THE TABLET October 3rd. 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6228

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 3rd, 1959

NINEPENCE

Before the P o l l: Some Basic Considerations

Christianity and the Law in Africa: it . a Contrast. By Antony Allott Christian Commerce I An Experim ent in Tanganyika. By the Bishop of Kigoma

The Life of Ronald Knox: VI. Translating the Bible. By Evelyn Waugh

Patristics at Oxford : Scholars in Conference. By Anthony Stephenson, S.J. “The Establishment” : Mr. Hugh Thomas’s Symposium, reviewed by A lan Prycc Jones Pax Romana in Asia: Co-operation with Unesco. By Noel Ross

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

PEKING CONVERSATIONS

j y j KHRUSHCHEV, back in Moscow from the United

States, had the warmest praise for President Eisenhower, although some reservations about Mr. Nixon and certain others whom he had met. “ Statesmanship, wisdom, courage, valour ”—all these he had found in the President; and the enumeration of such qualities in itself left among some an uneasy feeling that perhaps the President had after all been over-eager to please. The President gave the impression at his news conference on the same day, although Mr. Hagerty was afterwards anxious to dispel it, that he had been readier than some of his advisers would have wished to envisage an accommodation over Berlin.

world in effect that if there were sufficient guarantees against German revisionist ambitions in Eastern Europe, and if an agreement between Moscow and Washington could be reached, then it would be safe for all countries not merely to reduce their armaments but entirely to dispense with their armed forces, and to rely thereafter on militia carrying small arms to smoothe out any disturbances that might arise. This must have been an uncongenial thesis to all the restless Afro-Asian leaders who are so determined to count for much, but most of all it must have been uncongenial to the Chinese.

It is a pity that the Press coverage of M. Khrushchev’s visit to China cannot be so complete as that of his visit to the United States, so that is difficult to judge whether he is having a more or less difficult time there, and whether he has found himself more or less often driven to exasperation in Peking than in Los Angeles.

The Chinese Communists cannot care about the way M. Khrushchev has been claiming the chief credit for relieving the tension in the world without any reference to them, giving second place to President Eisenhower as a benefactor of mankind and leaving Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai out of account. Nor can they like the way the presence of Western troops in Berlin is presented as the world’s chief problem, without any attention being paid to the Americans in Formosa. They cannot be flattered by the way the Germans are regarded as the chief danger to the peace of the world, when they, the Chinese, have taken so much trouble in Laos and Tibet and on the Indian border to show that they too are dangerous people, not to be taken lightly, ready to fight for the frontiers they claim.

M. Khrushchev arrived in Peking having just told the

The more importance is attached to all the present vast surge of Soviet propaganda about M. Khrushchev’s achievement in breaking the ice of the cold war, the more importance is attached to the prospect of a summit meeting at which quite certainly the Chinese Communists would not be present, the more do the Chinese Communists lose face. Indeed, so far as M. Khrushchev’s public utterances go, there is no indication that he even suggested, however modestly, however tentatively, that Chinese presence at a summit meeting might be necessary. He would have had a sharp enough rebuff from the Americans if he had done so. If they cannot be in the United Nations, they certainly cannot be allowed at “ the summit.” But it can only have been mortifying for them to find M. Khrushchev attributing boundless possibilities to a summit meeting in their absence.

The visits of M. Khrushchev first to America and then to China are made for different reasons: he is in China to do honour to a tenth anniversary, arid Mao Tse-tung and Chou En - lai, receiving congratulations, are not seeking any new bargain, and . so are not particularly anxious to please him. The talk of peace which M. Khrushchev finds so rewarding in the United