FREE DEMOCRACY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 20, 24 July 1934, Page 3

FREE DEMOCRACY

A SOCIALIST'S SPEECH

DANGER OF DICTATORSHIP

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 8. Mr. A. V, Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty in 'the/Socialist Government), in his presidential address to the National Brotherhood Conference:— "We are now faced with a new'agitation, led by a• . Press lord, which seeks to. destroy the democratic basis of ojir national life, to restrain—if not destroy-the liberty of the subject, which is likely to foster racial-' hatred against the Jews, to organise, on at least quasi-military lines, to set up a dictatorship!, and to maintain that dictatorship by force. In face of the bloodshed, cruelty, oppression,: and injury to conscience which have followed on the adoption of ,this policy in European countries, I feel strongly that there is an urgent call to our1 Christian -Brotherhood to warn men: everywhere against being ensnared into a policy of violence at home, or arrogant nationalism in our view of international affairs. It has been said that systems which rest on the principle of absolutisni must be not merely tyrannical but in the long run feeble and ineffective. The announcement of Signor Mussolini as to the industrial and financial position in Italy at the end of twelve years of dictatorship, with' the prospect of still lower standards there and his tribute to this country, is in effect, an admission of the soundness of tree democracy." .