THE TABLET July 27th, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6114

Published as a Newspaper

' : ' ABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 27th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Government as Shareholder : The Latest Socialist Compromise Lawyers of the Resistance : The Reformation and the Inns of Court

Corpus Christi in Poland : And a Czechoslovak Contrast. By Hugh Noyes

The Essence of Thomism : A Review of M. Gilson’s New Book. By D. J. B. Hawkins

The Prudence of St. Thomas More : A Sermon preached by Fr. Colomba Ryan, O.P.

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

THE LULL PRECEDING

S Parliament rises there is a deceptive lull in the inter­

national situation, where many great issues are slowly corning to the boil. The French face a gathering crisis; little by little on both sides in Algeria the feeling is hardening, both in Tunis and Morocco, and in Morocco the Sultan, who has hitherto refrained from taking an overt anti-French line, has now added his voice to those calling for Algerian independence. The French are asked to be content with the status of experts, advisers, technicians, in place of any recognition that it is they who have made Algeria, and that nearly a million of them are permanently settled there and belong to the country. Up to now the attempts of outgoing colonial powers, like the French and the Dutch in Asia, to retain a real foothold by creating a union with the newly recognised state have proved illusory. They have served, by dividing the separation into stages, to soften the blow to French or Dutch opinion. But nowhere yet among the new political creations has there been anything parallel to Algeria, because nowhere else has there been such a large and long-established European population. Algeria has from this point of view more in common with South Africa than with any of the new Asiatic or African states, and it is uniquely the test of what European and Moslem relations are going to be in the future, and whether there is enough statesmanship to enable the two communities to live together. The difficulties would not be so formidable if the Moslems of today had not become so uncritically addicted to the quite recent European concept of democratic majority rule. In Algeria that would mean the permanent subordination of the French, although they represent so much of the wealth, the skill and culture of the country. What is really wanted is a genuinely mixed constitution, a return to the ideas of Aristotle and St. Thomas instead of those of the French Jacobins, something like the Glorious Constitution which used to be the toast of the English taking a pride in the balance of forces in the state between the Crown, the Lords and the Commons, each representing a different principle and serving to correct and moderate the other parts of the Constitution. It is ironical, looking at the very undemocratic history of Mohammedanism that today’s Moslems should be so little receptive of any ideas except the idea of the Sovereign Assembly, based on a religious and racial majority vote. It is also ironical that the French, who have been since the French Revolution the great protagonists of this despotic conception, should be the chief victims of its vogue in North Africa today. Conservative Adaptibility

The Prime Minister made his political speech last Saturday at Bedford as a compliment to the Colonial Secretary, after a quarter of a century during which Mr. Lennox Boyd has sat for a never safe but always held mid-Bedfordshire seat. The Prime Minister paid him a deserved tribute for the way he has established a wide range of live human relationships with the leaders who are emerging in so much of the colonial empire. The creation of new communities is being fostered and new states are being established, under a Conservative Government and Minister, in a way that would have seemed highly improbable when the present Colonial Secretary first entered Parliament as a keen young Empire man, looking forward to responsibilities very unlike those which have in fact come to him. This business of granting independence here, there, and everywhere, within very short time limits, and to people with a very scanty store of men and experience to draw on if things go badly, has been handled in the only possible way, with a good grace and no attempt to drag things out for the sake of keeping power a little longer: and it has been Mr. Lennox Boyd’s great achievement that he has convinced both Asians and Africans that they are not being played with, and, seeing how suspicious they are, this is a considerable achievement. But it does mean very early dates for peoples who look like landing themselves in severe financial and then political troubles. It is a relief that they will not be able to blame Great Britain, but we cannot be content with that. These are all countries over which we have taken a great deal of trouble in the past, both politically and economically, so that we want the end to crown the work, and do not want to see the work jeopardised because of final outbursts of impatience. Mr. Lennox Boyd is a distinguished figure in the list of Colonial Secretaries, and it is as well, for he looks like