i HE TABLET December 21st, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6135

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

DECEMBER 21st, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Revelation and Religious Authority: Their Bearing on Unity Mercy is Not Ending : “ What is Your Name? ” By llltud Evans. O.P.

Christinas in Poland: Traditions of the Countryside. By Czeslaw Jesman

1he Prose ol the Ass I Allegretto Vivace. By D. B. Wyndhant Lewis

Hidden Tears: Apocryphal Stories of Christ's Infancy. By J. C. Marsh-Edwards

Star Light, Star Bright: A Page of Verse for Christmas Five Letters from Hilaire Belloc: From a Selection made by Robert Spcaight

Notebook : Critics' Columns : Book Reviews : A Latin Crossword

ROCKETS NOT ENOUGH

IVi. S’PAAK, the forceful and energetic Secretary of A A NATO, has felt able to announce that the Paris Conference has discussed all the topics on its wide ranging agenda: what answer to make to Marshal Bulganin, how to break the disarmament deadlock, how to streamline the common institutions for Europe while they are still in their rudimentary stage, and plenty besides. But there has been little time to do more than state attitudes, and to try to ascertain how big the field of common agreement is. Marshal Bulganin’s letters to the different Governments have succeeded to the extent of opening a wider debate than the Americans, in particular, were envisaging three weeks ago'.

Mr. Dulles can only be understood in the light of the Democratic Party’s record. He represents the Republican phase of antithesis, the morning after the age of convivial illusion about the Soviet Union. Disillusionment came during President Truman’s term, but it is only in the last few years that the converse attitude has hardened, that those who trusted too much have been all so very vigilant not to be deceived again, even to the point of sterility. It would be a reasonable summary of the mood that the Americans have encountered in Paris to say that in the European view the policy of President Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles is too much a military policy, and insufficiently a political one. The American leaders are now anxious to show that they are just as ready to correct the emphasis, if they can be convinced that there are useful steps they can take. But as this sort of conference, where the representatives of so many countries have the right to be heard, cannot hope to get very far, the best that can be expected is that as a result of it there will be a continuing fruitful intercourse between Governments. They are all, for one reason or another, very anxious for more results in the course of the coming year. They are all conscious that the alliance had been drifting, and the movement towards European unity was progressing very slowly, with something to show on the economic front but little anywhere else.

Here the weight and authority of Dr. Adenauer, refreshed and enhanced by his victory in the General Election, is a leading factor Otherwise, behind all the discussion, there stands out very clearly the one great immediate and concrete decision which the European countries are asked to make.

The decision is not as easy for European statesmen as their American colleagues think. The European electorates have been very slow in waking up, and are only now beginning to appreciate that the really momentous decision was taken in America some years ago—the decision to use what were termed tactical atomic weapons to compensate for the lack of men. The NATO countries are none of them able or willing to keep as large armies as the Soviet Union does as a matter of course. Long-term or rigorous conscription is unpopular, while the cost of competing against the attractions of private life and industry is prohibitive.

It is ironical but true that it is the very fact of Western societies being civilised, wanting to leave people free, and to treat their soldiers very well, that has driven them to the decision to employ atomic weapons instead of recoiling from then after Nagasaki. Poison gas, which was used in the first German War, was not used in the second, but it was not used because both sides had plenty of other weapons. There was a very good chance that the second German War might have been fought without the heavy bombing of cities, unless as part of an immediate military assault. The war began with pious declarations of a strict definition of military objectives. But when the British found themselves in the summer of 1940 without an army, their answer was to develop their plans for a great bomber offensive against German industry ; while the Germans, lacking command of the sea, could only strike at Britain from the air. By the last year of the war the bombing and destruction of cities was taking place on an appalling scale, such as none of the protagonists had envisaged or wanted in 1939. When, in the summer of 1945, the atom