THE TABLET July 6th, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6111

THE 'TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina e t Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 6th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Passing of Socialism: The International at Vienna

Austrian Socialism’s Mellowing: Contrasts and Changes for the Better

Secrets of Salazar: Reflections on his Twenty-five Years. By Denis Brass North Wales Revisited : The Revolution in Mountaineering. By Sir Arnold Lunn

The Reformation Surveyed : Mgr. Hughes’ Masterly Volume. By the Bishop of Salford

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

BREAKERS AHEAD

\ LTHOUGH beset at the moment by Commonwealth representatives, Mr. Macmillan continues his gallant effort to take his premiership lightly, and to communicate confidence not only to his own party but to the nation. He does well to make the most of this summer, for the portents are very ugly. It looks as though our post-war history to date divides into two periods. The first was that of Labour rule, a time of very high taxation and of steadily rising costs and prices, the period summed up afterwards by Earl Attlee in the pregnant phrase, “ We tried to do too much.” In those first six post-war years people who did not like either the taxation or the way the money was losing its value comforted themselves with various reflections about a period of transition, about the ideas of the party in power, which added up to the thought that things could be better in a few years’ time. Now, after nearly six years of Conservative rule, government by men much less easily reconciled than their opponents either to high taxation or creeping inflation, the doubt is spreading whether either evil can be curbed or controlled.

Mr. Maudling, having to defend what Mr. Nabarro points out is a 142 per cent increase in the price of coal since coal was nationalised, says, in effect, that the Government and the Coal Board are powerless. The nationalised industries, coal and the railways and the Post Office, lead the way in price increases for essential services, which then reflect themselves through the whole range of industry and provide the justification for next year’s wage increases.

Many people in the Labour Party do not really mind inflation, since it increases the power of the trade unions, representing current producers, against rentiers and owners of capital, if that capital is in the form of money. If the Conservatives cannot control it, the sensible conclusion for people to draw is that money is going to continue to diminish in purchasing power. In so far as that conclusion is widely drawn, it becomes itself a new factor forcing up prices, as people see that they will get more for what they buy this year than for what they buy next year. In a sound economy the opposite ought always to be true, that the advantage of saving should be decisive, the prospect that the money will keep its value, and buy more at the end, because of the added interest, than at the beginning. Now the country is living on a free-wheel momentum of past habits. The inculcation over the generations of the importance of saving has proved so much more potent than experience in making people still lend to the Government or invest in the giltedged market, although innumerable people have halved their savings by doing this who would have doubled them by buying land or jewellery. ,

It is on the whole a good thing that the big unions are shifting the emphasis from higher pay to shorter hours. Higher pay cannot fail to be directly inflationary, by increasing the demand for goods for consumption and the provision of the services attendant on the supply of those goods. Shorter hours can be mitigated in their effects by changes in methods of production, provided they are not a device for bringing in more overtime payments. Much more serious is the widespread mentality to which Mr. Campbell, the Secretary of the N.U.R., gives expression, by which certain standards of consumption are now taken for granted, even where it can be shown that they have been enjoyed at the expense of some other section of the community. Rent restriction has gone on for so long that people have forgotten that it was originally an emergency measure, and that in helping one category of people it was doing so at the expense of another category who did not have their loss made up to them as farmers, for example, have in cases where the public has been judged unable to pay an economic price for farm products. The electorate still has to recognise that the benefits of the Welfare State are not free, but have to be paid for in one form an another, and that it hits the competitive effectiveness of the country when they result in high taxation and when the beneficiaries are tempted to draw illusory conclusions that they are better off than in fact they really are. A Suspension of Nuclear Tests ?

A suspension of nuclear tests, with observation posts and instruments capable of detecting any breach of the agreement, even if in the first instance it is limited to a year, will be a step in the right direction ; and it is very important that there should be some step, while the possession of nuclear weapons is limited to three Powers. The great danger is that America and Russia may start equipping their associates and allies first with various forms of new artillery, and little by little extending the range of nuclear