VALUE OF A BALANCED MIND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 102, 3 May 1939, Page 10

VALUE OF A BALANCED MIND

The world is confronted today with democratic Governments that wait till public opinion is ripe, and with dictatorship Governments that themselves ripen public opinion by means of rapid-action processes based on one-eyed propaganda and ultimately on force. By a combination of propagandist and forceful methods, Nazi-Fascism can ripen public opinion, among its own peoples, in much the same way as, bananas are ripened, and can do it almost overnight. The democratic method is to leave the fruit out in the open, free to all the winds that blow, without artificial heat, and as accessible to cold air as to warm. Democrats have no doubt that this is the better way to develop public opinion; they must also admit that it is the slower way. But is it too slow? Under the liberal methods of { democracy, and with a free Press, public opinion in three democratic countries—France, Britain, and the United States—has made in less than a year the most remarkable advances. Compare the France of Daladier and Bonnet with the recent France of continually falling Ministries, the France that had no Cabinet when Austria was seized. Compare American aioofism today with what it was a year ago.

' In a Nazi-Fascist country there is but one party; Press, platform, and cinema have but one voice and one trend; public opinion is made from above. In a Nazi-Fascist country the citizen hears but one view; in a democratic, free-Press country the citizen is pelted with every kind of view. He often does not know what to believe, but a Nazi-Fascist citizen knows only too well what to believe, or at any rate what to profess. From the slow developmental processes of democratic public opinion it takes a long, long time for compulsory military service to emerge; but the NaziFascist countries have conscription always with them, and regard democracy as the poorer by comparison. But is this true? Even among professional soldiers and sailors, there are many who stand by the slower methods of democracy. Lord Chatfield, for instance, according to a cable message published today, pays his tribute to the balanced mind —the "balanced view" obtained from reading "newspapers of all shades of opinion"—and to the free British Press, which enables citizens to hear all sides of a question. The more freedom is given to critics, the more they cancel out one another's weak points, and the greater the residuum of solid sense available to the reader who has the industry to look for it. But who in Germany dare cancel out the casuistries of a Hitler speech or the falsifications of that great maker of public opinion, Dr. Goebbels? Lord Chatfield implies that the issue is between the stuffed mind and the balanced mind, and fears not the military decision. As to the cultural decision there has never been the slightest doubt. When democrats, reluctantly and gradually, accept military service, it is not merely be- \ cause the pending conflict affects territorial title deeds, but because the whole kingdom of the human mind is in danger; for with the. suppression of democracy public opinion as we know it must also disappear.