A DUTY OF DEMOCRACY

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 138, 8 December 1936, Page 10

A DUTY OF DEMOCRACY

II is not for nothing that the freest democracy in the world, that of Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations, has been associated with constitutional monarchy, a system which other democracies, like France and the United States, have difficulty in understanding. Such a system . is, indeed, the peculiar creation of the genius of the British people, who, in defence of their liberties, ended the dream of the Divine right of Kings and yet found for the Sovereign a high, honourable, and withal practical, role in the governance of a great Empire. The people have always reserved the right to criticise their rulers and have exercised that right in the past when what they considered just cause arose. Of recent years, until the present crisis, it is the, people's direct rulers, its elected representatives, who have been the main target of criticism, from which, by common consent, the Crown has been tacitly preserved. If the Crown has been kept out of politics, the politicians themselves have had to bear the full brunt of popular feeling, in any thankless task they may have had to undertake. In Europe die movement against the politicians has gone very much further, as Mr. Kenneth Lindsay, M.P. .'and Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the British Government, declared at a luncheon given in his honour at Parliament He-use yesterday. Emphasising the need of maintaining the system of free, democracy and the freedom of election as the one system which dignified the men who were elected and the nation that elected them, -Mr. Lindsay said that the political system was being lampooned in Europe, and the same tendency was. observed in England and Australia. Instances would be found in street conversations. A typical example occurred in the scenes in London, described in cable messages ;. yesterday and today, with references to Mr. Baldwin. Democracy and self-government call for self-restraint and1 thoughtfulness on the part of people. If these institutions are to survive,1 consideration is due to the elected/leaders of the people in the delicate and difficult problems that confront the world today.