THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 172 No. 5128

LONDON AUGUST 20th, 1938

SIXPENCE

IN THIS ISSUE

THE IRISH BANKING COMMISSION

An Editorial on the Report

MONSIGNOR ANDREJ HLINKA

A Personal Impression. By A. Christitch.

THE CATHOLIC VIEW OF ABORTION

A Statement with regard to a Recent Case. By Henry Davis, S.J.

A LITTLE-HEEDED CENTENARY

By Herbert Thurston, S.J. Full List o f Contents on page 228.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Trade Returns

The European Situation

The July statistics for overseas trade are far from satisfactory. Exports, imports and re-exports are all down, whether in comparison with June, or in comparison with July of last year. Imports fall by £11,565,000 to £73,939,000, exports by £10,125,000 to £37,470,000, and re-exports by £2,248,000 to £4,555,000. There could, it is true, be no greater folly than th a t of estimating the prosperity of the country entirely by its statistics o f foreign trade. When we are accused of calling in our foreign investments, we are entitled to ask whether it may not, perhaps, be as well to call them in now, when we can still get a price for them. N o r would there be great cause for lamentation at a loss of foreign trade, if there were evidence that we were making at home the things which we had previously imported.

The State of Agriculture

But, unfortunately, we are denied any so comfortable a belief. The Ministry of Agriculture’s annual census of crops and livestock does not give any evidence of any improvement in the position. There are 152,000 acres less under the plough in England and Wales than there were a year ago and 48,000 fewer hands employed in agriculture. It is true that actually more corn is being grown, but that is a t the expense o f a large reduction in clover and the rotation grasses and in the land left fallow for the autumn corn. It would be a mistake to make too much of the details of the statistics, but it is sadly evident that we have not yet seen even the beginning o f an agricultural revival and that the coming of the machine will cause a steady reduction o f the number o f men on the land, so long as we remain content with our present small production.

The present is certainly no time for facile and fatuous optimism. At the same time many o f the fears, with which minds are filled, are very unnecessary, even if there are plenty of other things about which it is necessary to be afraid. The publicity with which the German manoeuvres was attended should, from the first, have served to reassure those who were afraid of some sudden German stroke, and indeed those who are for ever fixing some mysterious dead-line date, seem to us singularly to misunderstand German policy. The Germans, whether we like them or whether we dislike them, are at any rate far from mad, and so long as they have a chance of getting what they want without war, they are not likely to go to war. Thus for the moment they are concerned to seal their Rhine frontier against the French. The French will then, they hope, be unable to come to Czechoslovakia’s rescue, whether they wish to do so or not, and it is the German hope that the Czechs may then make the required concessions. Therefore it is certainly not the German intention that there should be any violent development in the immediate future. It is o f course possible that in the tense atmosphere a gun “ will go off o f itself’’ and that there will be an unintended development, but talk of mysterious zero-hour dates in this or the next month can be safely neglected. The question is, o f course, what will be the German reply if all efforts a t agreement within Czechoslovakia should end in confessed failure ? And to that, no one can give a confident answer. The Air Pact

Meanwhile, the whole situation is big with possibilities, not only for bad, but also for good. The Paris Excelsior