THE TABLET April IStb, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6204

TH E TABLET

Published as a Newspapst

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

APRIL 18th, 1959

N1NEPENCE

What Must be Re-united: Not Divided Germany but Divided Europe The Rhodesian Dilemma: An African’s View. By Bernard Chidzcro

Scottish Catholic A rch iv es: Columba Llouse, Edinburgh. By W. J. Anderson Three-Year Training: Teachers and their Qualifications. By C. E. Robin Oil Discussion Groups : Free Speech in the Church. By F. H. Drinkwater

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

THE NUCLEAR DEADLOCK

"jpHERE will be general regret but little surprise that

Mr. Dulles has had to end a very notable tenure of the American Secretaryship of State because of rapidly failing health. One has to go back to the French Monarchy before the Revolution for a parallel to the minute and searching publicity with which his illness, like that of President Eisenhower before him, is surrounded. The American attitude is that they have chosen to become public characters, they wield immense power, and so the state of their health is of very great importance ; and the American tradition is not one that affords privacy where the public is interested. Yet it is a better tradition that does not expect even public men to endure their last illnesses under the limelight on a public stage, and there was a general revulsion against the lack of reticence accorded to the last days of Pope Pius XII.

It is something that the Conference on nuclear tests has reassembled at Geneva this week; and Mr. Orrnsby Gore, the Minister of State who represents the Foreign Secretary, professes himself still hopeful. But no solution has been found for the dilemma that there can be no effective inspection which does not give the inspectors the opportunity of collecting information which the inspected Government would be very unwilling for them to have. The Russian suspicion extends to all the nonCommunist world, and not only to British or American inspectors. They see the United Nations observers demanding to visit some place because of reports that what is going on there contravenes the agreement, and by the time the inspectors have satisfied themselves that at the place in question it is non-nuclear armaments that are being manufactured, their searching questions will have left them with a great deal of knowledge which is classified as highly secret.

Nothing is more deeply against the grain for the security-minded nations of today, and for Russians always, than to allow hostile investigators to probe their secrets. Yet it is obviously essential to any agreement that it shall include inspection of a thorough sort. The great argument making for agreement is that it is still possible for the three Powers to fix limitations and prohibitions in the short time that remains to them as the only possessors of these weapons. Agreement will become progressively more difficult as more and more countries think it a matter alike of pride and self interest to possess some sort of bomb. The poorer nations will then have to choose how much of their conventional armaments they will forego for the sake of possessing what they will all follow the British and American lead in calling a deterrent. NATO has set the pattern, and it is a very dangerous one, for in the nuclear age Governments will be left with the two alternatives when they are faced with small aggressions which are yet too much for their attentuated armies to meet, that then they must either do nothing or start a nuclear war. The answer to tactical atomic artillery is obviously heavier nuclear bombs, leading by an insensate progression to the most destructive onslaughts yet made. The fear of precipitating a suicidal catastrophe may be a great deterrent in Moscow and Washington, but will it be the same deterrent all the time among all the eighty countries of the world, in some of which all sorts of violent characters suddenly arise to seize the reins of Government ? There is a common interest among the Powers now at Geneva to renounce these developments, and a Western interest to make an agreement, even though it leaves the Russians with a large conventional superiority on the ground. It is a superiority which the NATO countries could easily end, for they are collectively very much richer and more numerous than the Russians, and they need not count in the Soviet strength the Warsaw Pact countries listed against them. Iraq and the Communists

It was among the many bad consequences flowing from Suez that it fatally undermined the position of Nuri, for so long the ruler of Iraq and the friend of Britain. He had of course to condemn the military