The Dominion FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1930. MUSSOLINI AND DEMOCRACY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 102, 24 January 1930, Page 10

The Dominion FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1930. MUSSOLINI AND DEMOCRACY

Another witness has arisen to testify to the virtues of Mussolini s dictatorship. Although he set out with a contrary opinion, Mr F. Milner was convinced by what he saw in Italy that 11 Duce has really accomplished “a great work of national regeneration, and dubs the Fascist regime a “benevolent autocracy.” Other observers who went to Italy to scoff have been converted to Mussohmsm. Nor can it be denied that the consensus of opinion now inclines to credit Mussolini with real achievement, especially by comparison with the supine government he superseded. ’ . It would be fallacious, however, to argue in this connection that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Many P e °P* e > seeing the success of the Italian dictatorship, contend that it should be applied in British communities. They urge that the Parliamentary system is proving a failure, that it is too cumbrous to give the drive and efficiency that is required in modern government, and that the widening of the electorate to include the whole adult population has still further reduced the status of Parliament by turning statesmen and ' leaders into politicians and panderers. ‘ Democracy has failed, they say. “Let us make an end qf the ineffectiveness of representative government and find $ superman to rule us instead.” The argument supports itself by pointing to what has happened in Europe since the war. Besides Italy, government by-the will of a despot instead of by the consent of the people has been established in Spain and Jugo-Slavia and, less obviously, in Poland and Hungary. And the Russian Bolsheviki showed the way to them all. 'the protagonists for autocracy do not dwell long on these others. , Lenin and his successors, de Rivera, King Alexander, Pilsudski and Admiral Horthy—none of them suit the argument quite so well and it is switched back to Mussolini. ‘ / Nevertheless the fact should not be missed that, broadly speaking, it is among the Latin and Slav peoples that autocracy has again reared itself above, representative institutions that had never been securely acclimatised in their new habitat. On the other hand Parliaments have persisted in North-West Europe among the Nordic races where they have had their home, despite many vicissitudes, since the days of the Vikings and before them. This seems to suggest that Parliamentarianism or representative , Government cannot be transplanted at will into alien soil and flourish as did the parent tree in its homeland. No doubt there is food for reflection here, not only for those who mourn for the eclipse-of democracy in Southern and Eastern Europe but for those who would introduce its institutions into other lands even less fitted to receive them. For instance, Great Britain to-day contemplates the grant of self-government to Egypt and India but is it likely that the system; quite foreign to these .countries, will survive very long? To return to Mussolini, competent observers see in him a personal dictator. It is the force of the man himself that has kept him in the saddle. When he goes there will be no one left to succeed him. He is another Cromwell. Therein lies the weakness of dictatorships, that their succession is not secured and that they fair with the dictator. With all its faults Parliamentarianism avoids this recurring confusion and, in Western communities at least, functions tolerably well. As the saying is, “it works” and guarantees its own succession in a way that ; dictators can never do.