THE TABLET September 5th, 1959. VOL. 213, 6224
I PI.h 11 BL fcT A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW
Published as a NewtfMpec
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
SEPTEMBER 5th, 1959
NINEPENCE
What Kind of Help ?: The West and the Undeveloped Countries The Western Dilemma : N ato and Nuclear Weapons. By Eugene C. Hinterfioff
The Life of Ronald Knox: I I : At St. E dm und’s. By Evelyn Waugh Outsider Inside : Mr. Colin Wilson and the Saints. By Christopher Hollis At the Edinburgh Festival: By A r th u r Oldham and George Scott-Moncrieff
La Pira’s Pilgrimage: The Russian Travels of the Form er Mayor of Florence
Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess
AFTER THE VISIT
INHERE came through President Eisenhower’s tele
vision appearance how completely he shares John Foster Dulles’ estimate of M. Khrushchev, how sceptical of anything resulting from the Russian’s visit and talks, and how very pleased he will be if, unlikely as it seems, he should be proved wrong. His attitude is very similar to that of the statesmen of the. ’thirties, Roosevelt and Chamberlain—that they must not only do everything for peace, but be seen to be doing everything. The great difference is that today the West talks from relative strength. But this is entirely due to the development of nuclear weapons. In conventional forces the Western countries have been content to let the Russians be far ahead qf them, as they let the Germans be in the ’th irtie s ; and behind both Mr. Macmillan’s and President Eisenhower’s recognition that statesmen should seek to interpret the popular will there lurks just the same weakness of democratic societies, that the public, wanting peace, is not necessarily a very good judge of how best to ensure it.
It is natural that in the week that covers the twentieth anniversary of the Anglo-French declaration of War on the Third Reich, minds should go back to that period. When they do the great fact they should think about is that the will to peace and reluctance to arm of the electorate was so strong that the Western countries commanded very little military power, and that therefore it made very little difference if the diplomatic language they used was strong or weak, when it was transparently obvious that, until a very late stage, there was neither the means nor the united will to fall upon the Germans from behind and prevent them from attempting to realise Hitler’s dream of a land empire in the Ukraine. This need for land was fundamental in Hitler’s conception of German greatness, for his vision of two hundred and fifty million Germans with subject races under them as the dominant people of the earth.
There is, fortunately, no need for Lebensraum in the ideological ambition of the Russian Communists. What they need is not territory but Communist Governments ; and the advent of such Governments to power, though it has not in fact been achieved except by military power, can be pursued by less dangerous courses, and we have reason to judge that it is these less dangerous courses that the Russian Communists are wisely resolved to follow. When President Eisenhower declares that it is a matter of principle not to desert the two million people of West Berlin, we may hope that M. Khrushchev and the German Communists will pay due attention, and realise that here is something in which the West is not bluffing but is in deadly earnest. In the Western view we have gone to the limits of concession and conciliation in leaving the other Germans of East Berlin and of the Soviet Zone under a Communist rule which we know they hate.
M. Khrushchev has made some sort of response to Dr. Adenauer’s more conciliatory language, for which we may assume President Eisenhower pressed him last week. But by contrast the reaction of the Polish Premier, M. Cyrankiewicz, has been violent, and the reason is not far to seek. The one great bond which unites the Polish Communists and Government with the Polish nation is the determination to keep the Western territories and to keep alive the memory of the monstrous wrongs the Poles began to suffer twenty years ago this week and suffered for over five years at the hands of the Germans. Nothing can suit the Polish Communists better than to keep all those memories alive, and to preach the doctrine that the Germans do not change : that the present German Government is playing a part, just as the Stresemann Government played its part in the transition after the first world war, when it took the Germans a bare fifteen years before they were again in a position to take the offensive.
