THE TABLET. November 2nd. 1957. VOL. 210, NO. 6128.

THETA A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

NOVEMBER 2nd, 19 57

NINEPENCE

After Ipswich: The Parties Re-furnishing The Fall of Marshal Zhukov: The Army and the Party. By Czeslaw Jesrnan Strikes in France : The Industrial Side of the Crisis. By John Dingle Preparing for the Lourdes Centenary: II. By nitud Evans, o p Fhe Church Emergent: The First Two Centuries. By R. A. Markus A Devonshire Saint : St. Brannock at Braunton. By Dont John Stephan

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

MR. BEVAN IN AMERICA

jy iR . ANEURIN BEVAN in the United States will be

* able to hear as well as to speak, and we hope he will not have to do all the talking. It is a dialogue that is fruitful, and while it is an advantage to show an open mind and a readiness to revise and change views, it is also necessary that the new views shall be shown to be deeply considered. Mr. Bevan will probably do little good if he goes at the American public like a bull at a gate, and creates the general impression that he wants them simultaneously to make overtures for summit talks with the Russian leaders, to disavow Chiang Kai-shek and accept Communist China in the United Nations, and to continue the aid to Marshal Tito. The case for each of these courses is weakened and not strengthened if they are all advocated together, and will be summed up as advice to appease the Communists everywhere, and especially wherever they are showing a formidable and unfriendly face.

Mr. Bevan would be much better advised to leave Red China to one side' on this visit, and to concentrate on what is much more immediate—the Middle East. There he is on very solid ground when he points out that America cannot exclude Russian influence, that the Russians are there, and that it rests with local Governments how much influence the Russians have. Time is against the American policy of offering help that is conditional on the recipients taking no help from Russia ; while the Russians more diplomatically offer less, but what they do offer they offer without strings. The Americans at one time thought they had to try to fill the vacuum left by Britain. But in so far as there was anything to be called a vacuum meaning Arab Governments very much on their own — it has come about through resentment of British policy on the part of peoples intensely jealous of a political independence that is quite a new experience. What the Arabs have found so far in the Americans has been a sympathetic hearing when they have explained their feelings about the European nations, Britain and France, who were so lately their masters. But then they have found that the American official listener, when the talk moves on to positive

American assistance, becomes full of conditions which both pride and caution render distasteful to those who are asked to accept them. The western Arab countries want all the help they can get without becoming in any way involved in the American camp against Russia. The Baghdad countries, which live nearer the Soviet Union, feel and act differently ; but it is the western Arabs and the Egyptians whose attitude is so uncertain now.

Mr. Bevan can point to the American Democratic leaders, Mr. Stevenson and ex-President Truman, as men who considered it right and proper to travel abroad while in opposition, and to express views on foreign policy at variance with those of the Republican administration. But there is an art in these things—Mr. Stevenson possesses it much more than ex-President Truman—by which criticisms can be made without attacks on Ministers of a kind that public men should and do contrive to avoid when they are abroad. This will not come particularly easy to Mr. Bevan. But it will be an important part of his campaign to make himself broadly acceptable as a future Foreign Secretary. In the. past, when foreign affairs were very much less momentous, there was a semi-tradition that the Foreign Secretary, like the Lord Chancellor, having high non-party functions to perform, should keep away from the more violent manifestations of party politics. This too will not be easy for Mr. Bevan.

Mr. Macmillan may be presumed to have judged the moment propitious, with the Americans mortified and disconcerted at Russian progress with rockets and man-made satellites, to secure a revision of an Act of Congress restricting the sharing of atomic secrets. It is an Act which was passed in a very different psychological climate, over ten years ago. From the communiqué issued after the talks with President Eisenhower, it looks as though the American attitude has changed. But if this is on account of the Russian successes, and from a new sense of urgency, the climate that was propitious for Mr. Macmillan will be unpropitious for Mr. Bevan's proposal that all tests should cease. The American reaction to that is that there