The Tablet January-June 1949 (fél évfolyam) [antikvár]

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW PRO ECCLESU DEI, PRO RECE ET PATRIA VOL. 193. No. 5667 HJUNDED IN 1840 LONDON, JANUARY 1st, 1949 SIXPENCE AS A NBWIPAKK "confirma fratres tuos" The Christmas Eve Allocution of Pope Pius XII the arrest of cardinal mindszenty The Charges Adduced, and the Real Explanation the sources of civilised strength The Continuity of National Cultures THE CRITICAL YEARS AS the New Year opens, its message is painfully clear and' unmistakable, that unless we do very much better than in 1948 we are heading towards catastrophe. Any honest retrospect of 1948 must admit as the first and greatest fact that the western world, led by the United States and Great Britain, is acquiescing in the annexation of Central Europe to the Soviet Union. There has been no one single overt act of submission and acceptance, but, in fact, the policy both of President Truman's and of Mr. Attlee's Governments has been to bow their heads and to accept the fait accompli, even though it brings the power of the Kremlin to Prague. President Truman talks regretfully of the way the Soviet Union has broken, in the spirit and in the letter, the promises of Yalta and Potsdam, but this rueful shaking of the head is totally insufficient as a policy. When men can stand back a little from the years 1945-1948, what will chiefly strike them will be the way the Russian Communists, as soon as they realised that their mastery of Central Europe was not going to be disputed, immediately opened the battle for Germany. With an arrogant and contemptuous gesture they shut the roads and railways leading to Berlin to their former allies, who at once proceeded to organize the Air Lift. This was a great and brilliant piece of improvisation, disconcerting and unexpected for the Russians, and to a large extent it nullified the attempted blockade, as well as serving as a potent reminder that even today, in a trough of lassitude and relaxation, the air power of the West remains exceedingly formidable. But why should the Western Powers ever liave accepted the role of a Hercules, being set his immense labours by a capricious deity ? The answer is that both the United States and Britain demobilised and disarmed themselves, too fast and too far, the moment Nazi Germany was beaten. Countries which are so very slow and reluctant to re-arm are, for the same profoundly pacific and commercial reasons, all too prompt at disarming. And they thus invited what they are traversing, a period of acute military inferiority, with its consequent diplomatic weakness. This is the more dangerous when men are dealing with materialists like the rulers of the Kremlin, who measure and judge quantitatively, and are consequently tempted to over-play their hands. The millions of men with whom they could overwhelm Europe are always mobilised at their orders, while the millions who would in the end defeat them and destroy their power are today living as they want to live, peaceful civilian lives, spread through four continents. We can record thankfully at the end of the year some real progress towards the creation of organs of European Unity. For it is only that conception of unity which will enable Mr. Bevin to resolve the present dilemma confronting him in Germany, where British policy is all too obviously halting between two opinions, and is continuing an old policy framed in a context according to which German aggression was the chief danger confronting the world, with a new policy made necessary by the emergence of the Soviet Union as filled with dynamic ambitions to impose its ideas on the Germans and on the rest of Europe. Only inside a European framework can the economic and political recovery of the Germans be promoted by the rest of Europe, without there being a latent fear that German nationalism will arise to play between east and west. But if it were not for the progress made, so largely through American prodding and insistence, towards European unity, the record of both British and American policy in Germany through 1948 would betray a constant confusion and indecision, and a lack of consistency. There has been a continuation of activities which now go forward of their own momentum because the machinery for conducting them was erected in 1945— activities like the demolitions at Kiel and elsewhere. There has also been an increasingly emphatic and wholehearted determination, the Americans leading the British, to encourage and ensure German economic recovery, because German industry is necessary to all Europe. TIic Missed Chance What is being done about the Ruhr is perhaps the most conspicuous instance of a great opportunity missed. The Six Power Control is in itself a sensible and European arrangement. But because it is only the Ruhr which is selected for this special status, all the German political parties dislike and resent it. The attitude of the Christian Democrats, at any rate, would have been quite different had they been presented with a much wider and more genuinely European scheme, which took in other fields of heavy industry in other countries and integrated them all for European recovery. This was much more a matter of presentation, of what things are called, than of anything else ; but it is of the first importance what things are called. French nationalism, as exemplified today by General de Gaulle, is quite naturally uneasy about the future relations between the international authority for the Ruhr and any German Government of the future, and General de Gaulle's programme was a number of small regional German Governments, none of which could make pretensions to control the Ruhr output.