THE TABLET January 4th, 1958. VOL. 211. No. 6137.

7 7 :: TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 184 0

JANUARY 4th, 1958

NINEPENCE

The Common Market Begins: The Choice before Britain Yellow Stickers for Utopia: The Two-Generation Family. By E. L. Way Austrian Socialism's Evolution: The Winter’s Significant Debates. By Stella Musulin To Dublin to Study: Its Merits as a University City. By Dermot J. T. Engletield Problems of Plainsong : For anc Against Solesmes. By Alec Robertson Letters from Hilaire Belloc: MI: Front a Selection made by Robert Spcaight The Message of Pius XII: Ex<erpts from the Holy Father’s Christmas Broadcast

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

TEMPE1 IN MALTA

VI/HEN Mr. Macmillan sets out for India next week on ’ ’ a journey that is to take him as far as New Zealnd, his Asian hosts and visitors will be chiefly interestd to know how much he is prepared to promise them in rairn for their being a little more friendly, or a little less hstile to the West. This is an absurd position. The Danes, ’hen they demanded Danegeld, were at any rate in the contry of the people they were out to exploit. But the usethat these new countries are making of their new-tiund sovereignty is to expect a great deal of help, and > do nothing or very little in return. On the contrary,they expect the donors to understand that the more theytielp, the ruder they must expect the recipients to be.as a matter of self-respect, and in order to prove to thei own people that they are in no sense pensioners or depenents.

Mr. Macmillan is not being accompanied by the Chncellor of the Exchequer, and he is in no position to p>mise anything except trade. He is not stopping at Malta eitoute. In that island not only Mr. Mintoff, but the Leadenf the Opposition, Dr. Borg Olivier, have watched for a loi; time what does and what does not make British Govements produce money. They see what the Jordanians has had over the years, they know what the Suez adventure crt, and what has been spent in Cyprus; and so they are attopting to attach a price to the continued military availality of Malta. It was little over a year ago that the Suez exjdition used Malta, and not Cyprus, as its base. Mr. Bandanaike, as soon as he came to power in Ceylon, asked thdritish to take away their naval bases, as repugnant to e new national sentiment which he and his party embodk This altitude has not prevented him from wanting and weoming British help to cope with the recent natural disasters

Mr. Mintoff’s difficulty, in his battle to keep thelaltese in work, is that the importance of Malta is so vei much less than it was, Invaluable in the age of sail, still inortant in the age of steam and oil, it has rapidly lost invrtance in the age of aerial and, in particular, of nuclear arfare. But Great Britain has an obvious moral obligatiorowards the people of the island which it has held for more than a century and a half: and it is obvious that we could not, in fact, let privation stalk the island without organising adequate help. It would have been much better to make more of a virtue of moral necessity, instead of using language full of escape-clauses, of a kind that Treasuries the world over pride themselves on inserting.

Mr. Mintoff has cried out before he was actually hurt, in -apprehension that he is going to be, and he has done it in such a way as greatly to injure the prospects of integration, or of ever seeing Maltese Members of Parliament at Westminster. The reaction in Britain is that if the relationship is to be seen as a business transaction, it had better be kept as such, without attempting a degree of unity for which there is no real basis. The strength of the Maltese claim is sufficient not to call for these exaggerated gestures. What Mr. Mintoff has done will please the Archbishop and those with him who have always dreaded the secularist influences which any closer association with present-day Britain would be sure to intensify.

The trouble is that we are really faced with a choice of unwelcome truths. Either the Maltese, and not only Mr. Mintoff, are showing a great lack of moderation and good sense, or our own Minis-ters must have been maladroit and heavy-handed, annoyed at the persistence of Mr. Mintoff’s pressure, and telling him bluntly and brusquely, as Mr. Sandys finds it easy to do, that we have promised them nothing. We can make some allowance for the Mediterranean temperament. What has happened in the Maltese Parliament is like the scenes, with shouting and table-thumping, which are common enough both in business and in private life among more hot-blooded peoples who think nothing of such scenes the following day, whereas the English tend to remember them for a long time.

While Mr. Mintoff is generating heat in Malta, Sir Hugh Foot has begun his Governorship with a notable and successful effort to change the prevailing mood in Cyprus, to encourage all the sensible Cypriots to hate living in an island