Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1935. BRITAIN STANDS FIRM

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1935, Page 10

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1935. BRITAIN STANDS FIRM

With the collapse of the German Empire the last of the absolute monarchies in Europe vanished. After the War, Professor R. B. Mowat has written: * Every people' outside Soviet Russia was free and independent, governing itself under a liberal Constitution and parliamentary system; Thus by 1919 the long process -of European history, so eloquently described by Croce as the emergence, development, and struggle of the liberal ideal, seemed to be completed. Liberalism had come into its own. The term "liberalism," as here used in its application to the Continental political ideals, has a wider meaning than Liberalism in the English political vocabulary. It may be best expressed briefly in the English sense by the term "democracy." Conservatives arid -Liberals in English politics arc both liberal in the Continental meaning of the word. After the War,- then, all Europe was liberal. In sixteen years, however; it has been found that the victory of liberalism, or democracy, is far from being complet6 and permanent. In Russia, Italy,, Germany, Poland, and Austria the authoritarian State has come again in a new form. In Spain the liberal-socialist republic' is precariously, maintained. Hungary has more than a. semblance of dictatorship and democracy comes and goes in the Balkans. In ten years France has twice appeared to be well on the road to dictatorship. In 1926 the course was changed by M. Poincare; in 1934 by M. Doumergue. With the death of Marshal Pilsudski, Poland may attempt to regain a constitutional form of Government. General Rydz-Smigly succeeded Pilsudski as InspectorGeneral of the Polish Armed Forces but apparently, he did not measure up to the stature of a dictator for the Premier, M. Slawek, announced last week that the search for a dictator to succeed Pilsudski had been abandoned. Poland would now be governed with a Constitution as the supreme arbiter. But France is again a candidate for dictatorship. We do not refer to the wide powers granted to M. Laval, the Premier, for though "The Times" referred* to him as "temporarily joining the small but growing band* of individuals upon whose single will '■ Governments depend" his authority is derived from Parliament, and, his policy will be endorsed 'or condemned by the Chamber when it reassembles. A more direct threat of dictatorship is that given by Colonel de la Rocque, leader of the Croix de Feu. Yesterday he was reported as declaring: We will mobilise'possibly in a fortnight against the revolutionary plans of. M. Blum, M. Daladier, and others. We will pack off the rotten Parliamentary system and silence the bankers. What power there is behind this threat cannot'be stated; but the Croix de Feu, as the French type of Fascism, was a power to be reckoned with last year when Paris faced the menace of a new revolution, and the Croix de' Feu is believed to have gained steadily in strength since, M. Laval does not appear to have the resolution of M. Poincare or the harmonising power which enabled M. Doumergue to give France a breathing space. Much will depend on whether the extreme Left maintains the spirit of the political truce or breaks it in an effort to seize power. •;$ While this is the course of events on ,the Continent, what is the position of Britain? Mr. Stanley Baldwin stated it briefly and precisely in his speech to the delegates of the Empire Parliamentary Association on July 4. English people, he said, had always preferred committees to dictators, elections to street fighting, and talking shop's to revolutionary tribunals. Parliamentary government had not failed where it had grown and formed appropriate traditions. To appreciate the significance of Mr. Baldwin's statement one must regard the Continental reversions to authoritarianism not as failure of democracy but as rejection of the liberal ideal before it has been fully and fairly tried.' Lord Eustace Percy set out this view in his contribution to the symposium of broadcast talks which has since been published under the title "The Modern State." In Turkey, lie said, there had been no revolt against democracy" because there had never been democracy. Russia had had no more practical experience of democracy than Turkey. Hitlerism in Germany appeared to be taking the shape of an old German tradition: an alliance between a dominant army or military movement and a more or less subordinate political machine. Fascism was not new in Italy. Italian politics had often taken the form of the dictatorship of a party and, in one aspect, Fascism was only this old tradition breaking up through a thin layer of Parliamentary institutions which had' been superimposed on Italian life in the last sixty or sevenLy years. Democracy in British countries is different. It is not a new branch

grafted in k to the old tree of' absolutism. It-has roots of its own. Dictatorship has no traditional appeal to the British mind. There is certainly always the clanger, which Lord Bryce noted on Llie Continent, that people may for a time sacrifice the ideal of liberty for the economic efficiency promised them by dictatorship. But British people will not make the sacrifice heedlessly. They may trifle with the idea of Sir Oswald Mosley's Black Shirts to offset Sir Stafford Cripps's plan to bring.'in Socialism the day after tomorrow by edict—dictatorship just thinly disguised. But with Sir Osivald Mosley on one extreme and Sir Stafford Cripps on the other the great majority of the people will keep the middle of the road. The temperament and the experience of the British people are described in two quotations: which present considered views of the present problem. The first is from a "Round Table" review of the progress of the Black Shirt movement. By the hard road of experience through successive generations, said the writer this nation has assimilated the first principles of social and political wisdom. It has learned to judge its leaders less by their words than t>y their works, to distrust exaggeration, and to treasure fairmindedness. . . . Unresponsive to general ideas or new philosophies, it is an admirable judge of what is practicable. The second quotation is from the King's Jubilee Address to the two Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall: Our ancient Constitution, ever adaptable to change, said his Majesty, has during my- reign faced and conquered perils of warfare never conceived in earlier days, and has met and satisfied'new democratic demands, both at home and overseas. The system bequeathed to us by ,our ancestors, again modified for the needs of a new age, has been found once more, as of old, the best way to secure government by the people, freedom for the indi-vidual,-''the ordered strength of the State, and. the rule of law over governors and governed alike. ]