BLOWN SKY-HIGH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 300, 18 December 1937, Page 10

BLOWN SKY-HIGH.

FATE OF DICTATORS. SITTING ON VOLCANOES. "INEVITABLE," SATS BISHOP. Dictatorship is only a hiatus in human progress, said the JS'shop of Chelmsford, addressing the Chelmsford Diocesan Conference. "There, is not, and cannot be, anything final about i-," he. went on. "A dictator sits on tiio top of the volcano until he is blown sky -high, nnd then, after the ensuing erupt ion, society settles down again to work out its own salvation along sober democratic lines. '' This course of events is inevitable in the totalitarian States in Europe. Doomed to Perish. "An apparent efficiency in government which necessitates a regimentation of life, national, social, family and individual, and which inevitably brings into bondage the body, mind and spirit, is n thing evil in its essence and destined to perish. ''We may be very confident that our way is the best, but we have to produce the evidence. If democracy is to justify itself there is much yet to be done." It was claimed that dictatorships were effective in getting things done. "England was once governed by a. dictator," the bishop said. "The military dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell certainly got things done. "He prescribed the religion of the nation; certain sports and pleasures (and very few of them) were permitted; the Press was muzzled. "Under his autocracy England was feared as never before on the Continent, but it is also true that England had not a friend in the world. "The dictatorship left behind a bankrupt treasury, and an Ireland seething with a hatred of this country which is still unappeased." Dictators are Quacks. Mr. T. S. Simey, lecturer in public ■administration at Liverpool University, addressing the National Chamber of Trade Conference at Chester, said, "The man who is certain about his aims in social administration will usually be a quack. "The politician with a ready-made and complete programme of social reform in his pocket is usually the greatest quack of them all, and I think that the modern dictators fall into this category very easily."