UNEASY DICTATORSHIPS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 9

UNEASY DICTATORSHIPS

TO THE EDITOE OF THE PRESS. Sir,—ls war the solution of the difficulties that the European dictators are experiencing? Have they mismanaged their economic and political affairs to such a degree that war offers an attractive means of recapturing the enthusiasm and loyalty of a disillusioned populace? From recent Press Association reports it would seem that Mussolini considers war a highly desirable condition, and clearly indicates his belligerent attitude. We know that conditions are rather tricky in Italy today. She has been under dictatorship for 14 years. Italy's plight is no better than Germany's. Her exports declined by 781,372,000 lire in the first 11 months of 1934, as compared with the corresponding period of 1933. At the same time, her imports increased and her adverse trade balance grew to nearly 2,000,000,000 lire. Soviet Russia has been under dictatorship for 17 years. So little has dictatorship achieved internal harmony there that early in December some hundreds of potential rebels were shot. Germany, latest home of dictatorship, faces the New Year with her foreign trade in decline and her elaborate system of Nazi armies in dispute. Exports for January were the lowest since the Nazis took over control, and the adverse trade balance the worst for the last seven years. Has democracy won the race? France has come through a trying year effectively unscathed. The Spanish Republic, its doom long prophesied, still survives. Britain looks back on 1934 as the year in which trade revived in most of the basic industries, and in which unemployment was less than in any year since 1929. She looks forward to 1935 as the year in which her administrative institutions, constitutional monarchy notable among them, will be fittingly celebrated. If practice, rather than precept, be accepted as the touchstone, the last lew years have made it clear where the honours lie as between dictatorship and democracy.—Yours, etc., FRANK EDWARDS. February 20, 1935.