THE TABLET September 26th. 1959. VOL. 213, No. 622?

TH E TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 26th, 1959

NINE PENCE

The Branch on Which he Sits: M. Khrushchev’s Plan for Total Disarmament The Canadian Hierarchy : A Tercentenary Celebration. By Roy La Bcrgc Christianity and the Law in Africa: a Test Case. By Anthony A iio tt The Life of Ronald Knox: V. Leaving Oxford. By Evelyn Waugh Priest-Workers and Rome: The Letter from Cardinal Pizzardo

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

TO CAMP DAVID

E State Department has perhaps been over-nervous of the effect of plain speaking on M. Khrushchev, who was never very likely to pack up and go home without his meeting with President Eisenhower at Camp David this weekend. However angry he might get at what the newspapers have been calling “ baiting ” —as though any reference to the immense inhumanities with which he has been identified were no more than ill-timed teasing—he could not have been driven by that to any swift admission of failure. The tremendous “ build-up ” given in the Soviet Union and throughout Communist-dominated Europe to his mission as a peace-maker made it impossible for him to abandon it half-way through. In addition, he was plainly enjoying himself, with that zest for seeing new things, supermarkets and so forth, which is the most attractive of his personal characteristics. No useful purpose would have been served by letting him think that the Americans have forgotten, for example, the repression of the Hungarian rising, or thought it un im portan t; and the conversations at Camp David will not be conducted on the American side in any spirit that might come later to be described as that of appeasement. Any appeasing is more likely to come from M. Khrushchev.

The jamming of the Voice of America broadcasts, lifted a t first so that the anticipated cheering might be heard in the Soviet Union, was resumed as soon as it was clear that the cheering was in a very minor key. This is not the least paradox about M. Khrushchev’s extraordinary tour. By all the Communist propaganda of ten years past Soviet listeners should have expected the Americans to receive him coldly. The Voice of America was not jammed when it was thought that that propaganda m ight be proved false, but was jammed only when it seemed that it might be proved right. Communist listeners may have been even more surprised to learn that M. Khrushchev’s angriest brushes have been with trade union leaders, and that, at least until he reached San Francisco, the company in which he had got on most easily, in an atmosphere of affable courtesy, was that of the business men of New York.

Not the least surprising, and, indeed, bewildering feature of M. Khrushchev’s behaviour, for Communists who hear the full reports, and the most repugnant for those who are not Communists, is his habit of frequently invoking the name of God. Mr. Patrick O ’Donovan remarked on this in his despatch to last Sunday’s Observer; and in the Guardian on the following morning Mr. Alistair Cooke told how M. Khrushchev had greeted Mr. Spyros P. Skouras, of Twentieth Century Fox, as “ a friend and brother before Christ.” Moving to San Francisco, M. Khrushchev there broke into applause while a prayer composed by St. Francis was being recited, and said in reference to the Mayor of Los Angeles: “ Let us practise leniency. The Christian religion teaches us to forgive those who trespass against us.” And later in the same speech : “ If you look into our political philosophy you will see that we have taken a lot of Christ’s precepts—regarding, for instance, love for one’s neighbour.” M. Khrushchev is very ill advised if he supposes that remarks of this kind will endear him to the Christian world ; to anyone more familiar with his own past than with the strange streak of ingenuousness in his make-up they can seem like little less than a deliberate mockery.

M. Khrushchev was, however, the signatory of a well remembered resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which appeared in Ptavda nearly five years ago, on November 11th 1954, chastising the militant atheists of the Soviet Union for their excessive zeal and “ serious errors.” He stated his position very clearly on September 22nd 1955 :

“ Each citizen can do as he wishes with regard to religion ; profess whatever faith he likes ; frequent his churches . . . But that does not a t all mean that Communism has modified its fundamental attitude towards religion. We repeat as heretofore that religion

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