THE TABLET, June 2nd, 1956 VOL. 207, No. 6054

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW t

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JUNE 2nd, 1956

NINEPENCE

Black P rospects: The Outlook for British Costs Italian In d ic a t io n s : Consolidating the Centre. By Dennis Walters Dead Sea Scrolls: III : The Vatican Library’s Acquisitions. By Geoffrey Graystone, S.M. Counting th e F lo ck : An Essay in Religious Sociology. By W. N. T. Roberts A Period Saint: The Secret of St. Philip Neri. By Mgr. R. A. Knox V io lence in Ireland: “Mutiny at the Curragh.” By Christopher Hollis Homes and Fam ilies: Cardinal Griffin’s Pastoral Letter

Critics’ Columns : N o tebook : Book Review s : Letters : Chess

TITO ON THE MOVE

M ARSHAL TITO is the latest ruler to see a new scope for a small country in the business of international brokerage ; and everyone should welcome this new kind of international bid for prominence. It is not, of course, new. It is the natural and recurring ambition of small States. The world today has a number of countries whose rulers see themselves as particularly well placed to act as go-betweens where there are sharp cleavages, as between the Communist and non■ Communist world, or between the new Asian and African •nationalisms and the European countries who have ruled in Asia or Africa. But Marshal Tito is not really well placed as long as he professes himself a Communist not less wholehearted than the Moscow Communists, although proceeding by somewhat different methods.

His present visit to Moscow is really a prelude, a demonstration that he is in no sense an isolated figure, but, on the contrary, full of international business and well viewed everywhere. There may be no great harm to the West in this, but it is clear that he can be very useful to the Russians in Italy if he is willing to exert himself. The visit of Signor Togliatti to Belgrade has been intended to mark the end of a division between Communists. The Italian Communists were in a very difficult position over Trieste, not liking to go against Italian national sentiment. That sentiment has always been so curiously intense about the future of that port, though it is a port of very little importance to Italy, though potentially of great importance to Central Europe, which, it was built less than a hundred years ago to serve. But if Marshal Tito wants to strengthen his relations with two of his neighbours, Italy and Austria, he can do so most easily by showing more understanding of the aspirations of the Catholic Croats and Slovenes.

Marshal Tito is also presented with new opportunities, such as he could not have expected, of making friends and influencing people in Greece, where there are now many Greeks anxious to be assured that NATO is not really necessary, that there is nothing to be feared from Russia, and that it is Greece’s fellow-members of NATO, Britain and Turkey, who need to be opposed.

As Marshal Tito is a professional Communist, thoroughly indoctrinated and trained, it may be that his major interest really is in building a collectivist Marxist State, as industrialized as possible, out of the recalcitrant peoples over whom he rules. It is a bewildering experience for them. Everybody over fifty remembers very vividly the invention of Yugoslavia at the Versailles Conference; its first uneasy twenty years, when no-one was sure what either the form of government or the relations between peoples were to be; and then the sudden rise, in a country where there were virtually no Communists, of a Communist partisan movement which took advantage of the war years and the allied help to establish itself in power. Marshal Tito’s great difficulty is that of all Communist regimes in anti-Communist countries, a lack of sufficient number of convinced Communists to man the kind of government which Communism requires. It needs great numbers of people, because it is the most ambitious form of government there can be, which considers no part of life exempt from its supervision and recasting ; and when he goes to Moscow now, it may well be because he is in need of a special kind of help, the professional Communist technologists and the training facilities to provide the people necessary, if he is to continue to work against the grain.

But there is always the possibility that after a time men and parties flag when they realize, though they may not admit, that they are working all the time against deeply entrenched human instincts and desires. There is always a force making for relaxation in conformity with what everybody wants. This we believe is happening in Poland now, and there are some signs of it in Yugoslavia ; and if so the surrounding countries are all themselves so placed today, for one reason or another, that the opportunity for Yugoslavia to emerge as a different kind of State, in genuine relations with them all, is better than it has ever been.