THE TABLET, July 11th, 1953. VOL. 213, No. 6216.

Published as a Newspaper

L J c t A RT F T JC J L i i D i / L 1

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 18 40

JULY 11th 1959

NINEPENCE

Starting Second Families I The implications of a Legitimacy Bill,

Democracy’s Growing Pains in Japan : From a Correspondent in Tokyo.

A Visit to Berlin: Impressions by Michael Derrick.

Critics’ Columns : Notebook :

“TROJAN

News, Notes and Texts : Letters DONKEYS”

Disagreement in the Labour Party over the H-bomb has its parallel in Germany where a great cleavage is showing itself among the Social Democrats. It needs to be healed if the Party is to have any chance at the General Election, though the German general election is further away than the British by at least twelve months. On the Left Wing of the Party are men so eager for German reunification, which would bring with it the probability of a Social Democrat Government, that they continually play with illusions that the Russians and the German Communists are not as implacably hostile to Social Democracy as in fact they are. These Left Wingers are castigated by Dr. Mommers on the Right Wing of the Party who dubs them “ Trojan donkeys ” , a pungent if surely somewhat confused expression, for the asininity rests with those who drag a Trojan quadruped into their camp not knowing what it contains. The more moderate Social Democrats see the great danger of the future in a movement for National Bolshevism. This is what the German Communists envisage as the future, taking up again the formula of nationalism and socialism, for a movement designed to attract mass working-class support. To build such a movement the Communists might have a temporary use for Left Wing Social Democrats, oifering to form with them a democratic government, while excluding as not really democratic all the parties who at present make up the Coalition behind Dr. Adenauer. The Social Democrat opposition at Bonn will continue to be weak and unimpressive as long as it cannot make up its mind whether it is in fundamental agreement with the Government’s firmness in the face of either threats or blandishments from the East, or whether it wants to advocate quite a different policy of its own, moving towards some sort of partnership with the East Germany Communists, running great risks for the sake of making some progress towards reunification. Meanwhile, Dr. Adenauer has been strengthened at home and abroad by M.r Averril Harrim an’s report of his visit to Moscow. He returned to New York much disturbed by his conversations with Mr. Khruschev whom he found badly informed about the resolution of the Western powers to maintain their rights in Berlin for the sake of protecting two million Germans there. Mr. Khruschev cannot apparently believe that, if put to the test, the NATO countries would not recoil. If Mr. Khrushchev is accustomed to think in large numbers, as Soviet statesmen do, a population of two million must seem not worth very much bothering about when blocs of hundreds of millions of people are confronting one another. His materialist and statistical approach could mislead him into grave miscalculations. It was miscalculation about how far other powers would give way which caused both World Wars of this century. Mr. Khruschev needs always to bear in mind that the population of West Berlin holds a symbolic im portance as the uncommitted peoples of the world watch to see what happens to them; and not oniy NATO but SEATO will be judged by what happens to Berlin.

When on Monday the Foreign Ministers meet again after the pause, there do not seem to be any grounds for expecting more of the resumed sessions than of the earlier ones. The parallel conference on nuclear tests which did not adjourn proceeds like an almost imperceptibly moving glacier, in its attempts to find a system of control that could not be circumvented, and yet that would not give the other side opportunities to learn loo much about defences in general. It looked like real progress when the Russians agreed to a limited number of veto-free inspections; but the areas to be inspected are so enormous, and so the number of inspections as a right would have to be considerable, as well as thorough, so that the difficulty remains to find what place would really be left for the veto designed to stop chronic inquisitiveness poking everywhere on the pretext of making sure there were no nuclear tests. Something new into Africa

I t seems unfortunately in the highest degree unlikely that the French Government will pay any attention to the plea of the Ghana Government, that the French should not test their nuclear weapon in the Sahara. To the French it is a matter o* great pride and satisfaction, that within a few weeks they will be the world's fourth nuclear military power, and it may be thought in France