THE TABLET, April 21st, 1956. VOL. 207, No. 6048

Published as a Newspaper

HE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

APRI L 21st, 1956

NINEPENCE

Sporting Chances : The Chancellor's Imaginative Step Responsibilities o f Intelligence : Freedom for What ? By the Bishop of Salford Co-Existence at Kônigswinter : Anglo-German Conversations. By Roland Hill

SPRING BOOK SUPPLEMENT A History o f the English-speaking Peoples, Volume I, by Sir Winston Churchill, reviewed by D.W.

Diaries, 1924-1932, by Beatrice Webb, reviewed by Christopher Hollis

Tiberius, by Gregorio Maranon, reviewed by J. J. Dwyer ; and Victor Hugo, by André Maurois, reviewed by Robert Speaight

Other reviews by Kenelm Foster, O.P., A. J. Brooker, Michael De-la-Noy, M. O’Leary, Elizabeth Sewell

Letitia Fairfield, Anthony Bertram, Wilfrid Purney, Anthony Lejeune

A. H. N. Green-Armytage and Sir Arnold Lunn

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Letters : Chess

THE GUESTS ARRIVE

H AVING stated our views before they arrived, we do not propose, while Marshal Bulganin and M. Khrushchev are in the country as the guests o f Her Majesty’s Government, to write more about them until they have gone and the visit can be assessed. We are now content to express the hope that those whose public duty it is to conduct the discussions which have become more and more the leading feature o f the visit will contrive to raise fundamental issues. They are matters which are so very well worth discussing, but which international diplomatic usage makes it very difficult to raise or pursue i f there is any unwillingness on either side. Assurances have been given that these fundamental matters will not be ignored, and we do not doubt that those assurances will be kept, and that such thorny subjects, even religion, will be spoken about. But how deeply and for how long is obviously something which hosts cannot determine or insist upon if guests turn them aside with brief pleasantries.

What we do venture to hope is that the visit will have as a by-product the ending o f many human tragedies o f enforced separation. Already we are glad to note that an appeal to M. Khrushchev has secured permission for a little Hungarian boy to rejoin his family in England, after the Hungarian Communist Government had callously refused to let him out. There are tens o f thousands o f these tragedies among the peoples o f Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, and this is the most fruitful end with which the Russian visitors could begin their public relations campaign, as a demonstration that the long era o f Stalin’s tyranny is going to be replaced by something better. Let there be an era o f amnesties, and of exit permits.

Whether or no the visit proves educative for the visitors, it is certain that the British Press has acquainted the British public with the past record and recent utterances o f these Communist leaders with a thoroughness that would not have been judged journalistically worth while but for their visit. In their different ways, all the main streams o f British opinion have their special reasons for their hostility to totalitarian Marxism, which is equally the enemy o f social or constitutional democracy, o f the liberalism o f which this country is a stronghold, and o f conservatism and traditionalism and religion.

The Manchester Guardian has concluded, just before the guests arrive, a “Khrushchev Anthology” o f his views about our society, mostly delivered in Asia, and very unflattering reading it makes. How far all this is going to be laughed off in slap-happy fashion we do not know. But great pains seems to be being taken to turn the visit to account, including a profession o f readiness on the part o f Soviet Russia to co-operate with other members o f the United Nations in trying to maintain peace in the Middle East. It may well be that, with many days now available for discussion, the Russians will much prefer to talk about the Middle East, and about disarmament; in a reference to the affairs o f third parties, they have made it plain that the future o f Germany is not for discussion here.

The United States Government and the British Government both turned down a French suggestion for a Middle Eastern Conference at this moment. Those who complain o f Mr. Dulles and o f a general American vagueness and indecision are doing less than justice to those whom they criticise. The Americans have the strongest political reasons for avoiding any close definition o f their attitude in an