THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 168 No. 5035

LONDON NOVEMBER 7th, 1936

SIXPENCE

PRINCIPAL

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK

. 621

THE KING'S SPEECH ; SPAIN IN THE COMMONS : DIPLOMACY BY MASS ORATORY ; INTERNATIONAL BARGAINING ; THE COLONIAL ISSUE ; THE ROOSEVELT TRIUMPH ; THE NEW HUMANISM IN EDUCATION LEADING ARTICLES.......................................... 624

ROOSEVELT ; CATHOLIC UNITY ; PRIZES FOR SINS THE WAR OF ALL THE SPAINS . . . 625

By E. ALLISON PEERS CATHOLICS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA, II 627

By P. CRICHTON-STUART ROME LETTER

629

NEW YORK LETTER.......................................... 630

CONTENTS

THE CHURCH ABROAD .............................. 632 REQUIEM SERMON FOR F. N. BLUNDELL 636 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, X .............................. 637

By G. K. CHESTERTON BOOKS OF THE WEEK .............................. 642

MATHEMATICS WITHOUT TEARS ; THE RETURN TO RELIGION ; RUPERT OF THE RHINE ; MARLBOROUGH, Vol. I l l ; LORD HALIFAX’S GHOST BOOK ; RECENT FRENCH BOOKS CHESS AND CROSSWORD.............................. 650 CATHOLIC A C T IO N .......................................... 651 THE CALENDAR .......................................... 652

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The King’s Speech

The King’s speech outlining the programme for the session was remarkable for its uncontroversial character. The programme of legislation is not ambitious or contentious. The most important part of the speech announced the Government’s determination to bring about improvement in the national physique, and this may easily become controversial as the proposals become more precise. It is generally recognized that the level of individual physique, in spite of all the social services, is low, and that the low standard is intimately connected with malnutrition, in part a result of poverty, in part of ignorance. Agricultural policy, in the past few years, has been pursued as an affair of one industry with requirements running counter not only to those of other industries and of the consuming public, but to the whole inherited structure of British economy which is manufactured for export. Mr. Walter Elliot, who now goes to the Scotch Office, has been the best-liked of recent agricultural ministers, because he gave a real impression that the office had ceased to be a quiet stepping-stone to higher things. It would be too much to say that he did for the Ministry what Chamberlain did for the Colonial Office in the ’nineties, but he has been the co-operating minister while public opinion has come to think of agriculture as a major and not a secondary national preoccupation. The experiment launched a year or two back by which school children can be provided with one-third of a pint of milk a day free was a small beginning in the effective linking of agriculture and national health. The Milk Marketing Board faces continuous difficulty through the pressure of liquid milk production, while health and education authorities record sadly how far too little milk is consumed. The outstanding feature of the budgets of the great mass of the population is the huge percentage of the weekly wage which is swallowed up by the rent. Even so, Government assistance has been necessary to provide reasonable houses because the rents people can pay would not of themselves suffice under present arrangements to provide the buildings. It is common nowadays to feel horror at the building that went on in the last century : back-toback houses, erected without regard for health or convenience, but the builders who put them up were meeting an urgent want in the only way which it could be met under a system of free play for economic forces. A modern government has to correlate housing, nutrition and agriculture. It is driven to do so, and each King’s speech is a further milestone on the path to extended Government control. Thus it is announced that health services are to be available at a much earlier age to bridge the gap between school services and industrial health insurance. Each such step seems a reasonable and humane thing, but it is impossible not to question the ultimate consequences of this course of development by which people become increasingly dependent upon Government services for the discharge of intimate personal responsibilities. People are increasingly embraced in a network o f social services which they accept as much better than nothing, but as much less preferable than genuine independence. Spain in the Commons

But few people can earn enough to save themselves into independence. In contradistinction to the domestic issues which arouse little save conventional oratory in the House, affairs in Spain were hotly debated and all sides were represented, from Mr. Gallagher, the Communist, to Mr. Denville, who answered Mr. Gallagher as a Catholic. The debate was conducted at a high level, and from the speeches there emerged a comforting impression of how much goodwill there is, even if that goodwill is too often unaccompanied with knowledge. It was a creditable side of the debate that the fate of Spain was not judged from any narrow attempt to forecast the bearing on British naval calculations of the establishment of a national or a Red State in Spain. For one thing, such calculations are meaningless at the present time. It cannot be thought, for instance, that a weak and distracted Spain would be advantageous to Britain, because such a country would be the happy hunting-ground of the powers. A strong Spain, jealous, no doubt, of its dignity, but