HARDER PHILOSOPHY MUST BE TAUGHT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 39, 9 November 1940, Page 12

HARDER PHILOSOPHY MUST BE TAUGHT

Democracy Of Future

AN ORDINARY .MAN’S VIEW OF THE WAR

(By

Observer.)

Often in this conflict it is emphasized that we are fighting for, among other things, the preservation of democracy. We have accepted it as a sort of negative plank in our war platform. The erasure of nearly every one cf the Continental democracies has illuminated the truth that the broad issue is survival either for the totalitarian system or the democratic, not both. What is more we are aware now that the preservation of the democratic way of life is going to be a costly business. Small wonder then that people with any capacity at all to think are earnestly questioning what kind of democracy we are fighting and paying for. On one thing most minds are made up. It is not. the democracy of .1919-39.

The dynamic onslaught of the totalitarian revolution has served us well if only by showing up the degeneracy of the democratic mind and institutions between the last war and this. The democracy we out here know best is our own form of it. Are we in this war to preserve a New Zealand democracy which up to 1939 revealed many typical symptoms of a democracy in retrogression? To be sure we were not unique in national flabbiness —not. by a long chalk. But we were living in a glass-house and had no qualifications for stone throwing at States which went down through the accident, of being neighbour to more virile if less likeable peoples. The war has given an eleventh-hour chance for democratic regeneration. Are we facing up to the obligation as tlie democracies nearer the realities of war have been compelled to do? Last Sunday while sheltering from the rain I met a rugged Cockney also sheltering. He had lived among us for two years and had brought a good job out from England with him. "You know,” lie said, "there’s more soft-soap factories iu New Zealand than aircraft factories in the Old Dart -and that’s saying something." A shrewd thrust and pretty near the mark. I thought. He went on to say that he had heard that New Zealanders were tough. "Blimey!” he said. “The way you people are soft-soaped by your politicians and radio propagandists! You are falling for stuff we've ohucked away years ago.” Our failing as a democracy has been of course the lure of the soft life. I use the past tense more in the hope than the belief that the war has awakened us to the perils of drift: I don’t see a real awakening till we have been made to suffer "a bit. We have been spoon-fed and fathered and mothered by an indulgent State, and assured that everything would be all right. What is urgently needed now is the preaching and practice of true democracy, which means the application of sandsoap instead of soft-soap. A hard philosophy must be dinned into the generation coming forward. They must be told that there will be no place in the new democracy for the man or woman who can but won't work. They must be told that they are responsible for the State, not the State for them. They must be impressed with the cardinal economic truth, namely that all wealth comes out of production and production out of hard work by capital and labour in unison, and that monetary quackery is no substitute. They must be told that the true measure of national greatness is the character of each and every individual — that soft individuals nieen a soft nation. If it will assist in teaching these truths the war is not an altogether bad thing. Hitler’s Revenge.— Tlie Hitler Guy fires of November 5 have, we hope, effectually consumed the spirit of Nazism, but there is a story from that inflammatory night which deserves to survive. The small daughter of a friend of mine made a Hitler guy, a swede-turnip serving as the tyrant’s head. Her father assisted at tlie cremation, which passed off happily for all but Hitler. Next morning my friend set to work clearing up the wreckage, as fathers invariably have to do. Poking about in the ashes he discovered Hitler’s head smoke-blackened, but otherwise intact. Thinking it a pity to waste the vegetable—it being wartime and so on—he suggested to his wife that she cook it for dinner. In due course she had to report. “It wouldn’t cook—it was too tough I” And Scotland Too!— In the Battle for Britain Hitler has had to write off a major defeat, and it may safely be taken for granted that “There’ll Always be an England.” A Scots acquaintance of mine is also of that opinion: so much so indeed that be was moved to send in some lines by a patriotic Scotswoman, Mrs. H. C. Legerton, a resident of Vancouver. They were published by the Edinburgh “Scotsman,” and here they are:—

There’ll always be n Scotland. An’ aye the heather bell. The sliielin' on the hillside. An* the bluebells in the dell. There’ll always be a Scotland. And lads wi’ bonnets bine. To march wi' pibroch skirlin'. Wi’ hearts baith leal and true. There'll always be a Scotland. Tho’ far across the wave Her smilin’ glens and rivers. The freehold of the brave. There’ll always be a Scotland. Her bairns are scattered wide. But when Auld Scotia calls them They’re right there by her side. There'll always be a Scotland. Part of the Empire wide. God grant us faith and courage To face what e'er betide. The Pope and the War.— A Wellington barrister who is acknowledged to be an authority on matters relating to Hie Vatican suggests to me that rhe public should be put on their guard about alleged statements by the Pope on tin 1 war. "Any cable messages 'bearing a- Home dateline concerning Pope Pius Nil or any statements alleged to have been made by him,” he says, “should be suspect as being I talo-Germau propaganda. The Pope has his own means of making pro nouneements and of reporting news of general interest. He is the indeixmdent sovereign of n Slate recognized in international law as being completely neutral and independent. He Ims his own radio station, which for some months has been denying statements attributed to him by the Axis-controlled Press and radio. For instance, it was reported that the Vatican was about, to enter into a new concordat witli the German Reich. ’The Vatican radio gave a quick and emphatic denial to the suggestion that any new concordat wus even in contemplation. It should have been evident that (he Vatican would not be likely to enter into new treaty relations with a Government that had broken every clause of the concordat arranged by the present Pope when he was Apostolic Nuncio in Berlin. Vatican City, by reason of its extra-territoriality, has free access by mail, cable and radio to the outside world. Therefore its information is not subject to Italian censorship. Caiile reports carrying the dateline Vatican City may be taken as authentic, but those dated as from Rome tire suspecL”