Dictatorship and Democracy—Difference

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 304, 19 September 1936, Page 20

Dictatorship and Democracy—Difference

AN incisive and illuminating leading article in the “Yorkshire Post” on dictatorship and democracy concisely states the difference between the two forms of Government. The writer says:— “The regime of the League of Nations in Danzig is as un-

popular as it was in the Saar. From his headquarters in Saarbruecken, Sir Geoffrey Knox endeavoured to work the Governing Commission in a manner which Geneva would have approved. “For fifteen years intelligent, hard-working, enterprising Saarlanders submitted to the leash of the League of Nations, and when the Plebiscite registered an obvious conclusion, there followed a period of hectic activity. Herr Buerekel, as Governor of the Saar Province, transformed industrial undertakings, straightened rivers to avert flooding, built new roads and vigorously attacked the problem of unemployment.

“Herr Duerfeld, as Burgomaster of Saarbruecken, at ouce put into operation town-planning schemes which are the envy of all Germany. More was done in a single year than the former Governing Commission could have hoped to do in a single decade. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Saar —the latest addition to the German Reich—is the most ardent of all the German provinces in its support of the Nazi regime, or that Saarbruecken headed the poll for Herr Hitler at the March elections. “Dictatorship has one justification, and one only: it gets things done. There is no point in disputing the fact that Herr Hitler is the leader of the German people or that the greater number of Germans support him with a fervour which they could never have shown for Bismarck or Kaiser Wilhelm. “The German mind requires a leader. It is not really fitted for democracy. When the English people finally settled their religious difficulties, they stipulated that their Monarch should be a member of the Church of England; no Roman Catholic could succeed to the Throne.

“But the Germans settled their religions, difficulties on the well-known principle cujus regio ejns religio; the people adopted the religion of the monarch. A Lutheran prince had Lutheran subjects, and a Roman Catholic prince had Roman Catholic subjects.

“At no time in their history would the English people have been capable of such accommodation.

“The Germans’ inability to be independent of their leaders has dogged them throughout their history. Pacifist beliefs were never more frequently expressed in the Reichstag than in the immediate pre-war years, and yet the Social Democrats, though strong in numbers, were unable to check the military ambitions of the Kaiser and his advisers. “A few years later German defeat gave the Social Democrats the fullest opportunity of inaugurating the reforms for which they stood. But the German people waited in vain for the Parliamentarians to save them, and they fell back on the old principle of following a leader. They have, in fact, shown themselves incapable of democratic government.

“Dictators may get things done, but they seem to destroy every safeguard of peace, law and liberty in the process. “We in Great Britain have kept our laws and our liberties. v "We strive the maintain the peace.

“We can criticise the Government without fear of imprisonment or physical torture.

■ “We can choose what religion we shall have. “We are not bound to subscribe to views on religion, science and history which we know to Ire untrue.

“We make it possible for scholars, thinkers and workers to retain their integrity, and we do not send our spokesmen to Geneva to behave like cads. “We may grumble at the slow machinery of democratic government, but it. is always within our power to repair or renovate this machinery with the full knowledge and'approval of the nation. “When our leaders make mistakes, we can censure them or force them into private life.

“Perhaps it is for this reason alone that they make fewer irreparable mistakes than the Dictators. It was the countries where Democratic sentiment was weak which actually began the last war. That is the chief reason why a Dictator is a menace to the peace of the world.”