THE TABLET September 14th, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6121

THE TAB; I A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 14th, 1957

N1NEPENCE

West Germany Votes : Issues in the Election Campaign

The Wolfenden Report : The Reservations of Mr. Adair. By Letitia Fairfield

Danger in the Middle East : The Russians in Syria. By Eugene Hinterhoff

The Pattern of Voluntary Schools : By the Bishop of Salford

Poets and the People : A Tale from Trastevere. By Desmond O’Grady

Adult Education I The Concern of the Voluntary Bodies. By H. J. Parkinson

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

MOSCOW AND PEKING

INVINCIBLE optimism is only one degree less likely to A mislead than invincible ignorance. It was widely shared in this country and the United States during the London discussions of the United Nations Disarmament Subcommittee, which reached their fruitless conclusion last weekend; and there is all the more dismay now as a consequence, among those who, hanging on every hopeful word that came from Washington, paid no attention to what was being said at the same time in Moscow. A useful letter in The Times has recalled the language that was being used five months ago by Pravda and Moscow Radio, obviously preparing their readers and listeners for the eventual announcement that the talks had broken down altogether. So it was throughout the period of the talks, which the Russians, as it is difficult in retrospect to dispute, were only carrying on for their propaganda value until the time when they might transfer the same propaganda to the General Assembly, as they are now about to do.

The same invincible optimism was well illustrated in the leading article of The Times on Tuesday, with an expression of hope that the General Assembly of the United Nations “ may be able to shame the Kadar regime into mitigating some of the harshness of its police action.” A regime that was not ashamed last November is not in the least likely to start feeling ashamed now. If the harshness ”is in fact mitigated, it will not be from shame but as a matter of cold policy, by a decision taken in Moscow — a decision that would be comparable to that taken in regard to Poland last October, when M. Gomulka was allowed to set Poland on a new course not from any repugnance for what had gone before but from apprehension about the alternative.

The Poles believe, rightly or wrongly, that the decisive pressure then came from Peking. Certainly it did not come from any Western capital. Eastern Europe is now humming with rumours about the power of Peking, and much reliance is being placed in it; perhaps too much. The Poles say that Stalin began the Korean war largely to entangle the Chinese Communists, of whom he was jealous, and that the Chinese have never forgiven the Russians for it. It is said that Mao

Tse-tung hopes soon to visit Marshal Tito in Belgrade, where M. Gomulka has been, this week; although no announcement has been made. Nor has anything more been heard of the reports that were current a few weeks ago, that he would include Eastern Germany in his expected visit to Europe, Which, planned to take him first to Warsaw, has already been twice deferred. It may be doubted whether the Chinese Communists are really anxious to play a major role in Europe at all, whatever their rivalries with the Russians. But it remains important that they are credited with a readiness to do so. Their voice carries more weight in Moscow than that of the United Nations, and arouses more hope in Hungary.

It is difficult to see what point there can be in sending a United Nations envoy to Budapest, and even from there on to Moscow, to demand the acceptance at this time of day of resolutions which were rejected out of hand when they were passed by the General Assembly, the best part of a year ago. There is no point in proving to the world that M. Kadar is still unrepentant, because nobody thinks anything else. There might be a reason for this mission if the idea was to give his Government one last chance before expelling Hungary from the United Nations, but no such expulsion is likely; nor is it desirable, since the main service of the United Nations at the political level lies in maintaining contact where the separating gulfs are otherwise widest. To expel Hungary without also expelling the Soviet Union would be to deny the main thesis of the United Nations report which is under debate, since it would be to say that Hungary is guilty in a sense in which the Soviet Union is not. The importance of the Report lies in bringing out the Soviet responsibility for what took place in Hungary, and proclaiming it to the world. But to expel the Soviet Union from the United Nations would be to deprive the United Nations of its raison d’etre.

A member of the Government of M. Nagy, now in prison in Budapest, has smuggled not only out of his prison but out of Hungary a document in which, among other things, he argues that it is in the Russian interest to relax the grip