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THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA VOL. 182 No. 5404 PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER LONDON, DECEMBER 4th, 1943 SIXPENCE THE EUROPEAN ALLIES Their Essential Place in the Preparation o f Peace CATHOLICS AND THE EDUCATION PROPOSALS The Full Text o f the Joint Advent Pastoral Letter The Political Scene in North Africa THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Drive Towards Rome With a characteristic Order of the Day from General Montgomery, the Eighth Army has embarked on a new offensive which is intended to carry it into Rome. The mouth of the Sangro river, where the Eighth Army made its first bridgeheads for this new drive, is further north than Rome, and we may hope that it is the Allied strategy not to fight a way into the city, but to by-pass it, using not the Tivoli gap through the mountains, but the Terni, and making our entry into the city a peaceable ceremony conducted behind the fighting lines. The fact that the initiative has been taken by the Eighth Army, rather than by the Fifth, suggests that this may be done. The latest development at Algiers is that the Communists have begun to attack General de Gaulle. The issue has not been that of Communist representation in the Committee of National Liberation. It is true that General de Gaulle said that the two Communist members of it must be MM. Andre Mercier and Fernand Grenier ; and the Communists say that these are needed for party work, and their representatives must be MM. Lucien Midol and Etienne Fajon. But this is only the immediate pretext for what is clearly a change in the prescribed party-line. The Communists have begun to say that General de Gaulle is weakening in his attitude to the Vichyssois ; that the Committee is evading its duty in the matter of purging and punishing, and that clearly plutocratic French interests are successfully applying pressure. They also say that General de Gaulle is taking care to see that all the really revolutionary representatives of the Renaissance in the new Provisional Assembly are being prevented from coming to Algiers at all. Meanwhile, Italian politics become more and more exacerbated. Some American cities in which the corruption of elected politicians, principally mayors, had become an intolerable nuisance, have turned over to the device of appointing a City Manager, a man chosen for general business qualifications, and appointed for a term of years to run the essential services of the city. The method has a great drawback, in that such men, while good administrators, are in no position to bring in large-scale reforms or innovations. They have tended to do their job seeking to avoid controversy, where very often there were issues ripe not only for controversy but for settlement, and for large changes. But where the local government had been very bad, there was at any rate a breathing-space, a chance to get out of the stranglehold of powerful local groups. We may come to something of the same thing with the Governments of countries in which function or corruption has gone too far. It is all to the good that Marshal Badoglio’s interim cabinet is one of permanent officials and other unpolitical men, who will concentrate on immediate and practical points without trying to use the machinery of government to build and ensconce a Party. Just as the presence of the Allied Military Government will assist in the abatement of passions, so will a concentration on government as a technical essential activity help to give a long breathingspace. All this was put forward the other day at a Press Conference held by the Communists ; and afterwards André Marty, who is now their leader, went further and told the dispersing correspondents that the National Committee fears “ the people” and has therefore been refusing to send arms to the French patriots, and that it was only because of General Giraud that any aid was sent to the Maquis in Corsica when they revolted. Marty went on to pay tribute to General Giraud, as a soldier whose only desire was to fight the Germans and eschew politics. The Communists are saying that General de Gaulle has carried the Führer-Prinzip into his Provisional Assembly, and that it is in fact little more than a “ packed” Reichstag. On the National Committee the various political parties are indeed now represented, but by men of General de Gaulle’s arbitrary choosing, and not of their own choosing. The Communists complain, furthermore, that General de Gaulle has set up his own standard, the Croix de Lorraine, in competition with the Tricoleur of France, with the result that there are two armies and two flags, often in real rivalry. What the other line of approach would 1ead to can be clearly seen as the news come out of Naples. The party which Count Sforza is trying to build up on a platform of which a chief plank is revenge—not a weak plank in the country of the vendetta—has its meetings broken up by other politicians who object to Count Sforza’s tactics in seeking to reach his goal step by step and calling for a regency now. These opponents of his demand a Republic now. At the same time there have appeared on the streets the monarchist Italian Blueshirts, Camicie Azzurre, some of whom want Umberto on the throne at once in place of his father. These Blue-shirts take their name from an organization of ex-servicemen formed in 1919 to resist the danger of an Italian Bela Kun. There has been so far hardly a breath of anti-clericalism in the part of Italy liberated by the Allies, but there is some danger that among the factions there will be bidding for the clerical or the anti-clerical vote, as there will be along every other line of division and cleavage. That is the curse of party politics ; that the astute politician is the man who studies his fellows to see what they quarrel about, and how he can harness their quarrels to his advancement. It is ironic that these complaints should be voiced by the Communists, of all people ; and it has happened that way simply because they are by far the most coherent and articulate political element apart from the people filled with the Gaulliste mystique. It is also curious that they should have started thus challenging where hitherto—until, indeed, about the time of the arrival of M. Vyshinsky in Algiers—they have cordially supported. But it is the fault of nobody except General de Gaulle and his advisers if this kind of challenge is beginning, or if Marshal Pétain is apparently beginning to think that, after all, he may yet lead France when the Boche has been expelled, and is seeking to move to the position of a prisoner of war. André Marty said last week-end, with supreme effrontery, “ General de Gaulle is apparently not yet acquainted with the democratic usages of France.” The newspaper France had said earlier, of the North African Communist Party, that as soon as it was legal it “ at once asserted itself most clearly as the champion of the republican idea and the return to democracy.”

