THE TABLET A W EEKLY NEW SPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 174 No. 5178

LONDON, AUGUST 5th, 1939

SIXPENCE

IN THIS ISSUE

THE CHURCH IN THE NEW SPAIN A Special Interview with Cardinal Goma y Tomas, Archbishop o f Toledo and Primate o f Spain

By Our Madrid Correspondent

THE TRADITION OF GERMAN CATHOLICISM

A Concluding Article, dealing with the Years o f the Third Reich

By Our Central European Correspondent

PRO FESSOR MACMURRAY’S CLUE TO H ISTORY

Reviewed by M. C. D ’Arcy, S .J .

Full List o f Contents on page 168.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Parliament Rises

Parliament has risen, with some unconcealed reluctance, till October 3rd. The reluctance came from the knowledge that the activity in Whitehall will continue undiminished. There is a widespread belief that a whole programme, leading up to the General Election in November, has been worked out. This may fairly be called an exaggeration, but it is nearer the truth than the ministerial professions o f not knowing any more than anyone else what the summer will bring.

supporting the Slav peoples, the Russia o f the Czars. A ll through Central Europe, the Russia o f the Soviets enjoys, by contrast, no influence. By some States it is not recognized at all. By all it is dreaded and kept at bay. The Soviet itself, from its first years, after the decisive defeat o f its attempt to overrun Poland in 1920, has been more interested in Asia than in Europe, and it is, first and last, an Asiatic despotism. In Moscow people talk much more about China and Japan than about Germany. The Efforts at Counterpoise

Parliament had one more debate on foreign affairs before it rose, an equable debate notable for the number o f speakers who recognized the importance o f not stopping in their thinking at a resolve to resist Nazi Germany by force. But there is still insufficient realization o f the difference between two things, the reassertion o f German predominance in the territories o f the old Austro-Hungarian empire, and the dynamic opportunism o f the Nazi Party now in control o f Germany. The great increase in German influence in the Danube is merely the reversion, after twenty abnormal years, to what has been normal to that part o f Europe for centuries, a German predominance which has come about through German military leadership followed by German economic power from the days o f the Ottoman Turks.

I f the Germany o f today were like the old Habsburgs, a power sharing the religion o f most o f the peasantries o f Central Europe, i f it lived in the full tradition o f the accepted law which has governed private and public life in Europe for centuries, German leadership would be recognized as providing that common framework so necessary if the different nationalities are to live peacefully side by side and to find a large area inside which to trade with one another. The basic reason for the easy return o f Germany in Central Europe is the disappearance o f what used to be the power

When the Russian Revolution removed the great counterpoise to German influence in Central Europe, its disappearance was masked by the temporary ascendancy o f French diplomacy and French influence. Last year witnessed the recognition that Germany, with the recovery o f internal strength, had also recovered the pre-eminent place. The Peace Treaties have suffered some drastic revisions, as one-sided as were the original Treaty arrangements, but more o f the Treaties remain than has been undone. The frontiers drawn through the old dual monarchy twenty years ago still make most o f the map. But it would be folly to think that stability has been reached. If, notably for Poland, Britain today is supporting to the full the settlements o f twenty years ago, that is not from any conviction that those settlements were the best then, or are the best now, but simply in order to arrest the new technique which has dominated German policy under the Nazis.

British policy since March has been directed to blocking one kind o f ruthless and one-sided action, in order to compel the Germans to modify their ideas and to seek a different approach. It is commonly forgotten in Britain, where the virtues o f democracy are celebrated by everybody in language which is now a kind o f ritual, that the Germans, like the Italians,