THE TABLET, June 9th, 1956. VOL. 207, No. 6055

THE TABLET

Published as a N ew spaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JUNE 9th, 1956

NINEPENCE

Oil and Strategy: The Limitations of Cyprus Conservative E conom ic s : Two Schools of Thought within the Party. By Colin Clark Prospects for Professor Romme : Next Week’s Elections in the Netherlands D iscussion in G erm any: Free Speech in the Waiting Room. By Desmond Fennell A Housing A nom a ly : Subsidies and Differential Rents. By G. W. Sanders The Church in E ssex: An Historical Exhibition at Ingatestone Hall Critics’ Columns : N otebook : Book Review s : Letters : Chess

MEN OF THERMIDOR

T HE visit of Marshal Tito to Moscow has coincided with a further exposure of Stalin as a tyrant in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible, one to whose timely decease M. Molotov, in particular, owes it that he is alive today, and reasonably secure ; though he has been retired from the office of Foreign Minister he remains a Deputy Premier. He was not brought to London because he was too closely associated with Stalin, whose mouthpiece for saying “No” he was for so many years. It is too early to form an impression of his successor, Shepilov, an ex-editor of Pravda, because the great truth the world is being begged to understand is that none of the present hierarchy were able to be themselves so long as Stalin was alive. Now they are the men of Thermidor after the fall of Robespierre. Vabsent a toujours tort, and Stalin, in his happily permanent absence elsewhere, will become increasingly wrong. He is the convenient scapegoat, now that it has been decided that the world revolution can be brought about much more safely and effectively by less heavyhanded methods. In the new phase of economic and ideological penetration, Marshal Tito can play a part in Europe which the Russians themselves cannot play so long as they represent, as they must, the ultimate military power, which is the reason why popular risings against Communist Governments cannot be attempted with any hope of success.

The whole nature of the struggle is changing, so that the anti-Communist populations are achieving some results, forcing a certain small measure of liberalization on their rulers by their non-co-operation ; while the rulers begin to perceive that they have much better prospects of winning friends by tempering their ruthless Marxism with a little more humanity. These are more intelligent policies that are coming from Moscow than those of Stalin in his last years, which raised up NATO and produced the showdown in Berlin and then in Korea, making it clear that the Western world was not going to yield for ever. In proportion as the cold war becomes a debate, all the chief Governments conducting it will have to learn to think differently, and give more attention to public opinion, particularly in the countries where it is coming into existence for the first time. On their side, the Russians have had the easy end up to now. They have only had to denounce. Sir John Glubb has been tireless since his enforced return to this country in arousing people to a sense of how much we are allowing to go by default in the part of the world where he has spent his life.

There has been a revolution in business practice since the last century, and most of it in theJast thirty years, so that today every large concern gives a lot of thought to public relations, to how it looks from the outside ; and this has come increasingly to mean that the policies of businesses are themselves increasingly moulded by a regard to public reputation. Governments also have learnt a great deal, beginning with World War I ; but the question is whether we are doing enough even yet, and whether what we do do does not lose too much of its effect by starting from the wrong assumptions —wrong in the sense that they are assumptions that the listeners will not naturally understand or accept. When we are denounced for colonialism or imperialism, as Marxists and local nationalists denounce us, the reply is equally wide of the mark if it is too idealistic or too cynical. The British are fond of moving abruptly from one gear to the other, sometimes talking of how much we have done for the Indians or the Egyptians as though we had gone to their countries from a sort of secular missionary zeal. We can take pride that many individuals have done that, seizing the chance of doing some fruitful and constructive work in their lives. But the national interest has been commercial, and this should not be concealed or apologized for, for it has been a process of mutual benefit ; and we need to say much more about our great part in developing international trade, to the immense enrichment of the world.

But these arguments cannot be alternated with purely selfregarding arguments about our determination to defend this or that vital interest, which stultify the only fruitful conception we need to impress, that the progress of the world requires