THE TABLET September 13th, 195S, VOL. 212, No. 6173

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840 SEPTEMBER 13th, 1958

N1NEPENCE

Controlling Immigration: The Arrangements with India and Pakistan Charles de Foucauld: The Centenary of his Birth. By Lancelot C. Sheppard Christianity in the United Arab Republic: h i Syria Today The Destiny of Man: A Discussion in the Sunday Times. By Donald Nicholl The Stratford Festival: I. Comedy. By Robert Speaight Ad Apostolorum Prmcipis : An Encyclical Letter to the Catholics of China

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

THE CALM CRISIS

p R O M the talks that are to open in Warsaw between the

United States and China, Mr. Dulles expresses himself as hopeful of a good result, provided the United States does not weaken. He expresses the belief that America’s allies would be in support, but that, if need be, America would go it alone, adding that only the President could take the final decision. It is an appalling burden to rest on the shoulders of one rather ailing man, and one who does not know the Far East personally. Fourteen years ago General Eisenhower had to take alone the decision whether to proceed with the invasion of Europe in the face of rather discouraging weather reports, and he chose the bolder course. But today he has to weigh more complex far-reaching considerations.

From other remarks of Mr. Dulles, the Americans seem to envisage the possibility of a face-saving exchange, with Chiang withdrawing from the off-shore islands in return for a public undertaking by Peking to leave him undisturbed in Formosa. The Democratic criticism of Mr. Dulles has gained electoral weight with the Democratic victory in Maine, which foreshadows a Democratic victory in Congress. It is that this bargain, for what it may be worth, should have been arranged much earlier, and before the guns began to blaze.

The British Government has been publicly preoccupied with other matters, of lesser priority at the mompnt, though important enough—Cyprus, race riots, even Iceland. But now officers of the Reserve have been told that as a precaution if they go abroad they should leave their addresses.

Aristotle’s observation that wars are brought about by trifles, but are not caused by trifles, could hardly have a better illustration than the off-shore islands. Both sides are now in a position where it is extremely difficult for them to seem to flinch or retreat without a grave diminution in their standing in the eyes of a watchful and uncommitted Asia.

Only the crudest wishful thinking could have made the authors of the Labour Party’s statement on the Far Eastern crisis write of the admission of Communists China to the United Nations as likely to lead to “ a settlement.” There can be no such thing as a settlement with a dynamic and expanding movement. The best that can be hoped for is to avoid a shooting war, and let the struggle go on with other weapons, like political subversion and propaganda. That is all that M. Khrushchev can mean by “ peace,” when he warns President Eisenhower, and attacks the whole American policy of keeping fleets in being—a Seventh Fleet in the Pacific or a Sixth in the Mediterranean.

The Americans, a profoundly pacific people, do not want to keep such fleets near the great troublespots. But it is not the fleets that make the trouble, it is the trouble that is the reason for the fleets. Many people are saying that the offshore islands, the Pescadores and Quemoy, were recognised by Britain three years ago as part of the Chinese mainland, and should be given up ; and it is common ground that they are not important in themselves. If at one time Chiang Kai-shek thought of them as an advance base for his return to the mainland. he cannot think so now.

It is always the first reaction after defeat for the defeated to think that those who have supplanted them will not be able to maintain their power, and the Chinese Nationalists have clung to this belief long after it has been generally accepted by the rest of the world that the Chinese Communists arc firmly in power. They are in power in China, and they are vastly better equipped than the Japanese ever were to create an Asian empire. They can rely on millions of Chinese in the lesser States like Malaya and Singapore, and do not need to seek collaborators in the Japanese or German fashion, but local Communist parties, all of which will acquire a new confidence with each successive