THE TABLET July 13th. 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6112

Published as a Newspaper

T ? FT7 81 GT' A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 13th, 1957

N1NEPENCE

The Fall of Molotov : The Significance of the Moscow Expulsions.

Turkey and the Baghdad Pact : Satisfaction If Not Delight. By Derek Patmore

The Common Market : How It Atfects Belgium. By Mark Grammens Secrets of Suez I The Bromberger Disclosures. By Eugene HinterhofE A Stuart. Anniversary : The Cardinal Duke of York. By Aubrey Noakes

After-care of Prisoners : New Opportunities for a Work of Mercy

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE FRENCH RATIFY

r PH E French Chamber has passed the Treaty setting up the

European Common Market and the Euratom authority, on the evening when the British Prime Minister, backed by Sir Winston Churchill, was addressing a great European Union meeting in the Central Hall. Sir Winston Churchill, warmly acclaimed, said his message was the same as it was ten years ago, let Europe unite. It is a message which was only muted on his lips during the years from 1951 to 1955 when he was Prime Minister and might have done so much more about it. Mr. Macmillan at any rate has not kept his enthusiasm as an out-of-office hobby, and has pledged his Government to meaning business. Sir Robert Boothby made a cogent appeal to the old guard of Empire Trade to realise that it is all Europe, and not Britain alone, that must develop the overseas territories, all crying out for capital. Lord Beaverbrook might, like Henry II, turn his face to the wall, on calling for a list of those who have deserted him and reading there the name of his favourite, the Australian Premier. But Mr. Menzies, with his usual robust commonsense, sees the case for British participation in Europe, and is naturally anxious to stop the longsustained pretence that it is the British Dominions which are the obstacle.

When the Prime Minister says so resoundingly that if we have to choose between the Commonwealth we have to choose the Commonwealth, no one knows better than he doeS that the sharp “ either or ” antithesis bears very little relation to the complex reality, which is that we need the fullest access we can get to both great markets and should not dream of turning our back on either. If we turned our back on Europe, we should soon find the Germans in the Commonwealth markets, immensely well equipped to compete there because the great European market had enabled them so to equip themselves.

The great danger facing this country is that the upshot of very cautious aoproaches will be that it will not be sure of its big markets anywhere. What manufacturers want is what American manufacturers enjoy, vast numbers of wellolT homogenous customers, who all want exactly the same thing, the same breakfast food, or car, or hat, or smoke, or book. For years now the British manufacturer has grown used to being scolded for not sufficiently studying the widely varying tastes and peculiarities of his customers in live very different continents. All this catering for local markets has become vastly more expensive in the last few years, and nothing adds more to the overheads of a business. It all begins to cost too much when there is always the danger that a balance of payment crisis in the importing country may lead to a shutting out of the British article made for that country and not saleable anywhere else. Those who grow or mine raw materials are in a much stronger position. they are not under constant pressure to change their product, if it is rubber or cocoa or tin. as manufacturers and especially manufacturers of inessentials, are.

When Mr. Thorneycroft speaks in the city next week it will be a more momentous occasion than it may appear, even if he seems to say little, he will have to admit that the latest round of increased charges, including new postal charges, have been forced on the Government because its various attempts to prevent the steady erosion of the value of money have not been or will not be sufficiently effective.

There is one school of thought that says the only thing to do is to let inflation run its course, as other countries on the European mainland have done in the past, with the knowledge that it will at any rate wipe out the huge annual burden of the national debt. Of the three divisions into which the Budget falls, the economies on defence are not going to be in themselves sufficient to lift the excessive load of taxation. The sufferers, like the holders of war loan, gel very little after taxation today, and even they might be better off in a much more lightly taxed community, provided they have not got all their capital in fixed interest securities.

Depreciation of the coinage is the oldest and most habitual device of embarrassed rulers, and their answer to conditions outside their control; it is a way of throwing off past obligations and claims on current production. We are headed for it more slowly and decorously than the Germans and French after 1918, or the Italians in the defeat of 1944-5, and we need not fear the depreciation will go anything like so far; but the direction is unmistakeablc, and it is proving im­