THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER
VOL. 169 No. 5067
LONDON JUNE 19th, 1937
SIXPENCE
PRINCIPAL CONTENTS
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK
.869
THE NATIONALISTS’ ADVANCE ; THE VISIT OF VON NEURATH : STABILITY AND CHANGE IN CENTRAL EUROPE ; THE FRENCH FINANCIAL CRISIS ; THE FRONT DE LA LIBERTE ; POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS IN FRANCE ; “ THE MOST EXCITING COUNTRY” : TRADE UNIONISM : THE NEW TAX ON PROFITS ; INDUSTRIALISM IN SOUTH WALES THE EDUCATIONAL LADDER . 872 SUED FOR YAWNING ......................... 873 CHURCH, STATE AND COMMUNITY .. 873
I. The Significance of the Coronation By CHRISTOPHER DAWSON THE SPANISH REPUBLIC AND BASQUE
IN D E P E N D E N C E ..................................... 875
By GIL ROBLES
THOUGHTS ON MORE’S UTOPIA .. 877
By W. J . BLYTON THE FREEDOM OF M A N ......................... 878
By W. R. THOMPSON, F.R.S.
ROME LETTER ..................................... THE CHURCH ABROAD ......................... BOOKS OF THE WEEK .........................
THE EARLY STUARTS ; CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ; THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS ; MICHAEL COLLINS ; DOUBLE CROSS PURPOSES ; THE HOLIDAY BOOK ; MISSIONARY LIFE ; THE TORCH-BEARERS ; CATHOLIC PERIODICALS TOWN AND COUNTRY ......................... LETTERS TO THE ED IT O R ......................... THE BASQUE CH ILD REN .........................
(Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle)
OBITUARIES
THE APOSTOLATE OF THE COUNTRY
SIDE ............................................................. THE CALENDAR .....................................
879 881 884
890 892 894
895 898 900
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Nationalists’ Advance
With the piercing of the last defences of Bilbao, the Nationalist offensive in the North has nearly achieved its object. The last stages in the reduction of the city may well prove costly to both sides, and in any event there will remain for the Nationalists the subjugation of the Asturias, which was the centre of the rising of 1934 and which General Franco is reported to consider as more formidable than Catalonia. But success in the North will be much more important even than the capture of Malaga, in increasing the steady preponderance of Nationalist Spain. It is not merely that, where the Nationalists rule, the country quickly regains a normal way of life which provides wealth in wide variety, but that with each victory the sedulously-fostered pretence that the Nationalists are mostly Italians or Germans has to be dropped.
What conditions are like in the other part of Spain has been graphically described in a series of articles in the Manchester Guardian by an observer with Left sympathies but of considerable candour. He records how completely “ anything that could be called bourgeois has simply ceased to exist, ’’ for the possession of any kind of wealth above the common level seems to have become an impossible offence. All the better class villas have been commandeered, and similarly he records the complete destruction, even down to the prayer books, which is the lot of the churches, and the shooting o f anybody who deserts to join the Valencia forces, if he is found at any time to have belonged to any monarchical or “ reactionary” or Fascist organization. This is the application of a class test, in marked contradiction to the Nationalist practice of making responsibility for specific crimes of violence the test. The Visit of von Neurath
The forthcoming visit to London of the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, will be a brief one, and the discussions will necessarily be very general in character, but they are of great importance. It is now well over a year since the British Government took the initiative in an attempt to replace the Locarno agreement, which was ruptured finally by the German reoccupation of the demilitarized Rhineland zone, by a new Western agreement. Both the French and the Belgians had to be persuaded that the attempt was worth making, and have in fact never believed in it. The Belgian answer was gradually and politely to detach Belgium from any reciprocal obligations. The French cannot afford simply to obstruct a British initiative, and have to content themselves with re-affirming that they can never be a party to an agreement which treats Western and Eastern Europe as wholly separate, for such an agreement would fatally weaken the already diminished hold of France over her traditional allies to the south-east of Germany. The Germans are equally clear that while they would very much like a formal agreement in the West, which would set on record that there are now no unsettled issues there, the price is much too high if it is to mean accepting solemnly and for an indefinite time all the present arrangements with their other neighbours. British statesmanship has to seek some middle ground between these two positions. It must recognize, as the French will not, that the peace settlement, which has lasted for twenty years, had no claim to finality in the frontiers it drew, and in the minorities which, often for improvised reasons, it placed under one or other of the new States. Stability and Change in Central Europe
The Drang nach Osten of the Germans has been, in one form or another, a continuing feature of the political life of Europe for centuries. Most of the time the Turk or the Slav constituted a threat to the great land frontier of Europe, and it was the mission of the Germans to hold and extend that frontier. The widespread German minorities, which even appear in Russia, are a legacy of history, and it cannot really be argued that because the Germanic Habsburg Empire came to an end twenty years ago, the Germans ought to consider that they have no more business than any other country in that part of
