THE. TABLET. November 21st, 1959. VOL. 21?. No. 6235

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

NOVEMBER 21st, 1959

N1NEPENCE

Socialist Parties in the Common Market: The End of an Era

Chinese Offensive in Asia: An Indian v iew . By a . s i r a j Popai

Poland Welcomes Tourists: h ardships and Hospitality

I lie Sacred College: E xpanding the R om an Curia

Diplomatic Retrospect: The M em o irs of Sir Ivonc K irk p a tr ic k reviewed by D.W.

Diving Without Strings: a New Look a t Parish F inances. By G. C. Norm an

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

THE RHINELAND POLICY

CANE of Dr. Adenauer’s main anxieties about Anglo-

German relations is lest there should still be quite insufficient comprehension in this country that the Common Market policy is not primarily economic, although it promises immense economic benefits, but is primarily political. A man who was born in the Rhineland in the first years of the Hohenzollern Reich has lived through too much history in which his native land has been a frontier not to be convinced that it must be a highway. Circumstances have played into his hands, and made what may be called the Rhineland policy acceptable to Germans as a whole. The same new factors—the division of Germany, the Russians on the Elbe—have made French opinion much more favourable than it would have been if a Germany of eighty millions was proposing to lead a Common Market policy. The partners today are evenly matched, and even those Frenchmen, Germans and Italians who think instinctively in national terms appreciate the immense advantage of achieving sufficient unity to be able to speak not for countries with less than a third of the population, and much less than a third of the resources, of the United States of today, or the Soviet Union of tomorrow. The answer is a grouping, a union, as both those great Powers are unions.

It is a policy which has the formal blessing of British statesmen, and of everyone here who is conscious of how very differently things could have developed if the Germans had not accepted the leadership of Dr. Adenauer ; if they had remained obsessed with the enforced division of their country, and had thought the way to end it was to refuse to throw in their lot with. the Atlantic Community, and to try to play between th e two blocs. Ten years ago there were plenty of pundits ready to predict that as the Germans recovered the policy of Rapallo. of running ahead to make friends with Russia, which can alone give them back their unity,

would be the policy of the late ’fifties. The Russian demeanour since 1945 has not been sufficiently encouraging for there to be any advocates of such a policy, but there could well have been a mood of sulky attentisme, instead of the resolute partnership in NATO which is Dr. Adenauer’s policy.

Britain is a leading member of NATO, and Dr. Adenauer’s problem is to ensure that what may be called the inner core of his policy, the European union with France and Italy and Benelux, does not create an estrangement from Britain which at once is and is not a European Power. What the Common Market countries are attempting is a policy which in the first years after the war they hoped Britain would have espoused and led. It is a policy which Sir Winston Churchill’s speeches from 1946 onwards suggested would be his if he were returned to power. That Great Britain is not psychologically ready or anxious for the commitments that such a policy involves has now sunk in on the Continent, and the practical question is how to keep the Common Market countries together, with a new and growing sense of unity and achievement, without a high tariff wall.

This is a matter which concerns Britain much more than the other members of the Outer Seven who are meeting at Stockholm this week. We are the only large manufacturing and exporting country among them. Mr. Heathcoat Amory and Mr. Maudling are talking with countries whose exports are relatively few, and already with an assured market for timber and paper, and already large buyers of British goods. The British interest is not to sell more to the Outer Seven, but to approach the Six as one of a group offering a larger market than the United Kingdom market, and to say “ Keep your tariffs low, and we will all do the same.” But the Scandinavian countries have no inducement to put up high tariffs against German goods, which they