BEVERIDGE

Catholic Social Teaching
have waited with interest to see how your readers would react to your favourable
reception of the Beveridge Report and your recent general agreement in matters of home policy with those of the " Left," whom you are so ready to abuse. While many Catholics must welcome heartily your support for practical measures of reform, it is only to be expected that others, mooned in the belief that the chief aitil of the Social Encyclicals it to protect private property
and condemn Communism, should he
surprised at your application of Papal teaching. No doubt you will in due course publish a full reply to Mr. .1. A. Riley, showing how to those who have ears to hear the lencyclicals call on us not to band together to protect such rights as we have, nor to dream of the days when we can all be peasant proprietors. but to take action at once to infuse into Our present social systems that justice which God's law requires. And you will he able to point out that the Popes, unlilse Some lesser members of the Chusch, have not by-passed the problems raised for Christianity in an industrialised society, nor feared to advocate State action when the good of the community demands it. In the meantime, I would like to draw Mr. Riley's attention to the fact that Sir William Beveridge, God help him, was not asked for, and did not offer, a " solution to the social problem " as a whole; he presented, in accordance with his terms of reference. an improved scheme of social insurance and made some additional recommendations, the most important of these being the payment of children's allowances. On the first point, I would refer Mr. Riley to the Encyclical Divird Redemptoris, paragraph 52; " Social justice cannot be said to have been satisfied so long as wollsing men . . . cannot make suitable provision through public or private insuraace for old age, for periods of illness and unemployment." On the second point, you have already remarked that you, in company
with the T.U.C., regard family allowances as a palliative, and that as long as this is kept in mind, there no reason to oppose the scheme.
For, of course, we, as Catholics (though still in company with the T.U.C. and with the Labour Party), want economic independence. We want to see reeognised and satisfied the right of every man to work and to earn a decent livelihood in conditions which allow for the full development of his personality. Certainly we may differ shout the means of achieving this end. Mr. Riley has every right to formulaic Iris own policy, but he is rash to claim a monopoly of Papal support. Within Lire broad aim of establishing social justice in an organic society the Encyclicals have not demanded a change of industrial structure.
On the grounds of greater practicability—grounds well understood by the Popes—I would suggest that we can. with full justification, turn our minds to those questions raised by another or your correspondents, Mr. Ingham, on the degree of State control necessary at the present time. In particular, I would like to draw attention, not merely to the suggestion of the taxing of site values, but to the whole matter of the control of land-ownership, as dealt with in the Uthwatt Report. This report has so far has little attention, although its implications may he at least as farreaching as those of the Beveridge Report. It reC0111111C111,1S a striking advance in the control of land ownership which rutty rouse considerable opposition, yet it is only necessary to compare the statement of principles contained in its opening chapters with the doctrine ot the dual nature of property as set out itt Quadragesitno Anno to realise how fully justified a Catholic could be in accepting the recommendations if he considered them necessary.
For in this, as in other matters, the question of how much control we can approve depends on how much, as practical citizens, we consider necessary for the attainment of our aim of social justice. But let us not be held back by incomplete knowledge of Catholic social principles.
MARGARET M. ATTLEE.
Greystoncs, Eynsham, Oxon,