DEMOCRACY IN GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24982, 17 September 1946, Page 8

DEMOCRACY IN GOVERNMENT

SIR PATRICK DUFF’S ADDRESS PLEA FOR DISCIPLINE AND TOLERANCE * The Press ' Special Service WELLINGTON, September 16. “One of the things which British folk pride themselves most upon is that, by long trial and not a few errors on the way, they have, over many centuries, evolved a system of government which we claim—and feel that we can rightly claim—is both the most dignified for the individual citizen and the most good-neighbourly for world society, in a word, democracy,’ said the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom <Sir Patrick Duff’, addressing the Rotary Club at Levin to-day. “Democracy, if it is to flourish, needs a deep and well-pre-pared soil and a propitious environment: and, on the top of that, neverending cultivation of personal character and personal self-discipline. It should never be forgotten that, because it demands more from each individual citizen, it is far and away the hardest form of government.” he said. “Even after the exhibition which we ■witnessed between 1918 and 1939 of the extent of our failure to ‘make the world safe for democracy,’ we remain as convinced as ever that democracy in all lands and all societies is the form of government most conducive to the good of the world,” said Sir Patrick Duff. “But the application and stability of it varies according to the maturity and temperament and conditions of the various races of man: and this is a consideration of essential importance and one which it is dangerous, and may even be fatal, to overlook. /

“Democracy implies government by a majority. It implies for British folk that the majority will not use their power to bludgeon the minority into desperation; it implies that the minority. on their part, will accept in principle the will of the majority and play the game according to the rules, waiting till they, in their turn, if by legitimate persuasion they can convert a sufficient number to their way of thinking, become the majority. It calls for an underlying mutual under J standing.. The essential background to the practice of democracy is a basic unity and mutual tolerance ”

After reviewing the world situation Sir Patrick Duff observed: “In the counsels of the United Nations, whose own respective theories and practices of demorcacy differ about as much as chalk from cheese, the manifestations of mutual trust and mutual forbearance and loyal solidarity are not particularly impressive. “It would be false modesty on our part and absurdly unrealistic to exppct other peoples to do overnight what it has taken the British stdck centuries to do,”* he said. “Meanwhile, for our own security we shall need .consciously to cultivate in our own democracies sufficient strength and resolution (and we don’t always seem to have much to spare) to make these dubious or reluctant pupils realise that our liberal way of life is not a sign of weakness and of decadance or an invitation, as they have regarded it before, for them to attack us. And, as an example and exhortation to them, we shall need more than ever to cultivate in our own private lives and to display in our own community sufficient self-discipline and mutual toleration (and we don’t always seem to have much to spare) to make'these other beginners feel that this way of life is worth their while striving to imitate, so far as they are able.”