THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 R EG I ST E R ED A S A N EW SP A P ER

VOL. 169 No. 5059

LONDON APRIL 24th, 1937

SIXPENCE

PRINCIPAL CONTENTS

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK

. 573

A MENTAL REVOLUTION ; THE NEW TAX ; SHAKESPEARE FOR THE ALBERT MALI. ; NON-INTERVENTION IN ACTION ; FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY ; THE “ LITTLE ENTENTE” ; THE MINERS’ BALLOT ; GREEK MEETS GREEK ? ; LATIN AMERICA AND THE SPANISH CRISIS; THE BLESSED NAME OF ALOYSIUS ; HARDLY WORTH UNDRESSING CANTERBURY LAMB’S TALES . 576 TWO CENTENARIES..........................................577

Gibbon and Constantine By J . J . BRODRICK, S.J. THE UNPOPULAR FRONT.............................. 579

111. The Democratic Army By ARNOLD LUNN THE KING’S CROWNING. IV

.. 580

By H. M. GILLETT ROME LETTER .......................................... 582

DUBLIN LETTER .......................................... 584 THE CHURCH ABROAD .............................. 585 “THE TABLET” LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 587

(Table of Contents inside) A WEEK WITH ST. THOMAS MORE. II . 607

By W. J . BLYTON TOWN AND COUNTRY .............................. 608 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 610 O B IT U A R IE S .............................................. 614 A MEDIEVAL DISPUTATION .615 C H E S S ..........................................................615 THE CALENDAR .......................................... 616 THE APOSTOLATE OF THE COUNTRY­

SIDE ..................................... . . . 616

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK A Mental Revolution

The New Tax

Mr. Chamberlain’s six Budgets will have a unique place in the history of Great Britain, because they embrace a period during which the ideas of public men about finance have been more severely shaken and modified than in decades before. The rejected heresies of 1931 have become the generally applauded policies of a singularly cautious Chancellor today. The crisis of 1931 was presented to the public, generally in all good faith, as an occasion for desperate tightenings of belts, for a cutting down of imports and a lowering of costs. Above all, the pound sterling was to be kept exchangeable for a fixed quantity of gold, so that foreigners should not withdraw their funds from London. The Budget had to be balanced or foreigners would not believe that British money was safe to hold. Public works were condemned on the ground that if they were economically sound there could be no need for the Government to take over those particular branches of industry, and that they were in fact, a particularly costly way of giving relief at the expense o f the future, to the hindrance of the natural working out of the mysterious laws governing the trade cycle. Such arguments are little heard today, although ¡t is interesting to imagine what sort of reception the rearmaments programme, with its round figure of £1,500,000,000, would have received if it had been stated, as it could be stated, in rather different terms, as primarily a way of providing certain basic industries with plenty of occupation, and setting the skilled workmen of the country to the congenial making of possibly useful things. The huge total figure of British rearmament was intended to have a sobering effect on foreign countries, and it has done so. But it has also had its psychological effect in Britain. People who are used to these figures will never be upset again in the way they were in 1931 over the prospect of large budgetary deficits in any particular year.

The sixth of Mr. Chamberlain’s Budgets is likely to prove much the most important in the long run, because of the new tax on business profits. This is an event comparable to the introduction of death duties by Sir William Harcourt, in 1894. Like the income tax, when it began, it is introduced to the public as a temporary expedient for a particular over-riding purpose, but if it is made to work, although its incidence in future will vary, it is never likely to be abandoned altogether. In Mr. Chamberlain’s proposals small businesses making under £2,000 a year are not affected, and the margin is likely to be extended. It is the appreciation of Ordinary Shares in good trade years that the Chancellor wants to share. We have taken a step towards the practice of the nations with corporative ideals, and the figure 6 per cent is the Italian figure for what has to be considered a reasonable trading profit. The tendency to-day in Great Britain is for practice to outrun theory. We continually subordinate the private profit motive to the general advantage, but it remains unchallenged as the guiding principle of commercial life, and a great many business men are exposed only to the disadvantages of a corporate order. They meet with regulation at every turn, but their activities receive no direct recognition as a useful or necessary part of the framework of society.

It was particularly notable how much Mr. Chamberlain is relying on a continual expansion of business and so of revenue. The May Committee, six years ago, was particularly insistent in its warning of the danger of incurring continuing liabilities on the assumption that they would be felt to be less and less of a burden with the growth of trade. Although some of the rearmament expenditure is exceptional, for it is making up ground that was lost in previous years, yet the increase is permanent, and a larger personnel is something which cannot be improvised quickly or sacrificed because it is expensive to maintain. Mr. Attlee made great play