The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY APRIL 5, 1923 A DECOMPOSED CORPSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 81, 5 April 1923, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY APRIL 5, 1923 A DECOMPOSED CORPSE.

■' ■ for the eaute that lacks nsaintaner, for the wrong that needs resistantM, For the future in the distano", And the good that tec c«n do. i

J-owell's Pious Ktlitor said thai "libbaty's a kind o' thing thet don't agree with niggers."' To-day we have Signor Mussolini, Premier of Italy, countryman of Mazzini, t-avour, ami < iaribaldi, declaiming that Liberty "don't agree" with Italians, or. apparently, with any other people. Men, he says, are tired of Liberty, and Fascism, avowing itself the foe of Liberalism, will "trample the tiecomposed corpse" of Liberty underfoot. When we recently said that Fascism and Holshel ism were in principle the same, in so far as each was a minority thatseized and held power by force, lie did not think that the leader of the Fascisti would underline our comment with stun a broad red line. The irony of it ! I Fascism was founded to prevent lb" 1 Italian Socialists from sovietising Italy, yet Signor .Mussolini speaks with the i authentic voice of Moscow. It was! Trotsky, we believe, who said that free' doni was n bourgeois superstition.' Signor Mussolini «ays that "the will ol"i the people is a.s shifty as the sands of the seashore." and thai Russia and Italy have shown that a country can be goi - j erned without Liberalism. So they have. but tlie kind of government that lias been evolved in Kussin is sufficiently indicated by the execution of the Roman Catholic bishop that has shocked the opinion of the norld. This attack on Liberty is enough to! make the leaders of the Ki-orgimento | turn in their grave-. Devotion to the cause of Liberty inspired the whole of I that glorious movement, and those who fought and suffered and died for Italy were proud to call themselves Liberals. favour, the statesman of the movement, and one of the great figures of the nineteenth century, was determined to unitefreedom from foreign control wit hi democratic government. "Passionate Italian as he was." says Mr. (I. M. Trevelyan. "his political and economic ideas were based on acute observations made in England, and on a close study of the work of lirey and Peel. Believing in civil and religious freedom to a degree unusual among Continental statesmen of any party, he regarded freely elected ParlianieiiLs as the essential organ of government, and force ano remedy, except lo expel the stranger and the despot. Any fool, he said, could govern by martini law. According to him il was the business of a statesman to govern by Parliament, not indeed obeying every behest of ignorant partisans and corrupt interests, but persuading the country and the Chamber to take the right course, by weight of the authority due to wisdom, knowledge and experience.'' Wo British people have a special interest in this betrayal of Liberty in Italy. Without British sympathy, expressed practically through the j help of the British Government, the I liberation of Italy would not, have been j achieved when it was. and it was to j England that the liberated Italians wen! I for their political system. [ The moral of* this betrayal is that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, that there is always a temptation for power to become tyranny, and that democrats cannot afford to take it for granted that the fight once won is uou for ever. Men are tired of liberty, snys Signor Mussolini. To some extent this is true. Years ago her worshippers believed that when .-he had been freed from her oppressor.-. Liberty would make a new earth, but many of them have been disappointed with the fruits of democracy, and to-day some of them arc. weary after 'a struggle tiiat bus shaken the world to its foundations. This. ! however, is no reason why Liberty ' should be dethroned. She must be wor- , shipped afresh with better service, and Iwe comfort ourselves with the thought that neither Signor Mussolini nor any- ' body else can really kill Liberty and the frame of mind through which it works. I liberalism. The hosts of Liberty may !be checked in Italy, but in the magnificent words of Byron, her banner "torn , but flying" still "streams like a j thunderstorm against the wind."