RULE BY A FEW

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 12

RULE BY A FEW

DANGER TO DEMOCRACY

SPEECH BY MR. ROOSEVELT

GERMAN EXAMPLE

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Received September 21, 2.10 p.m.) • PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 20.

President, Roosevelt, in a speech, said: "I regret to say that even today there are demands for the return of the Government, to the control of those few who, because of their business ability or economic omniscience, are supposed to be just a touch above the average of our citizens. "The great danger is that once the government falls into the hands of the few elite the curtailment or even abolition of free elections might be adopted as a means of keeping them in power. Free elections mean the enduring safety of our form of Government. No dictator in history has dared to run the gauntlet of a really free election."

Mr. Roosevelt said that the Germans had despaired of their democracy and had listened to a new cult of Nazism in which a minority offered "bread, shelter, and better government by the rule of a handful of people boasting of special aptitude for Government but making no mention of the abolition of free elections."

"Many people in large businesses," continued Mr. Roosevelt, "were dissatisfied with the democratic system and formed political and economic alliances with this group. You and I know the subsequent history of Germany. The right to free elections was suddenly wiped out by the new regime." - '