LEADERS WHO FOLLOW

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 8

LEADERS WHO FOLLOW

"The realisation in a democracy is not self-perpetuating" and "a conviction that its stability and permanence are not assured unless its defects are corrected or improved by constitutional methods to meet

changing circumstances" were mentioned by the Chancellor of the New Zealand University yesterday as reasons for the anxious concern evinced by thoughtful and loyal supporters of democratic government: These reasons cannot be overstressed, for in considering democratic government the test applied by the average citizen will be, not its accord with a theory, but its results. A factor in the imperfection of democratic government is the disposition, as the Chancellor pointed out, of unthinking people to insist and clamour for rights, and to fail to see that such rights enjoin and imply corresponding duties. This failure is largely responsible for the sectionalism which distorts the aims of popular government, and brings in its train all the inequity of class rule, and class rule is no more excusable when the ruling class is large than when it is small.

It is not sufficient, however, to place the blame upon the many. The leaders of democracy cannot be absolved if their followers go wrong. Indeed, the greater responsibility rests with the leaders. In emphasising this, Mr. Denis W. Brogan, a thoughtful critic and at the same time a defender of democracy, has quoted the epigram of a French workers' leader, Ledru-Rollin, when defending his participation in a rising: "I am their leader, I had to follow them." The leader who simply follows betrays the trust he holds for democracy. At no time is the duty of leadership more urgent than when the mandate given to his party must be interpreted. Mr. Brogan points out that "die motives for which the country has been led to support a party are always mixed, and the proportions in which they are mixed vary from day to day." But the mandate always consists of two classes of desires: the things the country wants and the things it wills as well as wants. For the latter things the country will pay; for the former it may be resentful if the price charged be too high. In the former class come even such things so generally desired as higher wages and shorter hours—if the cost prove to be higher prices and unemployment. The present Government in New Zealand is even now faced with the responsibility of making many far-reaching decisions upon its own mandate. It promised many things, some of them contradictory of each other. Now it must reckon how far it can go in attempting to keep its promises, and whether it will yield to the clamour of the more vocifcrous of its followers (and excuse itself by paying it has to follow them), or will discharge the real duty of democratic leadership and refuse (o take dangerous courses.