THE TABLET, December 10th, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6029

Published as a Newspaper'

THE TABI ET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

FOUNDED IN 1840

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

DECEMBER 101h, 1955

NINEPENCE

Strikes in Scotland: The Silence of the TUC and the Warning from the Bishops

Talk o f a Popular Front: Political Prospects in Paris. By John Dingle A Letter from V ienna: Oil and the Opera. By Stella Musulin U n ity in American Labour: II : Aims and Aspirations. By John Fitzsimons Our Lady o f Westminster: An Ancient Devotion Revived. By H. M. Gillett Crime in England and Wales: The Statistics for 1954. By Sarah F. McCabe

Words in Advent: III : The Corporal Works of Mercy. By Illtud Evans, O.P. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Myth o f Sisyphus, by Albert Camus ; Icon and Idea, by Sir Herbert

Read ; Famous Trials 5, edited by James H. Hodge ; Travelling Hopefully, by Walmesley Charlton ; The Christian Experience, by Jean Mouroux ; Cardinal Bernard Griffin, by Michael de la Bedoyere ; Home is the Heart, by Veronica Henriques ; The Visitants, by Ernest Frost ; The Story-Teller, by Gil Buhet ; Excelsior ! , by Paul Hyde Bonner ; and The Dove with the Bough o f Olive, by Dunstan Thompson. Reviewed by Elizabeth Sewell, Anthony Bertram, Letitia Fairfield, Robert Cardigan, John Beckwith and

John Biggs-Davison, M.P.

uncertain whether M. Molotov is back in favour or M. Malenkov, whether a Leninist line is prevailing or whether a Stalinist, or whether a new one of M. Khrushchev’s own. The Supreme Soviet has been called for December 23rd, ostensibly to discuss next year’s budget but mainly, it seems, to discuss larger political issues. Moscow Radio the other day was quoting words written by Lenin more than thirty years ago, striking the sombre note for Moscow’s Christmas :

MISSION TO WASHINGTON S IR ANTHONY EDEN and Mr. Harold Macmillan are to go to Washington at a time when the lack of coherent Western leadership has tempted the Soviet leaders to new and unbridled “cold war,” as shown in their brash speeches in India and Burma. Gone is the summer’s caution. The very brashness, the contemptuous lack of any restraint, reflects the increasing weakness of Western policy these past six •months, since the Geneva meeting ; and, indeed, these past eighteen months, since the surrender of Indo-China at Geneva a year before. Unless the Western leadership is strengthened, unless a new sense of purpose and meaning is given to it, the position will deteriorate still further. It cannot be static. Even “co-existence” cannot mean a static crystallization ; in co-existence with the Soviet Union he who hesitates may well be lost, and since Sir Winston Churchill ceased to be Prime Minister, and certainly since President Eisenhower became ill, Anglo-American policy has-become far too hesitant. The Foreign Office dithering over M. Khrushchev’s Indian speeches, censuring one unfortunate official for calling them “hypocritical” and replacing him with a more senior official who called the next speech “ludicrous,” was not only undignified but altogether too typical.

When the visit to Washington takes place, President Eisenhower will have been back at work for more than a month, and the presidential election campaigns will not yet have begun in earnest. Marshal Bulganin and M. Khrushchev will be shortly due in London, availing themselves of an invitation extended in July, in the full glow of the optimism conjured up at Geneva. Much water has flowed under the bridges since then, including much water of the Moskva. M. Khrushchev travels in the care-free spirit of a man confident that he is the master at home, fearing nobody’s censure and taking no care over what he says ; but it remains

“Purging from its ranks the defeatist and treacherous elements, the Party argued that opportunism should not be tolerated, but should be removed as an ulcer from a healthy organism. The Party is the leading detachment of the working class and its militant staff. To have opportunists and traitors among the staff while waging the struggle against our enemies is tantamount to being in the position of somebody who is fired upon from both the front and the rear.” There is perhaps more purging in prospect now. There has been some, in Georgia, in the last few weeks. But if Leninism is still the language spoken, then the supposed beginnings of détente were illusory from the first and the “relaxation of tension” which some have professed to discern never had any meaning. What the Western statesmen must pursue in Washington is not the will-o’-the-wisp that fascinated them at Geneva but a positive line of their own. They must aspire to something more than mere containment : they must find something to say. Not to have anything particular to say is necessarily to give ground which must in the course of time become political and then territorial ground. That has been the sad history of the international conferences from Teheran to Geneva. Readiness to believe what the Soviet leaders say, refusing to think that they do not care what they say, comes fundamentally