STATE SERVANT, NOT MASTER

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 86, 28 October 1938, Page 4

STATE SERVANT, NOT MASTER

A striking denunciation of dictatorships was made by Mr Joseph E. Davies, American Ambassador to Belgium, speaking at the Welsh National Eisteddfod at Cardiff. "Unless the rule of right prevails over the rule of might," he declared, "present day civilisation must disintegrate to the anarchy of the caveman age* Finite J man—little man—has sought to substitute for the living Christ man-made gods. For freedom, liberty, and the dignity of the human spirit, there are those who would substitute autocratic power, regimented subservience, and tyranny which, throughout the ages, men have died to prevent. Governments have been created upon the premise that democracy is a failure and out of joint with the requirements of modern economic and political life. Whole people have been indoctrinated by the propaganda of dictatorships into a state of mind which welcomes the thought that men exist only for the uses of Government, and that States do not exist to serve

mankind. In the face of these con-' ditions, to you Welshmen, citizens of! the British Empire and' one of the world's greatest democracies, I bring a message from men of Welsh blood who are citizens of another and great younger democracy, the United States of America. It is a simple message. We reaffirm the faith of our fathers. From the New World we bring back to you our belief that there is a living God. We still believe that the soul of man was created in the image of his Maker, that things and institutions are of the earth, but that the spirit of man is immortally a part of God. We believe that Governments are of the earth, and therefore exist to minister to the needs of a mankind which is a part of God. We maintain that the State is not the master, but the servant, of man.