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THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 182 No. 5404

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

LONDON, DECEMBER 4th, 1943

SIXPENCE

THE EUROPEAN ALLIES Their Essential Place in the Preparation o f Peace CATHOLICS AND THE EDUCATION PROPOSALS

The Full Text o f the Joint Advent Pastoral Letter

The Political Scene in North Africa

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Drive Towards Rome With a characteristic Order of the Day from General Montgomery, the Eighth Army has embarked on a new offensive which is intended to carry it into Rome. The mouth of the Sangro river, where the Eighth Army made its first bridgeheads for this new drive, is further north than Rome, and we may hope that it is the Allied strategy not to fight a way into the city, but to by-pass it, using not the Tivoli gap through the mountains, but the Terni, and making our entry into the city a peaceable ceremony conducted behind the fighting lines. The fact that the initiative has been taken by the Eighth Army, rather than by the Fifth, suggests that this may be done.

The latest development at Algiers is that the Communists have begun to attack General de Gaulle. The issue has not been that of Communist representation in the Committee of National Liberation. It is true that General de Gaulle said that the two Communist members of it must be MM. Andre Mercier and Fernand Grenier ; and the Communists say that these are needed for party work, and their representatives must be MM. Lucien Midol and Etienne Fajon. But this is only the immediate pretext for what is clearly a change in the prescribed party-line. The Communists have begun to say that General de Gaulle is weakening in his attitude to the Vichyssois ; that the Committee is evading its duty in the matter of purging and punishing, and that clearly plutocratic French interests are successfully applying pressure. They also say that General de Gaulle is taking care to see that all the really revolutionary representatives of the Renaissance in the new Provisional Assembly are being prevented from coming to Algiers at all.

Meanwhile, Italian politics become more and more exacerbated. Some American cities in which the corruption of elected politicians, principally mayors, had become an intolerable nuisance, have turned over to the device of appointing a City Manager, a man chosen for general business qualifications, and appointed for a term of years to run the essential services of the city. The method has a great drawback, in that such men, while good administrators, are in no position to bring in large-scale reforms or innovations. They have tended to do their job seeking to avoid controversy, where very often there were issues ripe not only for controversy but for settlement, and for large changes. But where the local government had been very bad, there was at any rate a breathing-space, a chance to get out of the stranglehold of powerful local groups. We may come to something of the same thing with the Governments of countries in which function or corruption has gone too far. It is all to the good that Marshal Badoglio’s interim cabinet is one of permanent officials and other unpolitical men, who will concentrate on immediate and practical points without trying to use the machinery of government to build and ensconce a Party. Just as the presence of the Allied Military Government will assist in the abatement of passions, so will a concentration on government as a technical essential activity help to give a long breathingspace.

All this was put forward the other day at a Press Conference held by the Communists ; and afterwards André Marty, who is now their leader, went further and told the dispersing correspondents that the National Committee fears “ the people” and has therefore been refusing to send arms to the French patriots, and that it was only because of General Giraud that any aid was sent to the Maquis in Corsica when they revolted. Marty went on to pay tribute to General Giraud, as a soldier whose only desire was to fight the Germans and eschew politics.

The Communists are saying that General de Gaulle has carried the Führer-Prinzip into his Provisional Assembly, and that it is in fact little more than a “ packed” Reichstag. On the National Committee the various political parties are indeed now represented, but by men of General de Gaulle’s arbitrary choosing, and not of their own choosing. The Communists complain, furthermore, that General de Gaulle has set up his own standard, the Croix de Lorraine, in competition with the Tricoleur of France, with the result that there are two armies and two flags, often in real rivalry.

What the other line of approach would 1ead to can be clearly seen as the news come out of Naples. The party which Count Sforza is trying to build up on a platform of which a chief plank is revenge—not a weak plank in the country of the vendetta—has its meetings broken up by other politicians who object to Count Sforza’s tactics in seeking to reach his goal step by step and calling for a regency now. These opponents of his demand a Republic now. At the same time there have appeared on the streets the monarchist Italian Blueshirts, Camicie Azzurre, some of whom want Umberto on the throne at once in place of his father. These Blue-shirts take their name from an organization of ex-servicemen formed in 1919 to resist the danger of an Italian Bela Kun.

There has been so far hardly a breath of anti-clericalism in the part of Italy liberated by the Allies, but there is some danger that among the factions there will be bidding for the clerical or the anti-clerical vote, as there will be along every other line of division and cleavage. That is the curse of party politics ; that the astute politician is the man who studies his fellows to see what they quarrel about, and how he can harness their quarrels to his advancement.

It is ironic that these complaints should be voiced by the Communists, of all people ; and it has happened that way simply because they are by far the most coherent and articulate political element apart from the people filled with the Gaulliste mystique. It is also curious that they should have started thus challenging where hitherto—until, indeed, about the time of the arrival of M. Vyshinsky in Algiers—they have cordially supported. But it is the fault of nobody except General de Gaulle and his advisers if this kind of challenge is beginning, or if Marshal Pétain is apparently beginning to think that, after all, he may yet lead France when the Boche has been expelled, and is seeking to move to the position of a prisoner of war.

André Marty said last week-end, with supreme effrontery, “ General de Gaulle is apparently not yet acquainted with the democratic usages of France.”

The newspaper France had said earlier, of the North African Communist Party, that as soon as it was legal it “ at once asserted itself most clearly as the champion of the republican idea and the return to democracy.”

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