THE TABLET FREE SU PPLEM ENT : THE ENCYCLICAL OF P IU S XI ON ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 169 No. 5055

LONDON MARCH 27th, 1937

SIXPENCE

PRINCIPAL

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK . . . . 433

THE PRE-ARRANGED RIOTS IN FRANCE ; THE ITALIANS IN SPAIN ; THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN CONVERSATIONS ; THE PORTUGUESE DICTATOR ; THE POWERS IN AFRICA ; BELGIUM’S DILEMMA ; THE NEGLECT OF THE FENS : THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF MINISTERS; FRENCH BOOKS AND FRENCH n v i i x u u r d u v j i v o a i ' o / r j \ L H L n IDEAS ; FREE KICKS AT THE BUCKET THE NEEDLESS ESTRANGEMENT . . 436 THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE THIRD REICH By VVALDEMAR GURIAN . . 437 THE SPAIN THAT HAS NO EASTER 438

By E. ALLISON PEERS “ IF CHRIST BE NOT RISEN”

By R. H. J . STEUART, S.J. ROME LETTER

. 440

442

CONTENTS

THE CHURCH ABROAD .............................. 444 THE POPE’S ENCYCLICAL TO THE

GERMAN BISHOPS .............................. 447 BOOKS OF THE WEEK .............................. 448

LIFE IN A NOBLE HOUSEHOLD ; THE SECRET WAR ; FICTION CHRONICLE, by Graham Greene ; THE SHELDONS ; TWO LITURGICAL STUDIES : THE MASS, A STUDY OF THE ROMAN LITURGY, and AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, Reviewed by Abbot Cabrol, O.S.B. LETTERS TO THE E D IT O R .............................. 454 CHESS AND CROSSWORD 458 TOWN AND COUNTRY .............................. 459 THE CALENDAR .......................................... 461

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Pre-arranged Riots in France

Clichy became for a few hours last week the most significant spot in Europe. The riots which occurred there were deliberately provoked by the French Communist Party as part of the now familiar tactics of using Liberals and Socialists to prepare the first stages of revolution. When the political leagues like the Croix de Feu were made illegal as likely to disturb the peace, Colonel de la Rocque formed his Social party, and the Communists soon showed that they considered it their most dangerous enemy. The party of Jacques Doriot is a younger organization and has not yet penetrated the provinces. De la Rocque called a meeting in a cinema at Clichy, as he was perfectly entitled to do, and there is no suggestion that the meeting would not have been a perfectly orderly one. But the Communists, supported by the local mayor, called a counter-demonstration on a large scale, and directed it to the cinema. Five people were killed in the clash that ensued, and the Communists at once called on the Blum Government to suppress Colonel de la Rocque’s party as the real cause of the trouble. The demand was backed by a lightning strike, a baring of the teeth. From fear of his Radical supporters, whose chief interest is the maintenance of the constitutional and legal forms of the Third Republic, M. Blum is in no position to meet this impudent demand even should he desire to do so. But he has made a strange and disquieting concession to the Left by removing their arms from the police. The police themselves have been largely infected with extreme Left predilections, but this weakening of their physical strength is one step more along the road of capitulation to the Confédération Générale de Travail, with its offers to maintain discipline on its own responsibility. The tactics at the moment consist in frequent strikes, accompanied by demands for the purging by the Popular Front government of the key services which control law, order and administration, so that men likely to prove resolute and troublesome in the crisis may be quietly removed now. The Italians in Spain

The casual reader of the English Press would take away the impression that enormous German and Italian armies were operating vainly in Spain against a heroic army of inadequately armed but desperate Spaniards. That is the impression which it is intended the British public should carry in its head. Anybody who follows the Spanish war with care knows that the numbers of the combatants engaged are exaggerated in the spirit of the medieval chroniclers. At the end of February, a careful military observer, a correspondent of the New York Times, published his conclusions largely based on official British estimates which he collected at Gibraltar. He estimated that total of the Germans and Italians in Spain at sixteen thousand. The Italians, whose supposed huge defeats have been filling the headlines, are the same Italians who entered Malaga, and have now been brought round to the North-East of Madrid. The inhospitable and precipitous country1 between Madrid and Siquenza is served by very few roads, and the explanation of the miles of advance made by one side or the other lies in the possession of these roads which can be commanded and made untenable from the surrounding heights. The testimony of the New York Times correspondent and of Sir Walter Maxwell-Scott, which we printed last week, has been amplified by Mr. Douglas Jerrold, writing in The Times last Monday. He points out that the numbers of front line troops on either side are much smaller than is commonly said. The Nationalists have no lack of men and have called up nobody over twenty-six. While