THE TABLET, November 19th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6026
Published as a Newspaper
THE TABLET
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Recjina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
NOVEMBER 19th, 1955
NINEPENCE
Geneva Breakdown: The Danger of Unperceived Drift
Electoral Debates in France : Jockeying for Position. By Frank Macmillan
“ 3 M inutes, 59*4 Seconds’5: Dr. Bannister’s Book. By Sir Arnold Lumi
Liturgy and Television: Viewing with Understanding. By C. R. A. Cunliffe
Solom on in All his Glory : Two Performances of Handel’s Oratorio. By Rosemary Hughes
The Knox Bible: Cardinal Griffin's Tribute and Mgr. Knox’s Reply B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The War Memoirs o f General de Gaulle, Volume I ; Living and Knowing, by
E. W. F. Tomlin ; The Love Letters o f Phyllis McGinley ; Adventure Road, by Alexander Powell ; One Only Lives Twice, by Stanton Hope ; The Opposing Self, by Lionel Trilling ; They Speak by Silences, by a Carthusian ; The Tigress on the Hearth, by Margery Sharp ; My Bones and My Flute, by Edgar Mittelholzer ; Seeing Red, by Theodora du Bois ; The Proud Walkers, by C. E. Vulliamy ; Illustrious, by Kenneth Poolman ; and The Laughing Cow, by Jost Meltzler. Reviewed by Sir Desmond Morton, D. J. B. Hawkins, Renée Haynes, J. C. Marsh-Edwards, Derek Stanford,
Mgr. Gordon Wheeler, Anthony Lejeune and Thomas Gilby, O.P.
EXCLUSIVE NATIONALISMS A FTER such a failure as the Geneva Conference of the Foreign Ministers, the United Nations re-acquires importance as a common public meeting-ground ; and it is very much to be hoped that the admission en bloc of eighteen more countries will take place, now that it has been for so long established that the United Nations is a club which does not impose tests or professions of political faith, it has taken ten years to get rid of various assumptions in the minds of those who drew up the Charter, assumptions which had been proved unrealistic by 1946. A number of countries are overdue for membership, including from Europe, Italy, Germany, Spain and Ireland.
tedious for everybody when people develop inferiority complexes, or lack the humility to recognize that- their dependent status does not come about by accident and is generally the real proof of some great infirmity. But the best way to prevent these feelings arising, with peoples as with individuals, is to give them a sense of membership of something in which they are proud and satisfied. “People,” said Franklin Roosevelt, “like to feel they belong.” It is very difficult to give that feeling where there is a direct colonial relationship between one European nation and African people. Even so, very much more could have been done.
The Economist last week had a long and reasoned article calling not only for Spain’s admission but for Spanish association with NATO, with liaison between NATO commands and Madrid. This is the merest common sense, since the chief Power in NATO, the United States, has already secured bases in Spain in order to be able to fulfil NATO obligations. The main obstacle now is the bad relationship between France and Spain, something with a very long history. During the years when they were ostracized by the Western European countries, the Spaniards cultivated the Arab world, telling the Arabs that no European people was or could be close to them as Spain could be, and pointedly disassociating themselves from French policies in North Africa. Now they have had a great success with the recall of the Moroccan Sultan they always upheld. The Spaniards have few possessions in North Africa —a small part of Morocco, and the poor and remote Rio d’Oro.
French policy, like British policy, will look very shortsighted to historians. Both countries have had every interest in checking the rise of the kind of narrow, embittering and impoverishing nationalism which is rife everywhere and has been stimulated by local resentment against being colonials, an inferior people, under the tutelage of another. It is very
But the whole position could have been transformed for the better if the European nations had not been so jealous of each other. What has happened to Britain in Egypt is a direct result of a policy which for over half a century has been unfriendly to either French or Italian influence in that corner of Africa. At the end we managed to be the only European Power in the Levant and North Africa, with no one in Europe at all sorry to witness our difficulties and misfortunes. The proper approach to Africa should have been continental, treating local nationalism as something quite reasonable when it desired local self-government, but idiotic and retrograde if it talked of sovereignty under the conditions of modern life. None of these little kingdoms and States—and the same is true of Asia as of North Africa—can afford modern air forces, navies or armies, atomic power, or even large representation and public information services. All are trying with desperate makeshift economy to do all the things they think a sovereign State must attempt. The future of them all lies inside some larger grouping. The economic and the military future of Africa must either be bound up with the NATO countries, or with the Soviet Empire.
We are passing through an uneasy interregnum of unreal bragging and thoroughly ill-grounded independence. In terms of NATO, Americans today will readily understand
