THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1840 R EG ISTERED AS A N EW S PA P E R
VOL. 170 No. 5086
LONDON OCTOBER 30th, 1937
SIXPENCE
IN THIS ISSUE
NIGHT-A POEM BY ALFRED NOYES FRENCH CATHOLICS AND POLITICS
An Account of Divisions and Groupings
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST
By Edward Quinn
PUBLIC BUSINESS AND NATIONAL TIFF
Editorial Full Contents List on page 584.
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Aftermath of Gijon
The full importance of the capture o f Gijon is being increasingly realized, and is influencing those parleys in the diplomatic battleground upon which, for a long time now, the chief hopes of the Valencia Government have rested. I t could not be said of Gijon, as it was said of San Sebastian, Bilbao or Santander, th a t it was not notable as a stronghold o f revolutionary fervour. It was pre-eminently such a centre. Geographically very strong, but stronger still in the numbers and intensity of political conviction of the Asturian mining population, yet it was taken, at the end, without any desperate assault, from the failure of any widespread will to ultimate resistance. The full toll o f prisoners is enormous, and in the course o f this northern campaign of the Nationalists some 130,000 prisoners have been taken. The captured material, also, is vast, and the Nationalists gain a double reinforcement from the release of their own resources and the acquisition of so much from the enemy. By comparison with the Asturias, the Eastern provinces of Spain have no equally formidable geographical advantages, and only a partisan optimism can pretend th a t the Nationalists will have greater difficulty in doing with both hands what they have hitherto achieved with one. When brave speeches are made by Valencia politicians about the increasing technical merit of the armies they have raised, they are in the difficult position of having to explain why they could not achieve more in the offensives of the last two months. They will never again have half such good opportunities for attacking on the Aragon front as they had while the Nationalists still had the Asturias for their major preoccupation. Soviet Tactics
Mr. Maisky has had to come out into the open to prevent agreement at the Non-Intervention Committee, or the Italian acceptance of the British and French proposals would have produced that unanimity among the Western powers which it is the great aim o f Soviet diplomacy to prevent. Alike for international Communism and for its localized Russian form, a four-power agreement in the West would be a grave set-back, and it is not, indeed, difficult to help the powers to remain apart. But hitherto the Soviet has avoided coming out openly, and Mr. Maisky’s rôle in the Non-Intervention Committee has been to keep behind France. Mr. Fenner Brockway, o f the I.L.P., who has more than once boasted rather indiscreetly of the help which has been organized from France for Valencia, has ju s t been explaining why the official Moscow policy in Spain has been so moderate, by contrast with the policy o f the Trotskyists of the P.O.U.M . Experienced revolutionaries know very well that matters must be taken in their proper order, and that at the moment it is essential to win for a time the confidence o f the ordinary Spaniard who is not a revolutionary. The Government has been constructed to appeal to him, and no abuse is too harsh for the Trotskyists who ruin these tactics by their premature and inopportune shouts for world revolution. The Stalinist Communists have provided nearly all the intelligent direction, and so much of the sinews o f the war for their Spanish protégés, that their anger with wrecking tactics is quite understandable. What is less intelligible is the slowness o f ordinary Liberalminded people in England to make any allowance for these revolutionary tactics at all. Talk to them of Fascist intrigues among the Arabs and they are all credulous ears. Tell them that Moscow is the proud and busy centre of world-wide political conspiracies and they smile incredulously. But the tru th is th a t there never was a time when more people were making their livings as paid agents.
In the international field the Soviet’s three years of membership of Geneva have not been idly spent. There was a great deal of calculation behind the Soviet attitude in entering the League and appearing to champion it after so many years spent in denouncing it as the worst
