THE TABLET October 4th. 1958 VOL. 212. No. 6176

the tab:.: A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published àè a. Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 4th, 1958

NINEPENCE

The Fifth Republic: The New Opportunity in Africa

The Task for the Church in France: Changing the Water. By s. c. A. Luff Iraq After the Revolution : The Reappearance of Rashid Ali. By J. E. Alexander

Congo University : The Lovanium a t Leopoldville. By Czeslaw Jesman

De Foucauld’s Country: A Saharan Journey. By Patrick Turnbull

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

WHILE ASIA WATCHES

DRES1DENT EISENHOWER is faced with the prospect of a Democratic victory in next month’s Congressional election, which will make it even more necessary for him to seek to take the Democrats with him in American foreign policy. Today the Democrats speak with two voices. There is ex-Presjdent Truman, ascribing the present difficult position to a lack of resolution in President Eisenhower’s first term and implying that if President Truman himself had been in charge, at a time when the Chinese Communists were much weaker than they are today, they would not have been allowed merely to break off unscathed in Korea. There are other Democrats, less tough of fibre than Mr. Truman, for whom Mr. Dean Acheson speaks, who are inclined to hope that, if the present tension over Quemoy can be relaxed, America and her allies will not have much to fear from Communist China for many years to come. This is the optimism of a naturally optimistic people ; it is what everyone would like to think, and it makes Mr. Dulles’ task a very uphill one. Against his own judgment he is finding himself forced to do the very things against which he had so long warned his countrymen, giving ground under pressure. This invites further pressure, as Peking and Moscow find a double advantage in creating these situations and exploiting the fear of war. of sowing division in the West and making concrete advances in Asia.

The same legalistic arguments that so much impress Mr. Aneurin Bevan, that are used to claim the off-shore islands, can also be used to claim Formosa : while in Korea and Viet Nam the local Communist parties will be put forward as representing the people of those countries. It is very much to the discredit of the Labour Party that its leaders have never considered the human reality, the 50,000 Chinese inhabitants of Quemoy who have never lived under Communism, and who, it can be easily foreseen, will suffer a very harsh fate if they are handed over. When the Bolsheviks, winning the civil war in

Russia in 1919, took over the Russia of the Tsars, nobody in the West said that that gave them an obvious right to all the territory that the Tsar was ruling at the time of his overthrow. On the contrary, the Western world recognised the Baltic States, and they continued to be happy and prosperous communities for twenty years. There was in that a true recognition of the principle of self-determination ; but by contrast today there is a great readiness to assume that the population of China has accepted Communism, with all its harsh discipline, and that the Chinese still outside it should not expect any help in remaining free. If that is the attitude, the object-lesson will not be lost on the neighbouring Asian peoples, and great numbers of them will be tempted to join what they adjudge to be the more resolute and formidable of the two sides. “ The wind from the East has prevailed over the wind from the West that is the slogan of the Chinese Communist leaders, and it must not be allowed to be true, or to seem to be true, if the countries of Asia are to be kept safe from Communism.

These are the large perspectives which Mr. Dulles has always in view, and he is right to be discouraged at finding how under-appreciated the danger in Asia is. What the American Government has been trying to do is to give reassurance, not only to the Japanese and the Filipinos, who can take comfort that they are islands and that Communist China lacks sea power, but also to the small peoples on the mainland, who have to fear the immense land forces which Communist China could deploy. Withdrawing from the Middle East

It must be admitted that the joint British and American decision to leave Jordan and the Lebanon is being taken without there being any very strong grounds for believing that the situation will remain tranquil. Much is built on the fact that the resolution carried in the United Nations Assembly was one framed and spon­