THE TABLET May 25t1i, 1957. VOL. 209, No. 6105

TH E TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 25th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Public and the Press : The Threat to Diversity Negative Freedoms I The Balance Sheet in M. Gomulka’s Poland. By Aubcron Herbert

Reforming the Welfare State : The Problem of Pensions. By Michael P. Fogarty Revolution in Colombia: The Church and the Recent Changes

“ The Potting Shed*': Mr. Graham Greene’s Play in New York. By M. C. D’Arcy, S.J A Strange Device : The Cannes Film Festival. By Maryvonne Butcher The POpe to Poland : An Encyclical for the Tercentenary of St. Andrew Bobola Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

A FRENCH RECOIL

/"'OMMUNISTS and conservatives voting together have ^ brought down M. Mollet’s Government. The Communists object to his foreign and the conservatives to his fiscal policy. Perhaps they would have been less hostile if the Middle.Eastern policy had met with more success; but in general French conservatives are always a leading example of the besetting sin of democracies, which is to will the end and not be prepared to will the means. The end now is the retention of French authority in North Africa—• an immensely costly business, where success cannot be guaranteed, for it involves the maintenance of a very large army in the hope that the depth and volume of Algerian national sentiment is not really so formidable that it will not grow, or grow the more rapidly because of the presence of the French troops. M. Mollet’s financial proposals, even when they have been whittled down, were formidable and objectionable. Mainly because companies have to keep exact accounts and are easier to tax than individuals, companies were to bear the brunt of the new measures, which included, for exaniDle, a 30 per cent surtax on any increases in dividends such as would normally come about with the rise of prices, and a 10 per cent tax on the depreciation of stocks; a curious proposal, tempting companies to overvalue their stock in a way that must be bad for any national economy, inviting the country to imagine that it is richer than it is.

Whenever a French Government falls, it is pointed out that this will weaken the voice of France in important meetings lying just ahead. This is always true, and is true today. The general expectation is that M. Mollet will prove extremely difficult to replace. No other Socialist will want to govern with conservative support. The Socialists and the M.R.P. will not want to support a predominantly conservative ministry. It is not remarkable that M. Mollet should have fallen: what is remarkable is the great length of the tight-rope he has walked in the longest lived administration of the last ten years. His fall reflects and reminds the world of divisions in the Chamber which have been through his achievement largely lost from view. The Communists still have a quarter of the seats, and the other three-quarters are grouped in blocks traditionally opoosed to one another.

M. Mollet’s fall comes when M. Mendés-France is in eclipse, for his policy for Algiers, sensible though it may be, encountered and affronted French national sentiments, quickened by the tension over Suez, and made uneasy by the general shift of NATO towards reliance on nuclear weapons and fields of defensive activity in which the French play a very minor role, and could only play a bigger role by immense and politically quite impracticable additional taxation.

M. Pineau could announce as one piece of satisfactory news that he and Mr. Dulles were in agreement about the immediate next steps to be taken over the Suez Canal; that although France is alone in not using the Canal at present, she is one of a group in the next stage. But it is a nebulous enough “next stage,” and Mr. Dulles chops and changes a good deal in what is to him essentially a tactical negotiation, strictly subordinate to his main purpose of containing and out-matching Soviet influence in the Middle East. He has none of the outraged sense which the French have that a valuable and mainly French possession has been stolen and must be recovered. The French thinking on Suez becomes much more intelligible when it is realised that they think of the Canal as a thing, something stolen, of which by a swift move they sought to repossess themselves in a way that might have made sense if the Canal was in fact a transportable object that could have been taken off into safe keeping.

The fall of M. Mollet’s Government should help President Eisenhower in a rather difficult battle he is having in Congress to get his budget for foreign aid approved. The administration has had to accept cuts of over $600 million, but the appropriation is still considerably more than Great Britain’s defence budget. It is recommended to Congress as strictly an alternative to direct expenditure on American defence, and hitherto it has been more congenial to the American temper to provide aid, including military aid,