THE TABLET February 7th, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6194

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

FEBRUARY 7th, 1959

NINEPENCE

Ac l’O S S t h e C h a n n e l ; W h a t is tak ing P la ce w ith out Us M a l t a a n d B r i t a i n : O rig in s o f the P resent Crisis. By P a tric k W a ll, M .P. A u s t r i a n P r o s p e c t s ; A n E lec tio n Year. By Stella M usulin S h a k e s p e a r e ’ s B e l i e f ; A new Study reviewed by R o b e r t Speaight

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

Q U I S C U S T O D I E T

A VERY likely quite accidental convergence of h ap ­

penings in the last week illustrates the difficulties even in negotiating, let alone in agreeing with the Russians. We have still no reason to doubt, in spite of Marshal Malinowsky’s assertion th a t Russian Hrockets can carry destruction everywhere, th a t the Russians are as anxious as the West to limit the dangerous hazards and prohibitive cost of the rockets race. Yet the talks at Geneva have run into a deadlock because the Russians will not agree to any p ro cedures for inspection and control which they cannot veto.

To the Russians, this seems a reasonable security p recaution, because they are in a permanent minority, and it has been the Russian veto, freely used, which has alone saved them at the United Nations from having to submit to the majority decisions of the capitalist world. Given their two leading conceptions, the implacable hostility of the capitalist world and the Russian trad ition of suspicion and secrecy, it is not surprising th a t they think inspectors will be spies. But equally clearly they must understand that, if they really want the benefits of an agreement, they cannot accept inspection as a principle and then turn down all suggestions for carrying it out. They cannot propose that the West is to believe them when they inspect themselves and announce that they have found nothing at all irregular or suspicious. They would not accept such assurances themselves. We get light on the psychological difficulty when we read in the proceedings of the Twenty-first Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the language in which those who have swerved from the orthodox party line denounce themselves or are denounced, as men who are committing the gravest of fau lts .. By this rigid standard of orthodoxy, the Western statesmen are men plunged in the deepest and most irreclaimable error, the wrong-headed products of the ephemeral capitalist order; and the only question is how most effectively to see them off the historical stage.

The Geneva deadlock coincides with the holding up of

I P S O S C U S T O D E S ?

an American convoy between West Berlin and West Germany, where what is carried appears to be a matter of dispute, and also of a British convoy. These are incidents of a kind which often come about through a pedantic decision very low down in the Soviet hierarchy, but which may also come from the top, to test the Western reaction, if the Soviet leaders are contemplating taking up again in 1959 the attem pt which they made prematurely and unsuccessfully in the very different strategic situation of 1947.

Mr. Dulles has hurried to London to try to ensure that the West presents a united front if the Berlin crisis is exploited as the Russians may exploit it. He knows th a t London thinking on Berlin is less rigid than that which prevails in Washington and Bonn, and if Mr. Macmillan goes to Moscow the Russian hope will be to find him more impressionable than either the West German or American statesmen have shown themselves, more receptive to the discussion of some form of disengagement, less convinced th a t the two sides are like boxers afraid to break loose, knowing exactly the present pressures of the interlocked embrace which has lasted now since the end of the war, and quite uncertain what would happen if any kind of disengagement is attempted. We think the West can afford to discuss disengagement, because there is no regime in the Western camp in any way parallel to those installed in Berlin and Warsaw, both of which would disappear tomorrow if the Russians really disengaged.

Seen from Moscow, the dilemma Tor the Russians is very real, that it is the present position which has created both NATO and the European Community, because it gives the West Germans no alternative policy. But how can the Russians make any change or exploit the German desire for re-unification, and yet keep the East German Communist Party in control of East Germany ?

If Mr. Macmillan goes to Moscow, we hope he will take in his bag, among other suggestions, that of moving the United Nations to Berlin, to see how the Russians react to that imaginative American conception.