THE TABLET December 26th, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6240 »

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper **

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

DECEMBER 26th, 1959

N1NEPENCE

Help for the Homeless: The Christmas of the World Refugee Year l Tilde Union Filltllice: Mounting Expenditures and Lagging Subscriptions A Dominican Centenary: Margaret Hallahan’s Foundation. By Philip Corbishley

Critic’s Column : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

T HL year ends with the news not of one summit

PARIS

but of several, with the first in Paris in April. President de Gaulle will by then have paid a State visit to London, received M. Khrushchev for a long official visit to France, and, in short, convinced his fellowcountrymen, and the world besides, that France is one of the Big Three of equals, and, if anything, is more equal than the others. It is reported that Mr. Macmillan solved the question of where the meeting should be by suggesting several summits, and the first in France. Wherever the suggestion came from, the attitude of France’s allies is the right one, to convince President de Gaulle that he has not got to fight a dour battle with those whom he calls the Anglo-Saxons, whose interest is that France, like the rest of Europe, shall be strong and prosperous and know herself respected. But statesmen tend to live in the present, and they have avoided that temptation and understood ithe back history which makes President de Gaulle the man he is, and explains why the French nation is so solidly behind him-as it undoubtedly is.

The Entente Cordiale. in the sense of a specially close relationship of France with Britain, lasted through a stormy half-century. It was an achievement when it was made in 1904, for the two countries had been ablaze with hostility a few years before, with the British seeking an understanding with Hohenzollern Germany. But it was formed, against Germany, and although when Britain went to war alike in 1914 and 1939 it was not on account of a firm commitment to France, the Entente Cordiale declared that Britain would no longer be the detached neutral with German sympathies of the time of the Franco-Prussian war thirty years before. We still hoped we could achieve our policy without raising an army, and on each occasion the French encountered a German invasion with a quite inadequate British army by their side—two divisions in 1914 and ten in 1939. Only after the first crisis did the British begin to appear in the field in real numbers. From the French point of view we were a very difficult and unsatisfactory ally, giving no firm commitment, not preparing properly, and after victory setting out to rebuild Germany.

Half way between the wars French statesmen who saw how things were likely to develop began playing

FIRST with an entirely different policy, of a United States of Europe, and it is that policy which has now superseded the Entente Cordiale. The division of Germany has made it possible, and the only policy for the West Germans. It had been accepted in France before the Suez affair, but that last occasion on which the French followed British leadership ended the Fourth Republic and buried the Entente. Tn April Paris will stand out as the capital city of Europe, in a way that will make Frenchmen comparatively uninterested in M. Khrushchev. They should, however, bear in/nind that all President de Gaulle’s policy turns on the continued division of Germany.

If Berlin became the capital of a united-Germany the whole picture would change, and from the French point of view, and ours, would change for the worse, for Dr. Adenauer would not for very long be accepted as the spokesman of the united Germany. The lost territories would take on a new importance, and there would be advocates of a friendship with Russia, to follow up the improved relation which reunification would have brought.

The Russians must have often considered these possibilities but have turned them down, for the risk in them. The only Power in Europe that quite recently entertained, and nearly achieved, aggressive designs against Russia is, from the Russian standpoint, much better divided: for professions of friendship might not last. We must allow for the double suspicion, both as Marxists and as Russians, that the rulers of Soviet Russia feel for all Western capitalist countries. Hitler has gone, but capitalism has never been so high ; and the Marxists always tried to identify Hitler with capitalism, although his National Socialism was a demagogic mass movement, and the industrialists who tried to influence it found they had been for a ride with a tiger. The suspicion that German militarism and demand for Lebensraum might come again, and this time with American capitalist backing, is something that a good Marxist who thinks capitalist prosperity cannot endure has always in mind. For this reason any Russian withdrawal from Germany or Europe is unlikely, and when M. Khrushchev talks of a treaty he probably means along the line of the Elbe.