THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 168 No. 5042

LONDON DECEMBER 26th, 1936

SIXPENCE

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK

THE BASQUE EXCHANGE ; A FRENCH OBSERVER ; A WORD FROM SWEDEN ; THE VOLUNTEERS ; ANGLO-1TALIAN CONCORD AT LAST ; POPULAR FRONTS IN BRITAIN ; NOT A MOUSETRAP FOR CAPITAL ; COLONEL DF. LA ROCQUE ; GERMAN SELF-SUFFICIENCY ; TWO NEW B.B.C. GOVERNORS ; SPENDING AND SAVING ; GAYER FOSSILS GOODWILL AND GOOD WILL NATIVITY HYMN .....................................

Bv GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS. ENGLISH VERSION by RONALD KNOX LOVE INCARNATE .....................................

By R. H. J . STEUART, S.J. INCARNATION AND APOSTOLATE

Bv EDWARD QUINN THE ENGLISH CHRISTMAS, II

By T. S. GREGORY THE MEDIEVAL CAROL, II

By MARY G. SEGAR ROME LETTER

PRINCIPAL CONTENTS

896

o f ,_

897

893 VIENNA LETTER ..................................... 906

THE CHURCH A B R O A D .............................. 907 A PHANTOM C I T Y .......................................... 909

Bv HUGH POPE, O.P. BOOKS OF THE WEEK .............................. 910

THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM ; THE

CHRISTIAN FAITH ; THE SPANISH MARRIAGES, 1841

1846 ; MARC ANTONY ; QUEEN ELIZABETH ; MARY

QUEEN OF SCOTS ; HISTORIC ENGLISH CONVENTS OK TODAY ; SPANISH JOURNEY ; THE MENACE OF THE TERRIUORE ; THE MEDIEVAL STYLES OF THE

898 900

ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH ; ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI ; MOTHER MARY JUDITH FOREIGN M ISSIONS..................................... 917 O B IT U A R IE S ................................................. 918 902 THE CALENDAR ..................................... 921 904 TOWN AND COUNTRY ......................... 922 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR......................... 923 906 C H E S S ............................................................. 924

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Basque Exchange

There are now good hopes that some two thousand Basques will rejoice this Christmas after being freed and exchanged by the contending parties in Navarre. This negotiation, under the auspices of the Swiss Red Cross, has been largely carried through by the Mayor of Bilbao, who was himself exchanged for a leading Carlist early in the war. The exchanges have been bitterly opposed by the Anarchist and Communist parties fighting by the sides of the Basques, and in other parts of Spain where those elements are dominant there is no hope of similar exchanges.

Bad weather continues to make military movements slow. The general lesson of the fighting to date has been the relatively greater effectiveness of defensive over offensive weapons. A very high proportion of the tanks have been put out of action, and the antiaircraft artillery work is reported as attaining a high level. General Franco is believed to be moving slowly but steadily towards the complete encirclement of Madrid, and the forces of General Varela, in charge of the Nationalist troops, which have borne the brunt of the assaults on Madrid, are reported as moving north-east in the Guadarrama range, so that Madrid may be taken by siege rather than by assault.

It is notable that neither the Nationalists in front of Bilbao nor the Red militia in front of Saragossa have succeeded in reducing either of those important strongholds. Neither side can afford to incur the risk of heavy casualties which machine-guns make it so easy for the defenders to inflict.

A French Observer

The British M.P.s who are now returning to England after visiting Nationalist Spain have performed a valuable work. They have corrected the one-sided impression which was inevitably given in Spain by the party of M.P.s who went to Madrid but returned, as they went, through Red territory. Another recent visitor to Spain is the French Deputy, Henri de Kerillis, of the Echo de Paris. Like many Frenchmen of the Right, he views the Spanish scene with mixed feelings, dreading the prospect either of Communist victory or of Nationalist victory of a kind involving the deepest obligations to Germany. But M. de Kerillis does not let his public imagine there is any truth in the statements, freely circulated, that the Germans helped to prepare the rising. He states, on the contrary, that it was the ill-advised manifestation of his sympathies with the Left, by M. Pierre Cot, who was at the critical moment in July the chief Minister in Paris of the Blum Government, which enabled the Spanish Nationalists to prove to the Germans that the French Popular Front was prepared to intervene, and Léon Blum’s wiser second thoughts only came after the Germans had agreed to provide aeroplanes and arms. The defenders of M. Cot reply that the Italians were already supplying aeroplanes, and the Italians’ reply, on the lines of General Franco’s own statement, that the whole rising, like the help afforded to it, was inspired by the sense that it was the last chance to arrest an impending Soviet revolution.

Documents found at Tetuan, and since circulated by General Franco, include the instructions of the professional Soviet emissaries of revolution who came to Spain earlier this year to direct the subversion of a temporary Popular Front regime. In these documents, dated May, 1936, Largo Caballero already appears as destined head of the projected Soviet, While Señor Del Vayo, who speaks so eloquently about democracy, was earmarked for the key position at the Treasury. It is not very useful for the apologists of Caballero to denounce as fabrications documents of this kind, for his own speeches are on record, marking his transition to the school of revolutionary violence, and the quite undemocratic imposition, by a ruthless minority, of its ideas on the population. Yet the cry of democracy is still raised as relevant to the issue in Spain.