THE TABLET September 27th, 1958 VOL. 212. No *175

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

NINEPENCE

Faith and Learning; The Higher Studies that concern the Faith.

Imperial Preference and European Free Trade: By John Dingle The Right to Use Force; II. Doctrine for the United Nations. By David Johnson 1 hree Cardinals: Wiseman. Newman and Manning. By Christopher Hollis Catholic Higher Education; The Second part of an Address by the Bishop of Salford

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

NO EASY

IT'HE Warsaw Talks have broken down, while Quemoy is still being shelled, with the Chinese Nationalists proudly keeping count of the number fired, with just half the United Nations sharing the American Government’s determination to keep Communist China out for the present, and President Eisenhower sending back Mr. Kruschev’s letter. All this adds up to an ugly outlook and an intractable situation which is dividing America and the free world. It is one in which the Pacific coast Americans are much more strongly behind the administration than the East coast. There are many Americans to whom the last war, which we think of as primarily against Germany, was always primarily first and last, from Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima, against Japan. The threat of Asia under a militant and hostile power, the idea of sudden descents by the Asian hordes which brought America and Australia together, has continued. There was only a very short interval between the surrender of the Japanese under atomic bombing, bring the end of their Greater Asia Co-prosperity sphere, and the triumph of the communists in China three years later which renews the threat again. Chiang Kai Shek was the ally against Japan and then the ally against the Communists, and the Americans cannot possibly abandon him and retain any credit in Asia. We do not know what instructions the American Ambassador in Warsaw was given, but if there was the hope of exchanging the offshore islands for a firm undertaking by the Communists to leave the six million Chinese with Chiang Kai Shek unmolested in Formosa, it seems to have been promptly dashed. The Peking Government has made it very clear that already it is Formo a, and not just Quemoy and Matsu, that is in issue. With full Russian diplomatic backing—if diplomatic is the word — the Chinese Communists press their case, with no need to reach a settlement. They have a good prospect of turning t.o account the general dread of war in order to isolate

COURSE the American Government if it does not retreat, which means in effect, abandoning long standing allies to the harsh mercies of their ideological enemies, or of inflicting a major diplomatic defeat on America, with far-reaching implications for the future of Asia; America is out, they will tell the rest of Asia, “ and nothing stands in our path. Now is the time for each man in Asia to decide whose side he is on.”

All those who want to see the Americans give way quickly and quietly are very anxious to emphasise the differences between this crisis and that which has made the September of twenty years ago forever memorable. There are many differences between today and Munich; but there are unhappy resemblances. The off shore islands play the part of the Sudeten territories, given up in the hope of saving the rest of Czechoslovakia, which was overrun a bare six months later. How many months breathing space before the issue of Formosa has to be faced again, 'would the surrender of the offshore islands bring? There may be, just as there were twenty years ago, very strong reasons for avoiding a head-on conflict until the opinion of allies and the world has settled in America’s favour, and the threat to Asia as a whole is more widely understood. But no one should pretend that there is any easy and honourable course only waiting to be taken, and that provided it is taken, there can and will be peace in our time. Hong Kong and Singapore

Both Singapore and Hong Kong came into existence and grew to be teeming centres of population through the growth of the China trade and the development of the Far East, in the main by British merchants, in the last century. Natural harbours with empty land behind them became immense cities under the leadership of men in the great age of international capitalism, who had the same sort of conviction that Communists have