THE TABLET September 21st, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6122

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840 SEPTEMBER 21st, 1957

NINEPENCE

After Gloueester : The Conservative Stock-taking 111 Kerala : A Visit to the Communist State in India. By Anthony de Silva Russia and the Zionists l The Harsh Treatm ent of Israeli Visitors to Moscow Child Guidance C lin ics: Serving the Handicapped. By Sarah F. McCabe 44 Die Sammlung ; German Lutherans Approach the Church. By Eva-Maria Jung

The Pope to the Jesuits l The Allocution to the General Congregation

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

GOOD NEWS FROM GERMANY

r pH E increased majority with which the German Christian

Democrats have been returned to power is not going to make Dr. Adenauer change his policy of governing by coalition, and securing the co-operation of smaller parties. The same wisdom inspired de Gasperi in Italy, when he said that he was resolved to use his overall majority to train his party in the habit of coalition, because, while it would not always have an absolute majority, it could reasonably count on always being one of the main parties. The German Christian Democrats are a party which, while predominantly Catholic, also has its strong Protestant element, and it is not confessional as for instance the neighbouring Dutch Catholic party is. This broad base and the coalition habit can both be usefully emphasised since in the election the German bishops and clergy urged support for Dr. Adenauer with an emphasis that the Church authorities usually reserve for occasions when the opposition is Communist.

The victory is important and auspicious in many ways, and ought to have been more generously appreciated in the British Press, even allowing for the continual hankering of left-wing papers for a Social Democrat victory. It is a victory which is particularly good news for Britain because it reinforces Dr. Erhard’s authority as Finance Minister. While Britain moves towards Europe economically with a sense of making the best of it, and seeking to secure a wider free trade area rather than a small Europe with a high tariff wall, it is important that Dr. Erhard, too, is more interested in lower tariffs everywhere than in constructing the Protectionist Europe of six. The protagonists of the Europe of six are thinking as much or more of the political unification which is to follow a customs union, as it did in the making of the German Empire. But simply in terms of economic advance, what is wanted is the largest possible market to which exporters can count upon having access. The promotion to the Cabinet of Mr. Maudling, the Minister In charge of these very important negotiations, is an earnest of the Macmillan Government’s intention to press forward, and to have something to show before the next election. It will be a hard race with time.

Meanwhile, we should not under-estimate the revolution that has taken place in German thinking, which Dr. Erhard exemplifies. Germany was always pre-eminently the country of national political economy, its text-book the work of List, who called his system national; and the Hohenzollern Empire instinctively put the State behind German trade as an element in the greatness of the State. The Third Reich pushed this tendency to the uttermost, and was the forerunner of all manner of controls over foreign trade which other Governments have taken over since. lust as Socialism everywhere gained greatly because men had had practical experience of the hardships bred of liberal economics, twenty-five and fifty years ago, so in Germany liberal ideas have been immensely strengthened by an opposite memory, of the over-controlled life that had to be lived under Hitler. We should make the most of the emergence of a Germany in which liberal economic ideas have an authority that no one would have prophesied for them.

If Mr. Thorneycroft really is, as he told the electors of Gloucester, nine-tenths Liberal, he is to be condoled with for having to live a very frustrated life, for it is regulations made by his department which meet the British business man at every turn, whether he is seeking to borrow or develop overseas or place investments abroad; all the things he can see Dr. Erhard increasingly encouraging our German competitors to do.

Dr. Erhard is the great enemy of controls, all that t'ne Continent terms, and knows, as “ dirigisme,” but he appreciates that the corollary of a free system is that the people taking part in market activities must be allowed to keep their profits, if they are also expected to carry their losses. The present British pattern is to leave businesses to carry all their losses, but to take for the purposes of the Government, through one tax or another, about half the profit of companies, and then further to mulct the individuals whose business it is with a steeply graduated surtax. The only daylight at the end of the tunnel is the chance that productivity can be made to increase faster than taxation overtakes it, so that the Government will still be able to live as it is