THE TABLET March 7th, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6198

Published as a Newspaper

’ - TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MARCH 7th, 1959

NINEPENCE

Local Associations: The Bournemouth Poll Rhodesian Realities : The Chosen Road. By Sir Archibald Janies Seventy Stepney Families: Portrait of an East London Parish: IV. By E. L. Way Ethiopia Today: II. International Relations. By Czeslaw Jesman The Mind of Walter Bagehot: A Friend of the Church. By Christopher Hollis Aquinas and Ireland : The Man who Taught St. Thomas. By M. B. Crowe At tile hoot of the Cross: Lenten Meditations: IV. John. By Michael Hollings

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

WHY THE HASTE?

^HE sequel to Mr. Macmillan’s Russian visit is that he will now go to Paris and Bonn and Washington, to concert policy over Berlin and Germany ; but he should not have to do this under pressure of a rushed time-table. Any urgency is of M. Khrushchev’s devising, and if M. Khrushchev accepts negotiation the first thing is to allow plenty of time for it. The tim elimit of May 27th has nothing imperative about it. It may very well be th a t M. Khrushchev is continually being urged by the German Communists to try to make some change in their favour, because the present pattern of Germany means that the vitality, in particular the reserve of educated professional people, is being drained away all the time to the West. But th a t is a phenomenon which has been marked for some years, and its causes are fundamental, and can only be removed by the German Communists abandoning the policy of attempting to indoctrinate everybody in their part of Germany with their own dialectical materialism. If they do that, they are abandoning the creation of a German Communist society.

M. Khrushchev yielded at the end of Mr. Macmillan’s visit about a meeting of Foreign Ministers, but he seems to have gained the substance, for in fact it is Heads of Government whom Mr. Macmillan will be seeing in the Western* capitals, as he has in Moscow.

Whether the arrangements for increased trade, like those for increased cultural exchanges, will in fact serve to change ideas in the Soviet Union depends very much on whether the Soviet authorities are prepared to relax their regulations and their surveillance. If they are, then they are wasting money if they go on trying to depict England as the England of Dickens. I t is not technical achievements that the Russian public will find im pressive, for they have achievements in plenty of their own, so much as the special quality of an easy freedom, which cannot be very easily communicated by speech or print, but which makes a great impression when it can be experienced. In nothing th a t he said was Mr. Macmillan more representative of his country than when he made it plain th a t we are not in the least grudging or half-hearted in recognising the Russian economic achievement. On the contrary we believe th a t the better off the Russians become, the better the prospects that their leaders will revise the harsh doctrines of inevitable conflict which Marx and Lenin bequeathed to them, and will let their people mix and be mixed with.

Mr. Macmillan’s visit was one of those occasions— and they are only too frequent—when the Press has an interest which is not a t all identical with the public interest. I t was the newspaper interest to magnify every episode and incident, including many which should have been passed by and had no particular im portance attached to them. M. Khrushchev lends himself to this treatment, for he is not a closely-buttoned and severely self-disciplined figure but a rough-andready peasant type, gifted with unusual shrewdness, drive and energy, but not equally gifted with any measure of the rather rare power which Mr. Macmillan has of saying just as much or as little as he means to say at any particular moment. Newspapers who send their special correspondents to compete against one another like birds for crumbs want front-page stories and conduct their own war of nerves with their readers; and though the public discounts a good deal, especially from the papers which use letters an inch high, the total effect is distorting, and continually suggests that more has happened than is in truth the case.

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