, both for the repute of the country and to emphasize the identity of views between London and Washington on this great issue.
Meanwhile, NATO has been given a sobering reminder of the realities behind the smiles and vodka: that the war-making capacity of the Soviet Union has never been greater than it is today, the submarine fleet never vaster, the aeroplane never more numerous or powerful, the cut in the land forces slight by comparison with the men who remain under arms. All this may very well be with a view to negotiating from strength, an idea we should understand. The leaders of the Soviet
