THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER
VOL. 168 No. 5041
LONDON DECEMBER 19th, 1936
SIXPENCE
PRINCIPAL CONTENTS
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK
THE NEW REIGN ; ROYALTY AND CRITICISM ; THE BASQUES AND MEDIATION ; SOUTH WALES : COTTAGE HOMESTEADS ; VON RIBBENTROP’S SPEECH ; THE B.B.C. REPORT ; A C.T.S. LEAFLET
857 THE CHURCH ABROAD
THE MEDIEVAL CAROL
By M. G. SEGAR
THE HIERARCHY AND THE PRESS CHRISTMAS AT BETHLEHEM
By EVELYN WAUGH
THE ENGLISH CHRISTMAS
By T. S. GREGORY
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, VI ..
860 861 BOOKS OF THE WEEK ......................... FROM HEGEL TO MARX ; POSTMAN’S HORN ; NOT UNDER FORTY ; NONSENSIBUS ; BRUSH UP YOUR WITS ; HITLER AND THE CHRISTIANS ; BACK TO
MALAYA ; THE FORTUNES OF CAPTAIN BLOOD
862 TOWN AND COUNTRY
864 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR .
THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY
TEXT OF THE JO INT PASTORAL OF THE HIERARCHY DUBLIN LETTER ..................................... 865 868 CHESS AND CROSSWORD . O B I T U A R I E S .........................
ROME LETTER ..................................... 869 THE CALENDAR
870 873
878
884
885
888 890
890
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The New Reign
The past week has been largely taken up with the opening ceremonies of the new reign. The Tablet, which goes to press in the small hours of Friday, was in print last week before the Act of Abdication had been passed, and this, the first issue to go to press in the new reign, is the appropriate number in which to extend our own loyal welcome to the new Sovereign. He comes to the throne, as he says, under sad circumstances, in the shadow of an event whose magnitude and implications will only be appreciated with time. Lord Salisbury, in the House of Lords, gave just expression to the truth that a monarch ‘ ‘has a mandate from nobody to whom he can return the trust. He sits there by an authority which is outside the ordinary human methods of appointment, and his abdication is a wound in the body politic which is a disaster. He leaves it mutilated henceforth. ’’ Those who most keenly feel this must be foremost in professing to the new King a deep and unshakeable allegiance. He and his Queen—the first Commoner since Katherine Parr—are well fitted for the high state that lies before them.
King George VI has already made it plain in many directions that he intends to model himself on the successful reign of his father, who had a clear grasp o f the practice of Constitutional Monarchy, and bequeathed that grasp to his sons. The ex-King showed scrupulous care in leaving a straight and smooth path for his successor. He left with dignity, and things should not now be said which were not said when they might have proved of value many months ago. Mr. Baldwin, in a speech which has been justly hailed as a masterpiece of simplicity and reticence, declared, “ We are not judges,” and now no one can claim that warnings of any sort are needed any more.
There could, indeed, hardly be a moment when recriminations of any kind would be more out of place.
The social historian will have much to say of the contrast between the convention of silence joined with a widespread habit of condoning lax practices and the final swift application of moral standards. But the time for such things is not now. The Convention of Speech
Mr. Attlee ventilated the question of how far the way in which the Royal Family has of recent years been written or spoken about in public is altogether salutary. The tradition is certainly quite new. Our late Sovereign, King George V, was the first of his line to be spared outspoken and adverse comment. Edward VII was the target of much plain criticism as Prince of Wales. Queen Victoria had a period of marked unpopularity in the late ’sixties when there was even, in political circles, an incipient movement of avowed Republicanism. The Queen’s uncles, William IV and George IV, lived in an atmosphere full of rather badtempered controversy which brought the repute of the Crown low, though its real and accepted Constitutional power proved an effective armour. Various reasons may be adduced for the change, which belongs to the last two decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, when respect for the ageing Sovereign combined with the new Imperial fervour, and the rise of the Dominions as separate parts of the Empire. It is obviously important that in this relation of Sovereign and subjects, as in other relations, words shall express realities, and keep in step with them. The Basques and Mediation
Bad weather is holding up the struggle for Madrid, and the most active hostilities in the last week have been in the Basque country. That has also been the scene of some hopeful results from the efforts of the powers to mediate. Basques are fighting on both sides, and those who originally threw in their lot with the then Government in Madrid, hoped to achieve self governs ment. Now that the real character of the struggle stand
