THE TABLET January ISth, 1958. VOL. 211, No. 6139

T1!E TAB! ET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 18th, 1958

N1NEPENCE

The Positive Inheritance : What Christians have in Common America Faces the Challenge l A National Examination of Conscience An Angry Young Middle Class • The Swedish Welfare State. By Gunnar Kumlien PlailS for Pensions • The Labour Party’s Scheme: II. By John F. L. Bray Greek Enigmas • Orthodoxy and Bishop Calavassy. By Joseph Minihan

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

LIMITED WITHDRAWAL

TT is not often th a t Foreign Office officials speak as plainly about policy as did Sir F rank Roberts, the British Representative at NATO, when he addressed the American Club in Paris, and dismissed as impracticable Mr. Kerman’s ideas of a neutral zone in Europe. Sir Frank Roberts, who is himself a number of years away from retirement, said that whenever a diplomat leaves the official service he loses his sense of the practical. But he assumed that a neutral zone, free not only from nuclear but from conventional weapons, would involve the departure of American forces from the European mainland, and not merely their withdrawal to a parallel distance to the Russians, so that, if the Russians withdrew behind Russian and not satellite frontiers, American and other NATO forces would go westward an equal distance from the Elbe : to somewhere in France.

In the smaller issue of Austria, it used to be argued th a t the Western Allies could not withdraw because they would be then at a great disadvantage with three Communist States bordering Austria. Despite the Americans in Bavaria, the immediate Russian military force in the area has been greater ; and yet it was a very good thing that the withdrawal was agreed.

It is so clear th a t the Russians could not afford to leave East Germany without the regime there crumbling, that it seems a pity for the Western Powers to be the first to reject proposals which would cost the Russians much more.

Mr. Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State under President Truman, has also taken issue with Mr. Kennan, and has spoken as though in his view it is only the presence of American troops in Europe which has saved Western Europe from being overrun by the Red Army. This is to make out Soviet policy, even under Stalin, to have been much cruder than it was. Finland could have been overrun, with specious excuses about the need to defend the Soviet Union from a possible hostile base. Bui in fact the Russians have left Finland, and

Scandinavia generally, alone. NATO was a wise precaution, but it is unlikely that the Soviet Union would have embarked on conquest without it, when th a t conquest would have involved lines of communication running through the hostile populations of the satellite countries.

We believe th a t both Stalin and his successors have been much more influenced by their Marxist dogma than Western statesmen appreciate. The chicanery which established the group of Communists known as the Lublin Poles as the rulers of Poland was intended to lead to the spread of Communism, by removing the historical factors which had supported capitalism. That has always been the Marxist theory—that peasants and workers everywhere are by nature and economic destiny Marxists ; that the religion which befuddles peasants is the product of economic conditions, and will prove evanescent, having no reality of its own. To see the world as it looks from Moscow, we must give a proper place to the doctrine of the proletariat as naturally Marxist.

No doubt Stalin hoped for many years to see Italian and French Marxists seize political power, and then he would have wanted to help them, if he could have done so without too great risk. The Marxists in Spain, the Government of Largo Caballero, whose left-wing Socialism was barely distinguishable from Communism, received abundant help from Stalin, including the Russian tanks which saved Madrid for the Revolution in October, 1936. But when it became risky, the Russian help became less overt, more exacting, working through the International Brigades which the Communist parties everywhere were instructed to organise.

Neither in post-war Italy nor in post-war France did the Marxists come near power ; nor could the Russians have helped them without coming into direct conflict with Britain and America. As the hope th a t the Europeans would make Marxist revolutions of their own