A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Reqina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 21st, 1956

NINEPENCE

The Russian V i s i t: The Balance of Advantage “Progressive Catholicism ” in Poland : The Pax Movement. By Auberon Herbert Maltese Enosis ? : Before the Referendum. By John Eppstein M iddle East Conversations : l l : Jews, Christians and Moslems. ByJ. E. Alexander Wolfgang Amadeus M o z a r t : Reflections on the Bicentenary. By Cuthbert Girdlestone

Far Eastern Carmel : “Good Friends of God” in Singapore. By C. B. Acworth B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The Man Who Was Shakespeare, by Calvin Hoffman ; Cicero and the

Roman Republic, by F. R. Cowell ; Leaders o f British Industry, by G. H. Copeman ; Wine’s My Line, by T. A. Layton ; Bridge : Card Play Technique, by Victor Mollo and Nico Gardener ; Map o f Monastic Britain, North Sheet ; and Bruckner and Mahler, by H. F. Redlich. Reviewed by Hugh Dinwiddy, P. G. Walsh, Colin Clark, Edward Quinn, Hillar Kallas, Professor David

Knowles and Rosemary Hughes. Review o f R eview s : The Monthlies at Home

THE H

T HE chief advantage of Sir Anthony Eden’s visit to Washington is that it will perhaps do something to keep the policies of Britain and the United States more closely in step in the Far East and Near East. For a long time now the Americans have taken a strong line in the Far East and a much more equivocal one in the Near East, although both are parts of a common front. The British emphasis has been the opposite. There has been a rather precipitate recognition of the Chinese Communist Government, from which little good has resulted, and a rather half-hearted acquiescence in the resolute American policy. But in the Near East, where Britain has felt at home for a century, our policy has constantly felt the handicap of an absence of American support There has been a rather jejeune American idea that it has been British imperialism that has stood in the way of cordial partnerships accompanied by a free flow of oil, and American representatives, both political and commercial, have thought they were at an advantage and could talk to the Arabs as fellow-democrats and business associates on a firm and equal footing. There has not been the solidarity there should be, and needs to be in the very dangerous phases that are now unfolding.

Sir Anthony Eden will also have the opportunity to explain why, on the whole, the balance of advantage is with letting the invitations to the Russian leaders to visit Britain stand. Mr. Dulles will have the opportunity of explaining away the very unfortunate article he let Life print, which he must have known would cause uneasiness among all America’s allies and associates. It gave the impression of American Secretaries of State being expected to juggle with hydrogen bombs. The rest of the world knows that there is no particular training to fit a man to be Secretary of State, except that he is generally a corporation lawyer, and that in the last fifteen years, since Cordell Hull, four or five men of very different temperaments

BRICK have been entrusted with the power to threaten nuclear war as a necessary part of his regular work. That is the unfortunate idea that Dulles contrived to convey, and the moral is that there should be much more constant consultation between the members of what is, from our point of view, a great military alliance whose strength is the immense area it covers, but all of whose members would accordingly be involved in the consequences of decisions taken in Washington. In an election year, Mr. Dulles has made his Democratic opponents a handsome present, and Mr. Stevenson has not been slow to make his comment. Presidents, after all, are elected ; they can be closely scrutinised ; they can be said to be the country’s choice, perhaps the country’s fault. But under the American system the Secretary of State is the President’s personal choice ; he may be a man little known to the public, and perhaps not very well known to the President, who choses him to please some section of the country ; and he ought not to aspire to, or wield, or boast about, the immense responsibility which Mr. Dulles shows himself as taking in his stride.

Yet it is better to drop bricks than bombs, and Mr. Dulles, facing on Tuesday the largest Press conference of his career, might have made a happier impression if he had not been so determined to insist that everything could be explained, and if he had been readier instead to face the issue which was being pressed upon him, which was whether the threat of nuclear warfare is used by the Americans as a normal support for their diplomacy, to be stressed or soft-pedalled as the occasion may demand. The article in Life was based on an interview given to Mr. Shepley at the beginning of December, but Mr. Dulles did not know, and apparently had not asked, when the article would be published ; nor had he read it before publication, or, apparently, asked to read it, which is surely very extraordinary when the American Secretary of State is discussing