THE TABLET, October 1st, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6019

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED 1N 1840

OCTOBER 1st , 1955

NINEPENCE

Britain in the Near East: The Mishandling o f the Cypriots

6iQui Mange du Pape . . . ” : Easy Fallacies about the Fall o f Perón

Factory-Priests in I ta ly : The Industrial Apostolate

Journey to Formosa: By a Missionary Priest formerly in China

Spanish War and After: Two Recent Books, discussed by D.W.

Patristic Stock-Taking: Scholars in Conference. By Hilda C. Graef

The Church on Earth: Mgr. Journet’s Work. By the Bishop o f Brentwood

English M edieval Sculpture : Sermons in Stone. By Anthony Bertram

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : D. H. Lawrence : Novelist, by F. R. Leavis ; Hiroshima Diary, by Michihiko

Hachiya ; The Life o f J.-K. Huysmans, by Robert Baldick ; Father Vincent McNabb, by Ferdinand Valentine, O.P. ; A Vincent McNabb Anthology, edited by Francis Edward Nugent ; Roman Wall, by Bryher ; Flight o f Wild Geese, by Ronald Fraser ; The Guardians, by J. I. M. Stewart ; and The Huge Season, by Wright Morris. Reviewed by T. A. Birrell, Letitia Fairfield, Lancelot C. Sheppard, Timothy Matthews and

John Biggs-Davison, M.P.

THE PRESIDENT’S ILLNESS T HE American Constitution was designed by men who thought of the Executive, the Colonial Governor, as the part of Government primarily needing to be watched and curbed. An American President is as likely as not to have to govern with a Senate and House of Representatives in the control of the opposite party. But, with the accretion of responsibilities, the presidential office has become more and more monarchical. The President has always nominated his own cabinet, but today he nominates to a great number of positions, mostly created in the last quarter of a century, whose holders wield as much power as most of the cabinet ministers. In the conduct of international relations, the personality of the American President is of immense importance, as the world learned, alike for good and ill, during the rule of Franklin Roosevelt.

colder and more cautious and openly suspicious attitude towards the new Russian line. President Eisenhower, with his military record and intimate knowledge of NATO, has authority to keep the party behind him, but who else would do so ? It is a real problem for the Republicans. The Democrats can point both to Mr. Adlai Stevenson and Mr. Averell Harriman as men who may be said to embody the Geneva approach, if that is what the American public wants to see continued, as it probably does and will do unless the Russians overreach themselves over Germany.

It is not surprising that the sudden news that President Eisenhower has suffered an attack of coronary thrombosis has caused so much excitement and consternation, because at this delicate and early juncture his personality is of much importance in the conduct of relations with Moscow. The nature of the bulletins, their very partial reassurances to a public which knows that such bulletins would not err in the alarmist direction, have immediately precipitated discussions about the 1956 election which were in any case about due to begin. Till this attack everyone had thought the President would of course be renominated, and would be triumphantly re-elected as the man who had improved the international atmosphere. Now that becomes less certain, and at once emboldens those, and they are many and influential in the higher walks of the Republican Party, who would like a

As the Geneva Conference of the four Foreign Ministers approaches, the aims of Soviet policy in Europe are becoming clearer. President Bulganin and M. Khrushchev can well afford a holiday in the Crimea, as could the German political and military leaders in the summer of 1914 : all the plans were ready, and events could be allowed to take their course. It has been a week of prodigious activity in Moscow. M. Khrushchev has explained what he means by co-existence : “We favour co-existence not because we deny MarxistLeninist principles but because we remain loyal to them : capitalism is doomed even or especially if the third world war does not take place.” M. Khrushchev made an important speech in the course of his negotiations with the East German leader, Herr Grotewohl, in which he attacked the Atlantic Pact. He told a French parliamentary delegation immediately afterwards that France gave him the clear impression of not having an independent policy. He showed rage when a French woman delegate asked him whether there was a chance that Soviet women might in future be exempted from heavy labour, retorting that the fate of Western women was far worse ; that