TH E TABLET D ecem ber 28th. 1957. VOL. 210. No. 6136

THE 7ABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN I840

DECEMBER 28th. 1957

NINEPENCE

Soldiering on; The Inadequacy of the Military Approach Poland Faces a New Year: M. Gomulka’s Uncertain Future. By K. A. Gillett Three Letters from Hilaire Belloc: From the Selection made by Robert Speaight

I

India and the Mutiny: An Indian View at the Centenary. By J. A. B. Palmer

On Sacred Music: The Findings of the Paris Congress. By Edmund Rubbra

Notebook : Book Reviews : Talking at Random : Letters ; Chess

WHERE FROM HERE?

1AIE discuss in our leading article this week the commu” niqué issued after the NATO Conference—a Conference which may be summed up as having carried the NATO countries ,a little further in the direction of military preparation, but not much further in any other direction. No one can do this with any satisfaction; as these vast powers of destruction are continually assembled, and are placed under the control of a NATO commander, and an Allied Council whose composition a few years hence is so extremely uncertain. The men in supreme authority in all countries come and go, generally inside a few years, and continuity of power is exceptional. No one would care to prophecy whose will be the decisive voices even five years from now. While Stalin lived, Bulganin and Khrushchev were figures of the third rather than of the second rank. In the parliamentary countries, the future leadership of parties remains extremely obscure, and no one would care to prophesy who the presidential candidates in America will be a bare two years from now. Preparedness, which from one point of view can be represented as reassuring, is also profoundly disquieting, if the discharge of nuclear weapons needs nothing more than a decision and an order. We have already seen the danger that statesmen who have no other means available will use the threat of rockets, as the Russians did.

It was the judgment of the great Lord Salisbury that “ nine-tenths of statesmanship is the appreciation of material; the other tenth is the application of principle to that material,” and, as is discussed more fully in our leading article, it is a great question how far the appreciation of the character of Soviet policy, with which Mr. Dulles in particular has identified himself, is an accurate appreciation.

The essential business that has been going on in Paris is very simple. President Eisenhower, leading the American Delegation, came over to secure the assent of America's Western European allies to the use of their countries as launching sites for American missiles which can reach the Soviet Union from Europe but not from the United States. The American Government wanted to reassure its own people that it has taken the only immediately feasible defensive measure against the longer range of the new weapons at the disposal of the Soviet Union.

President Eisenhower's administration is acutely aware of criticism at home for having fallen behind the Russians, in a way that has been a shock to an American public which has hitherto always believed not only that it was ahead but that it would naturally be ahead through having been a long way first with the atom bomb, and commanding much greater resources.

The Russians had to pass through an uncomfortable phase when they first learnt of the atom bomb, in 1945, and had nothing of the kind themselves. Stalin met the position in a fashion very different to President Eisenhower's. He affected to show very little interest, accepted philosophically the sudden ending of the war with .lapan which prevented the Soviet Union from staking out a claim as a co-victor, and continued to concentrate on extending Soviet power by political chicanery in Central Europe. He had already collected all the German scientists he could, and he pressed on to catch up, and was very much helped by Communist sympathisers among the Western scientists, who brought him the secrets of their countries. Little or nothing was said or printed until results could be announced and demonstrated. But a democratic Government like the American cannot discipline its Press, or invoke the need of secrecy to the point of stopping the formation of a public mood. It was to satisfy the public that the character of the NATO meeting was so narrowed down from the earlier idea of broadening and deepening the alliance. There is no time for that at the moment, and there is, on the contrary, a realisation that many big divergences of outlook would have to be faced and reconciled, while what is immediately wanted is a simple concrete act of assent to immediate military measures.

The great argument for these measures is that everybody is stronger and safer in proportion as the number of places from which retaliatory devastation could be launched is large. To this is added the further consideration that we are traversing a short but dangerous period, which will end when American rockets, like the Russian, have intercontinental range.

The immense cost of preparing for modern war, where so much is so quickly out of date and useless, is compelling the NATO countries into a real mutually interdependent alliance. It has long since ceased to be practic­