THE TABLET, May 5th, 1956. VOL. 207, No. 6050

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 5th, 1956

NINEPENCE

After the Soviet Visit: Doubts about the Marx-Leninist Diagnosis Stirrings in Poland: Significant Developments in the Warsaw Parliament Colonel Nasser and th e Arab States: Uncertain Leadership. By Wilfred Ryder i

Fellow -T ravelling Bargains : The Flood of Communist' Books. By Jan Przybyla The Tragedy o f Roger C asem ent: Mr. MacColl’s Study. By Letitia Fairfield Empiricism and Belief: A Cambridge Controversy. By Dom Illtyd Trethowan

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Review s : Letters : Chess

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\

SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES T HE Disarmament Commission in London is not getting anywhere, and Sir Anthony Eden admitted in the House on Tuesday that it was in a tangle, while the Russian visitors spoke much more definitely on the lack of progress. Yet the broad picture which the world presents is one in which, as the implications of nuclear war are taken in and pondered, every country is beginning to think it is probably wasting a great deal of money on conventional weapons and armies, maintained on too big a scale for any of the small localized purposes for which they might be needed, and yet quite inadequate to nuclear war. In Moscow the May Day celebration was given a pointedly economic character, as though to emphasize the new line which Soviet policy intends to follow. It is a line which the West must watch warily, as long as the Soviet Union maintains such a vastly larger armed force than any other country. But there is no doubt that, if this policy is carried further, NATO will evolve in a parallel direction, and already much thought is being given to the need for making the Atlantic Alliance into something more than a military alliance against the kind of contingency which is being declared less and less probable.

has to be fought for all the time, both against Social Democrats and Nationalists, and that there is an unfortunate disparity between the permanence which NATO needs and the fluctuations and lack of permanence inherent in the parliamentary regime which, on all other grounds, everyone wants to see continuing in Germany. Those who have championed a fuller integration, such as Dr. Adenauer hoped to see, did so largely for this very reason, that what has been achieved could most of it be undone again only too easily given a different public opinion inside Germany.

The talks now due, to find ways of giving greater economic content to NATO, are really an attempt to take up again the cause of European unity in a larger setting and with fuller American and Canadian participation than United Europe could ever expect or ask for. The position is complicated by the increasing impact of German manufacturers in other countries, and of competition from which Britain is likely to be the chief sufferer in proportion as the British are half-hearted about adopting new methods which are adopted whole-heartedly in Germany and the United States and Canada.

ft is in this state of feeling that the German Foreign Minister, Dr. von Brentano, has come to London ; with the great unsettled issue of what contribution the German Government will make to the cost of maintaining the British Division whose presence on the Continent has been pledged to underpin the modest achievement in the way of a European Army. Dr. von Brentano has expressed himself optimistically, but it is clearly the kind of issue which under a parliamentary system an Opposition will exploit. There will be a constant, Russian suggestion that the presence of such troops is entirely unnecessary and is really intended to keep the Bonn Republic in line with its victors of yesterday, and that the Germans are being committed to an expense for something not in their interest, and so on. Speaking for Dr. Adenauer and his party, Dr. von Brentano has reaffirmed the cogent and deep reasons which align today’s democratic Germany with Western Europe. But it is clear that Dr. Adenauer’s policy

It is of far-reaching importance for the future of British exports that this country shall use the latest and most laboursaving machinery, but there is a stronger resistance here than in the other countries which compete in the same market. Christian sociology has always refused to agree that these questions ought only to be settled in terms of economic advantage, and has never liked the abstract approach of economists who continually talk of “labour” as being much more mobile than human families really are. When classical economics first worked out its idea of labour the mobility was much more a reality. There was no acute housing shortage, and the people affected were primarily thankful to be in work, since the alternative was the workhouse. They emigrated to face the greater hardships of the journeys of months in sailing vessels, and followed the work if they stayed in the country. With the rising standards that were the result and are the main justification of the last