THE TABLET May 16fh, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 620R

THE TABLET

Published as a N ew s^ ap^

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 16th, 1959

NINEPENCE

Holy Writ and Holy Church : Some Points at Pentecost for Free Churchmen What Disengagement Means: A Policy Worth Attempting. By Eugene C. Hinterhoff France a Year Later: Algerian Retrospect and Prospect She Novel in tran ce: Mr. Turnell’s Study. By Robert Spcaighl 1ocqueville and Gobineau : A Nineteenth-century Correspondence. By Bela Menczer Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE EUROPEAN PROBLEM

JHE Foreign Ministers’ Conference has begun with a minor success for the Soviet Union, achieved by demanding a major concession at the very outset. The West and East German Governments are not parallel bodies, but they are being treated as though they were. The West German Republic is independent and sovereign, not the creation of America or Britain but deriving its authority from below. The East German Government has no authority. It has power which it derives from Moscow, and if the Russians were not behind it it would immediately cease to exist. This dominating fact needs to be stressed over and over again by the Western statesmen, because we have seen the tactics before. No group was less representative of the Polish nation than the group known in 1943 as the Lublin Committee, of Wanda Wassilewska and other Polish Communists who served the turn of their Russian masters and were then relegated to oblivion. That Committee was brought along in the wake of the Red Army, and successfully imposed on the Poles in two stages.

First the Western Allies were cajoled into agreeing that there should be a new Polish Government, built round the Lublin Committee, while the real Polish Government, the faithful ally not only of Britain but of Soviet Russia in the war, should be disowned because its members were not Communists. Then the few leading non-Communists who were accepted, notably M. Mikolajczyk, were, after a short interval, driven from the Government, which has been the Communist Government of Poland ever since. Similarly great things are intended for Herr Ulbricht and Herr Grotewohl. When M. Khrushchev says he wants a peace treaty, what he really wants is to establish them in the saddle, free from the embarrassment of a divided Berlin, and with everything their own way, at no disadvantage with their fellow Communists who rule in Warsaw and Prague and Budapest. We can be sure the Russians will not abandon men so doubly useful in preventing a reunited Germany, and in' maintaining a bridghead for Communist activities in the rest of Germany.

The attempts to add Poland and Czechoslovakia to the conference are plainly designed to get equal recognition for the German Communist Government. It does not follow, however, that the West should refuse to let the Polish and Czech Communists attend, for their presence, in all their unrepresentative character, throws into relief that there is a European no less than a German problem.

The agenda for a political settlement is mis-stated if the Russians are, in effect, allowed to draw it up ; to say they only want to talk about the future of Germany, when what we want to talk about is the future of Europe.

We are not surprised the Russians wanted a square table at Geneva for the two blocs to confront each other across. We want to see the Poles and the Czechs treated, and forced to behave, as the independent Powers they pretend to be. One of the main arguments for holding that a change of stance, and the ending of today’s interlocked embrace along the Elbe, would prove advantageous to the anti-Communist cause, is that any relaxation must increase the difficulties of the Polish and Czech Communists in controlling the intercourse of their peoples with the rest of Europe and the outside world. In Poland there has been on the whole a steady improvement, with a tacit understanding by the nation that it must not alarm the Communists into thinking that things are moving dangerously fast. In fact, the new mood of the people, which is to think as little about the Government as possible, and see how comfortable and interesting private life can be made, is one in which Communists find it extremely hard to work. Communists are Puritans, enforcing a gospel of discipline and work for the collective future good, which requires a preoccupation with material advancement, a continual consciousness of the public interest, as it is described to be; and the Government has always to be in the centre of the picture and not treated as an incurable but supportable complaint, about which the wise man who suffers from it will think as little as possible.