THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 188 No. 5564

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

LONDON, DECEMBER 28th, 1946

SIXPENCE

STEP BY STEP The Progressive Destruction o f the Free Society

ANTI-CLERICALISM IN ROME

The Holy Father’s Allocution last Sunday. From our Rome Correspondent

THE DETECTIVE STORY Its Rules and Its Prospects. By Ronald A. Knox

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK M r. Bevin’s Breathing Space

The Foreign Secretary, who has now spent many months continuously ou t o f England, is in London for a breathingspace before going to Moscow for negotiations to which no particular te rm ination can be foreseen. There is an impatience in the Western mentality, a sort o f idea th a t wars ought to be followed by peace conferences and clear and final settlements, which is far rem oved from the eastern trad itio n , where a much smaller value is set on tim e and much longer views are taken. In the O rien t a m an will spend hours, i f no t days, bargaining over the price a t which he is to buy or sell quite small things, and those who a re now engaged in an immense process o f bargaining and bartering in Europe and Asia do no t envisage this as ending in a few months. The American chapter which has ju s t closed, ended, as Mr. Bevin pointed ou t in his broadcast on Sunday, with three weeks in which M. M o lo tov made various concessions, which saved the proceedings from th e complete deadlock and futility which threatened them, but the concessions look very much larger th an they are because o f the previous intransigence.

The public will only make Mr. Bevin’s task more difficult if it builds too much on concessions which can quite easily be w ithdraw n a t any time. Lesser men th an Mr. Bevin and Mr. Byrnes have long had experience o f the Soviet tactics by which hope and despair are deliberately made to alternate. Prisoners and suspects o f the Bolsheviks often find themselves approached with courtesy as people whose co-operation and goodwill is genuinely desired, and then suddenly, an hour or two later, find themselves being abused violently as reactionaries o r fascists, enemies o f the people and o f democracy. A rchbishop Stepinac has known both these form s o f tre a tment, one after the o ther, and concurrently. So have many lay politicians in the Central European countries. And this is very much the trea tm en t th a t is being extended to the Governments in London and Washington : th a t sometimes, as in form al interviews given by Stalin, they are spoken o f as valued collaborators, whose deficiencies are to be m agnanimously overlooked, an d a t o ther times, and pretty consistently in whatever is b roadcast anywhere under Soviet orders, they a re depicted quite unm istakably as the enemy today but, much more emphatically, the enemy tom orrow .

I t must be a m istake fo r th e British Government o r Press to take all these charges to o seriously ; to make a great deal o f i t when unfounded charges against British naval convoys, fo r example, a re w ithdraw n and Pravda prints a criticism o f th e Russian naval jo u rn a l which made them and the naval jo u rn a l retracts. Obviously somebody deviated from the party-line o f the moment, and the fact is worth noting. But it is no t worth acclaiming, as there was so much tendency to acclaim i t last week, and to tre a t it as a subject fo r a grateful editorial in the Daily Herald or front-page cheers in The People. All this is to invite M. Molotov to th ink th a t he could do more with us w ith words.

Mr. Bevin’s difficulty is one o f bi-location ; a difficulty which afflicts all ordinary mortals, though some saints have apparently transcended it. He must be in Moscow, o r wherever the Foreign Secretaries are, but he must also be a t home to deal w ith th e murmuring and crudities on the Labour back benches, and in the Labour movement in the constituencies. He gave a short answer in his broadcast on Sunday to the charge o f “ ganging-up” with the United States, but much more detailed exposition from the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues can alone bring conviction, o r dispose o f the easy phrases w ith which Mr. Zilliacus and his associates conceal from the simple and uninstructed public which listens to them the real nature o f the G overnm en t’s difficulties.

Mr. Bevin did n o t make his own task any easier by representing the difference between the Soviet U n ion and the United States as prim arily and essentially something economic, different views o f how the relations o f p roduction and exchange are best organized. So expressed, it is inevitable th a t people who are ta ught to believe in Socialism as the master key a t home will believe in Socialism abroad, will prefer the Soviet Union to th e United States, and will believe th a t the fu tu re must be w ith the socialized economy ; whereas the real gulf between London and Washington on the one side and Moscow on th e o th e r is no t economic ; it is moral. I t arises from the doctrine o f the Communist Party th a t all means are legitim ate th a t will advance the cause o f world revolution, and in particular th a t human beings o f their own o r neighbouring nations have no intrinsic rights, but may be seized and deported to wherever in Siberia or the Arctic Circle their remaining physical energies can be tu rned to some profit for the Kremlin. The gulf is created by the absence o f any common and accepted code, n o t only o f what is right and what is wrong, bu t o f what proceedings are to le rable and w hat a re intolerable ; and Mr. Bevin is only storing up disappointm ents for him self if he underrates the fundam ental im portance o f these things o r thinks it possible to tre a t them as irrelevant to the establishm ent o f peace. Europe cannot exist indefinitely h a l f slave and h a lf free. Preparing for the General Election in Poland

The Polish Provisional Government, which has sent a defiant reply to th e latest British N o te on the im portance attached in L ondon to the fulfilment o f the Y alta and Potsdam pledges in the general election which now lies only three weeks ahead, has announced its in tention to mobilize a corps o f 100,000 “ vo lun te e rs” to help the Army, the security police and the m ilitia in maintaining o rder over the election period. What is m eant by “ maintaining o rd e r ” is made clear by an Army o rder o f November 13th, signed by General Korczyc, a Soviet officer who is acting as Chief o f Staff in the Polish Army, in which he instructs the soldiers to take an active p a r t in the election on the G overnm en t’s side. The correspondent o f th e New York Herald Tribune, Miss M argaret Higgins, writes : “ This correspondent has seen a copy o f the order, and photographs o f it are available in docum entation. Election pamphlets issued to the Army for d istribution among the Polish population a re marked by the usual propaganda against the Western Powers. Thus, in one, entitled “ Know the T ru th ,” G reat B rita in and the United States are accused o f having more tro ops in the Netherlands, Belgium and F rance th an the Soviet have in Poland, and the Americans