THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 172 No. 5146

LONDON DECEMBER 24th 1938

SIXPENCE

IN THIS ISSUE

THE VIGIL OF THE NATIVITY

By T. S. Gregory CHRIST THE CHILD

By Mgr. Ronald Knox

THE SONG OF ROLAND AND OURSELVES

By David Jones

AT ASSISI: A POEM BY ALFRED NOYES

Full List o f Contents on page 848.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Forgotteii Country

The debate on foreign policy, with which the House o f Commons has marked the last week o f its labours before Christmas, was asked for by the Opposition in the hope o f exploring differences inside the ministerial majority. It came too soon after Mr. Chamberlain’s speech to the Foreign Press Association for him to have much to add. The Opposition expressed, once more, the great disquiet with which it views Mr. Chamberlain’s forthcoming visit to Rome. But, on the whole, the debate was a relatively tem perate and restrained affair, though it ranged over too wide a field, some Members speaking chiefly about Japan, others about Central Europe, and others about Spain. It disclosed once again the great gap in the ideas o f the Governm ent’s critics, which comes from their refusal to make any place for Portugal in their Mediterranean anxieties. The tru th is (1) th a t the attitude o f Portugal is o f the first importance fo r both Britain and France and their communications with Africa, (2) th a t Portugal is happily still the firm friend o f this country, and (3) th a t Portugal is bound in the closest sympathy to the ideals and interests o f the new Nationalist Spain. Mr. Chamberlain justly said th a t the O pposition’s policy would have involved us simultaneously in war, not only with Germany and Italy, but with Franco, and he m ight have added th a t their policy would have wrecked the AngloPortuguese Alliance.

The British mission to Portugal after some nine months in the country has returned to England. The King has conferred the G.C.B. on President Carmona. This mission, as is well known, had not too easy a task, for the Portuguese had been very naturally perturbed a t the widespread failure in England to appreciate the real character and imminent peril o f the revolutionary movement in the Spanish Peninsula. The Portuguese being next door to Spain could hardly understand the sort o f illusions which English minds formed. The Protestant Prejudice

Commander King-Hall is typical o f a whole school o f commentators who write on the Spanish Peninsula as though it had only one country in it and not two, and as though a Nationalist victory would mean a hostile Spain. They ought to ask themselves whether the interest o f Spain will not be ju s t the same as the interest o f Portugal, to prevent the complete preponderance o f any one Power in the Mediterranean, and to see th a t it remains open and safe for the commerce o f all nations.

There is unfortunately an ingrained habit o f mind in this country, largely rooted in Protestant prejudices, which treats Portugal as o f little or no account, in the same way as it easily assumes th a t Spain could be made into a German colony.

The Italians, as another southern people, used to be thought o f in the same derogatory way, and much of the unpopularity o f Fascist Italy in Britain is due to the abrupt way in which the old complacency has had to be revised. I t is in the true interests o f G reat Britain to cultivate the Portuguese friendship, not to wait till the end o f the civil war in Spain to reach a proper understanding with the Nationalists, and to think o f the Peninsula not simply in terms o f the policies o f other Powers, but in its own right. Parrot Talk of Puppets

Mr. Cham berlain’s answers in the House o f Commons on Monday made it abundantly plain, and widespread, that the Government, who have both every means and every reason fo r knowing the true facts, do not a t all accept the Opposition view o f Germany and Italy as the real masters in National Spain. The British Government believe the Italian contingent is about ten thousand men, and while Franco still obtains arms from abroad, th a t is also true o f Barcelona, and has, indeed, been true o f both sides from the very beginning. For, while on both sides there is an extensive local manufacture o f armaments, the facilities do not exist in Spain fo r all the requirements o f modern warfare. To recognize that the Nationalists, like their opponents, buy as much as they can from outside, is entirely different from imagining that their policy is in any way controlled by the people from whom they buy. I t is still more