THE TABLET September 12tJi, 1959. VOL. 213. No 6225

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 184 0 SEPTEMBER 12th. 1959

NINEPENCE

Rome and the Rates : Tile Recommendation of the Pritchard Report The Legitimacy Act 1959 : Honour Rooted in Dishonour. By Philip Bell, Q.C., M.P. The Life of Ronald Knox: III. Chesterton and Belloc. By Evelyn Waugh Population Puzzles : Curious Logic in the British Association Lord Russell's Refusal: An Intellectual Autobiography. By E. I. Watkin As Life Advances : Happiness in Later Years. By Thomas Rudd On Cathedral Worship: Caeremoniale Episcoporum. By Ronald Pilkington

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

GOING TO THE COUNTRY

AT all previous elections since the war the time elapsing between the announcement and the arrival of polling day has been at least half as much again as now—that is to say, at least a fortnight longer. The campaign which has now begun will be a brisk one, with, so everyone says, television making the individual performances of party leaders more important than ever before, and the performances of particular candidates correspondingly less important. An exceptionally large number of members of the last House of Commons are not standing again, and if that is a sign of the declining attractiveness of parliamentary life it would seem to follow that the general level of candidates must be tending to decline. When party leaders have easy access into every household this perhaps matters less than it did. But the quality of individual candidates is usually less important than candidates like to think ; it may make all the difference in a narrowly contested seat, but most seats are not narrowly contested.

The number of television sets in the country is now more than a third of the total number of votes cast at the last general election ; and most sets have several chairs in front of them. There are more than twice as many sets as there were in 1955. Yet on the other hand the B.B.C. has found out that, outside election times at all events, people are bored by partypolitical broadcasts, and that, in fact, no programmes are more unpopular. One consequence of never having had it so good is undoubtedly indifference. The total poll dropped by five per cent in the last general election. The opportunity for what is really mass mechanical canvassing is greater than ever before, but the task of arousing a response was seldom more difficult.

Mr. Macmillan lost no time in indicating his own intention of conducting the campaign so far as possible in the field of international relations ; and if he had not done so it would have been reasonable enough for the Labour Party to do so, for that is where the response is easier to find. Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Bevan, cutting short their visit to Moscow to come home for the election—it was for many reasons a great pity that they could not go to Warsaw—can claim to get on reasonably well in summit company, and to feel no particular inhibition about the old contempt of the Leninists and Stalinists for Social Democrats. They will find it much more difficult to carry conviction with a claim to look after the domestic economy so successfully as it has been looked after these recent years. Production still rises, and last month’s rise in the gold reserves was the first in August for ten years.

For the first time since the beginning of the year the unemployment figures are slightly up. but the increase is largely accounted for by the increased numbers who left school in July and have not yet been able to find jobs. The “ bulge” in the birth-rate in the latter part of the war, which began to crowd the class-rooms eight or nine years ago, is now having its effect in industry. More than three-quarters of a million children born in the last year of the war are reaching the age af fifteen this year, and nearly a million will reach that age in 1962, which will be the peak year. It is highly important that useful occupation shall be found for them as soon as possible; this, indeed, is even more important than that they shall start to earn. It is wrong to consider the problem of what to do with them as part of the general question of maintaining a satisfactory level of employment, and wholly misleading to include the total of those among them who are idle and aimless in the aggregate unemployment figures which are so widely used—especially in election time—as an index of social distress.

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