THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

YOL. 173 No. 5155

LONDON, FEBRUARY 25th, 1939

SIXPENCE

IN T H IS IS SU E

T H E BURIAL OF POPE PIUS XI

An Eye-Witness’s Account

THE SALVATION OF SPAIN

By H. Belloc

GREAT BRITAIN AND EUROPE (III)

By Christopher Hollis

THE CONCLAVE LETTERS FROM PARIS AND BURGOS

Full List o f Contents on page 244.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Mutual Fear

Money and War

In the debate on the defence loans, the Prime Minister remarked very pertinently : “ Perhaps it would not be a bad thing if we ourselves were to show a little more confidence, and not to allow ourselves to believe every tale that comes to us about the aggressive intentions of others. 1 am not sure that honourable Members realize how this attitude of suspicion is paralleled elsewhere,” and he quoted from Lord Grey of Fallodon’s Twenty-Five Years, how before 1914, “ Each Government, while resenting any suggestion that its own measures are anything more than precautions for defence, regards similar measures of another Government as a preparation for attack. Fear begets suspicion and mistrust and evil imaginings of all sorts, till each Government feels it would be criminal and a betrayal of its own country not to take every precaution, while every Government regards every precaution of every other Government as evidence o f hostile intent. ’’ It used to be the well-known method of men with armaments to sell, to go eagerly whispering, first in the ear of one country and then of another, that its rival had just acquired a new and formidable weapon. In the last quarter of a century the game of the armaments manufacturers has been done for them on a much larger scale, by the combination of various agencies. In France, Britain and America, the Popular Front tactics of the Communists are based on the exploitation of the fear of war, and the forming of all sorts of organizations, nominally devoted to peace, in order to exploit this fear. The Press, which is a commercial affair, has the strongest of motives for carrying backward and forward every incident that might be thought alarming and every insult that might be resented abroad. These things have news value, and make good stories, but the result is seen today in America, where the most responsible Senators talk of America being devoured by the roaring beasts of prey of whom the headlines have given them so clear an idea.

But the success of those methods of propaganda, the reason why this particular field is chosen, is that there exist in all the countries where money has enjoyed a free run, large vested interests which hate the new regimes in Europe because they threaten to put them out of business.

Men who have been waiting since 1931 for a resumption of foreign lending, for the automatic linking-up of all currencies, so that the exchanges may be played upon in the old way, naturally hate the new world of national currencies, exchange equalization funds, and in particular the new national economies to which Italy and Germany are feeling their way, economies which leave so little place for the international reign of money. There is no need to envisage financiers meeting as conspirators to plan the war which could alone give the necessary twist to the kaleidoscope and restore the authority of an international metal. Men do not need to be as conscious of their motives as that. Their judgments are a parcel of their fortunes, and they hate the idea of a new order in which there will be no place for them. The hatred of Nazi Germany in America is fed by many contributory streams, Jewish, Liberal, Christian, but no stream is more important than the financial hostility which considers the new tendencies in Europe an injustice of fate, just when New York was about to replace London, in the natural course of things, as the great home of international lending. It is indeed galling for those interests in America that after Great Britain had enjoyed the golden century of foreign loans and grown fat, that same war of 1914-18, which made Britain a debtor nation and placed New York in a position to succeed, or at any rate to share, the lender’s throne, also produced a revolt in Europe against the whole system. It was strained too far through the attempt to use it to secure an indefinite tribute from Germany, year after year, in the form of reparations.