THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 189. No. 5576

FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0

LONDON, APRIL 5th, 1947

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

THE RENEWAL OF SOCIETY The Consolation o f History : an Easter Editorial THE CHOICE BEFORE FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY

A Study o f M . Bidault’s Stewardship THIRTY YEARS OF RISING STANDARDS Revising the Cost-of-Living Index. By Christopher Hollis, M .P .

POLITICS IN ECONOMIC TERMS T HE unfolding o f the M oscow Conference confirms anew w ith every week that passes the identity o f interest between Great Britain and the United S t a t e s ; and the pattern o f the discussions is hardening as the econom ic clauses com e under discussion, because econom ic clauses, like the territorial, are less susceptible than the purely political to that kind o f comprom ise through ambiguity which has provided the illusory way out o f so many deadlocks. Words like “ federalism ,” as Mr. Marshall observed the other day, can mean quite different things in America and in Europe ; and it is a comm onplace now that the whole political vocabulary guarantees eventual agreement in that field and excludes any reality from it. It is true that there is much unreality a lso about the econom ic parts o f the agenda, as when the value o f the future industrial production o f an occupied Germany is assessed in precise terms o f American dollars ; but the debates on econom ic unity and on reparations are debates on what factories will be allow ed to work, and when, and under what control, and for whose benefit, and are as immediately relevant as those about frontiers, which w ill shortly be bringing Poland in to the discussions.

would be a to ll exacted over a short period, and not, with the help o f Soviet reparations comm ission s in all factories, through twenty years to com e ; twenty years in which increasing production would n o t increase the rate o f settlement, since arbitrarily-assessed values would be proportionately scaled down. They are not less well aware than the Western Powers o f the econom ic consequences o f over-rated demands ; nor is the difference that their titles are higher. The difference lies in what it is desired to achieve in Germany. Where the Western Powers desire to achieve the principles admirably re-summarized by Mr. Bevin on Monday, beginning, as a vital requirement o f econom ic unity, with “ freedom o f movement in Germany for persons, trade and id eas,” the Soviet has quite different purposes, desiring not the level o f prosperity at which responsible government can be developed, but the level o f privation at which irresponsible appeals to revolution may be made. The “ national C om munism ” o f which D r . Schumacher spoke last Sunday is, as he graphically described, seeking to conquer the Reich politically for Russia, and the whole approach depends upon privation, from the initial exploitation o f unrest at food shortages to the later use o f the discriminatory ration card.

When the present provisional western frontier o f Poland is considered in the light o f what has lately been said about the econom ic unity o f Germany, it will be seen as a means whereby about a third o f the best food-producing land in Germany has been taken from the beginning outside the scope o f the jo in t A llied occupation, and, through the device o f a nominated Polish Government, in to the exclusive sphere o f the Soviet U n io n . This is a major reason why even in an econom ica lly unified Germany the im port o f fo od will still be necessary, for a considerable period at all events, and why, therefore, i f the Soviet claim to reparations from current production were sustained, they would be in effect reparations subsidized by the Western Powers which can supply that food .

But the argument against reparations from current production goes deeper than that. N o one disputes the vast econom ic damage inflicted on the Soviet Union by the Germans, or the moral claim o f the Soviet to compensation on the largest scale. But these terms are being used as a cover under which much wider issues can be discussed in the language that has m ost meaning. It was so in Paris last year when the earlier and easier treaties were in question. An econom ic stranglehold is more effective than any political guarantee, and can be exercised towards a variety o f political ends, as those who talk about “ econom ic dem ocracy” (but less about what D r . Schumacher has been .calling “ national Com munism ” ) so well know. Mr. Bevin may have had the British tax-payer primarily in h is m ind when he answered M. M o lo t o v ’s threat to continue to repudiate the Potsdam principle o f econom ic unity unless reparations can be paid out o f current industrial production, but it was Mr. Marshall who led the way in rejecting any such bargain in principle, from a consideration also o f the larger im plications o f a twenty-year Soviet lien on German production, and o f the political hold over the German nation which it would represent.

I f reparations are paid from capital equipm ent it will also reduce the chances o f a German exportable surplus paying for imports from the Western world, but the point is that it

It is pre-em inently in the light o f the M oscow Conference that it is important that the British Government shall disavow those who spoke against the National Service B ill on Monday because they are anti-American, as several o f them made little attem pt to disguise, and who are anti-American because they are an t i-c ap ita lis t ; who can see nothing anywhere in the world but capitalists and Socialists ; whose spirit o f letus-be-the-m ediators is that o f Mr. S. M . Evans, the member for Wednesbury, who declared in the debate on the forthcom ing Geneva Conference

“ I can think o f nothing worse for the world than that it should be split in to tw o blocs, one based on the finance capitalism o f the Western hemisphere, backed by clerical reaction, and the other based on the totalitarian singleparty police State o f the East. ’ ’ This “ clerical reaction” is a figment o f his im agination, for that greatest o f voluntary associations, the Catholic Church, has the greatest interest in the maintenance o f the open society, the maximum political and econom ic freedom o f action for societies as for individuals. It is in defence against the c lo sed totalitarian society that the Catholics are show ing so much vitality in every country today. The Political Causes of Much Hunger

N o t only in industrial Germany but also in Eastern Europe starvation threatens increasing numbers, and there is perhaps an undue tendency to be concerned to o exclusively for those whose hunger is a direct preoccupation o f British officials. T i t o ’s recent appeal for American wheat may very well have been made in the knowledge that it would be refused, because o f the use he could make o f the r e fu s a l ; but the fam ine that spread through the wheat-growing lands o f Southern Russia and the Ukraine has touched eastern Europe. The Warsaw Government has now withdrawn the fo od ration cards o f all p r ie s t s ; n o t as an anti-clerical measure, but because the clergy have to share w ith many other sections o f the population the hardship o f being w ithout priorities, in a country