THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLES1A DEI, PRO RJEGE E l PATRIA

PU B L IS H ED AS A N EW SPA PER

VOL. 184 No. 5444

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 9th, 1944

SIXPENCE

“ WHO ARE TO BE THE ARCHITECTS?” The Full Text of the Address Broadcast by Pope Pius XII SOCIAL PRINCIPLES AND GERMAN CLAIMS

Inevitable Inequality and Material Progress ST. THOMAS ON FORGIVENESS

By Philip Hughes

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Threshold o f the Reich

After the liberation o f F rance comes the liberation o f the Low Countries. So fa r the immense advance has been supplied alm ost entirely th rough Cherbourg, by an extraordinary feat o f organization. There has been some traffic to Caen, but little else. But th e capture o f Antwerp gives the Allies a big port, which derives its im portance from carrying trade in to Germany. The lower reaches o f the Rhine itself lie next in the Allied advance in to Holland.

There is abundant evidence th a t what failed the enemy was primarily th a t higher direction, th a t power o f reaction, on which G erm an military commentators have so long loved to dwell. Even a p a r t from the hall-m arks o f th e F ü h r e r ’s own personal direction in squandering the military resources o f the Reich, the professional Generals, handicapped by an immense inferiority in the air and by the well-timed intervention o f the clandestine forces o f occupied France, have been out-classed ; and it is, incidentally, n o t the least o f our advantages th a t th e mythical prestige o f G erm an generalship has been so strikingly dissipated. Very many people in Europe who have been friendly to the Allied cause were yet overawed by the events o f 1940, and in particular believed the Germans when they said th a t neither th e British nor the Americans had the strategists and Generals who could handle immense m odern armies, w ith all their interlocking parts. I t was believed th a t, even if the Americans entered the war, even i f they and the British succeeded in landing, they would be handicapped and out-m an ceuvred. Until a few weeks ago, this was an opinion widely held among the Generals in Spain, with th e ir stro ng professional bias in favour o f land warfare.

Very soon now th e Germans will lack th e physical means o f continuing modern war. Already i t is the burden o f their propaganda th a t they are hopelessly out-classed so far as numbers go. The disparity will be greatly increased so soon as they lose even one o f their great industrial areas, the most im portan t o f which happen to lie along the Western o r the Eastern fronts.

In a few days we shall be losing the Belgian and D u tch Governments, which have been our guests in London for over four years. These have been years o f particular tria l for the Dutch, because, while the Belgian Congo, ou t o f reach o f any enemy, has played a valuable p a r t in the war effort o f the Alliance, the D u tch saw the occupation o f their country followed by the occupation o f their possessions in Asia, which, w ith Malaya, still await liberation. The m o ral o f the immense common interest between Britain and the Low Countries, alike in Europe, Africa and Asia, has been so heavily and painfully rubbed in by recent events th a t there could be no justification for letting it be lo st sight o f again from any hesitation about mutual and close m ilitary alliance. The defence o f the Low Countries and Britain, like the defence o f Britain and F rance, must be approached as a single problem , in which national frontiers are strictly secondary to m ilitary requirem ents. The bases and strong points fo r the navies and a i r forces should be chosen by geographical dictates ; and, provided there is a full reciprocity and representation o f all members o f the alliance a t each o f such points, we do no t believe th a t there is any public opinion anywhere which will oppose such mutual accords. Regionalism and Defence

Common defence arrangem ents will also fit in naturally with an arrangem ent for the regional control o f German industry in the Ruhr ; a control o f which the prim ary purpose will be military, to make sure th a t never again is there a large-scale surreptitious re-arm am ent by the Germans, factories secretly making machine guns while nominally making sewing-machines, or building tanks under the pretence o f mass-manufacturing a “ peoples’ c a r .” The industrial population o f the Rhineland and Westphalia have suffered more loss th an gain from their absorption into Prussia, and from being harnessed to the making and waging o f the successive G erm an wars. The Rhineland was given to Prussia a t a tim e when F rench ambitions were the immediate reality. Nobody then thought o f the reasonable solution ; nobody thought th a t the great ecclesiastic principalities o f the Rhine should never have been secularized; bu t it was E u ro p e ’s interest th a t the Rhineland should not be dom inated by Napoleon in one generation, o r by the Prussia o f Bismarck a lifetime la ter. The elected Prince-Bishops would none o f them have h ad the power to commit their successors or merge their territories in a larger political unit. The efficiency which i t is the chief merit o f the P russian adm in istra tion to have b rought to the Rhineland could have been secured by a process o f in te rnal reform such as would indeed have been highly necessary, bu t i f the Powers o f Europe had guaranteed the status o f th e rulers they could also have insisted upon the standards o f adm in istration. Large possibilities a re open to us now in exchanging in te rnational guarantees o f te rrito ria l integrity, and o f freedom o f local rule, in re tu rn fo r the observance o f a common code o f civilized behaviour to which all Governments will little by little be expected to conform. There has to be a central in te rnational institution, and, i f it exists, i t can perfectly well -extend its direction to regional areas as well as to small countries, prom ising its protection in re tu rn fo r an undertaking th a t the adm in istra tio n will be carried on w ithout any o f the evil things— the secret police, the repression o f criticism, and the other hall-m arks o f an unfree society—o f which Mr. Churchill gave the Italians a list.

The Swiss paper Die Weltwoche, o f Zurich, recalls the dictum o f the Germ an historical th inker Gervinus, a t the tim e when Bism arck was forging Germ an unity :—

“ The fo undation o f the fife o f th e G erm an S tate has always been federalism and no t union. There will inevitably be, sooner o r later— and the la ter it comes the more decisive it will be—a federalist reaction in Germany against unitary action, however unbelievable this may now seem. ’ ’ The Swiss, who have never themselves become a unitary State, are watching with keen interest for any signs o f German regionalism com parable with the marked individuality o f Austria. Commenting on the disillusionm ent now so com mon am ong G erm an prisoners, Die Weltwoche argues th a t a great many G erm ans will be in search o f a new faith. A purely negative prohibition o f Germ an form a l unity in a Reich would be ineffective, and was rejected in 1919 on the