LOOSE THINKERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20507, 18 March 1941, Page 11

LOOSE THINKERS

DEMOCRACY’S FOES AUCTIONED ELECTIONS EDUCATION THE CURE MR. R. M. ALGIE SPEAKS The peril in which democracy as a political institution stands, through loose-thinking and confusion in the public mind, provided the theme for a keenly interesting address by Mr. R. M. Aigie at to-day’s luncheon of the Gisborne Rotary Club. He stated that conditions of modern life in this country had done little but make the people receptive to propaganda, and that the electorate must be educated so that it could distinguish for itself between emotion and reason.

“The present age has been somewhat cynically described as a period of loud-speakers and loose thinkers,” said Mr. Aigie. “It is highly probable that no single word has come in for more of this misuse and ill-treatment than the word ‘democracy’ itself."

In point of fact, democracy was the most difficult form of government that had so far been evolved by man. Its real difficulty lay in its insistence upon the importance and the responsibility of the individual. It did not hesitate to cast upon the private citizen the whole responsibility for its continued existence as a system of government. Democracy’s Heights anti Depths Democracy was capable of rising to very great heights —as to-day in Great Britain, where the welfare of the nation had been placed above and before all consideration of sectional interests. Democracy was equally capable of sinking to very great depths, as where a people could put such minor matters as the artificial limitation of hours of work before considerations of national safety. To a very great number of people, democracy meant no more than a system under which they could obtain more and more advantages from a central authority regardelss of the contribution which they themselves were prepared to make in order to secure such privileges. To such people, democracy meant nothing more than rights and privileges, and that erroneous view was fostered and emphasised by a type of politician who sought to reduce our general elections to the level of a sale by auction, a competition to bidding, with the electorate being knocked down to the highest bidder. Solve —Or Be Destroyed There was no doubt, continued the speaker, that mankind stood face to face with a number of problems of enormous magnitude. It had been correctly stated that, as a people, we would have to solve those problems or be destroyed by them. But a crisis was no new thing in the slow, painful, upward march of the human race. Men had grappled with crisis after crisis since the dawn of human history, and it was idle to suppose that a time would come when such problems and struggles would no longer constitute an. integral part of human experience. There was a tendency at present to speak almost with mystic longing of the new order that would be ushered in with the restoration of peace. It was as well for us to remember that a given order was not necessarily good “simply because it possessed the merit of novelty.

An “order” that had within itself all that mankind could possibly wish had been given to this world some 2000 years ago. It had been humanity's own fault that it had failed to grasp and to apply the message it had been given. The colossal danger with which the world was now confronted was in effect just one more of those God-given chances for men to see a little clearer, and to get a little more in conformity with Divine purpose. Destruction Is Not Reform

There were many whose approach to our recurrent problems prompted them to think that the best method of reform lay in destruction. They sought to erect a future upon the ruins of the past. They seemed to feel that revolution, whether peaceful or violent, was a more certain road to progress than evolution. But such a view could not be supported; it was entirely contrary to history. As Earl Baldwin had once put it: “There is no doubt in my mind that, if it were possible to destroy the present system in a moment, those who destroyed it would cause a shipwreck, and they would not bring into being a ship in which they could take away the survivors.” Those who believed that any so-called “new order” could toe based entirely upon party politics and upon consequential legislative enactment were merely asking for heart-rending disappointment. The vital need was not so much a new order as for a conscious acceptance of and a deliberate application of a very old one. In brief, there was an urgent necessity for a little less experimentation and a lot more adherence to fundamentals. No Substitute for Education

Legislation was not and could never be a satisfactory substitute for education. The problems of the present period had presented to the church and to the schools not only a task but also an opportunity. But we, as individual citizens, could not escaoe from our responsibilities merely by passing them over to religion and to .Mucation. Democracy was in every sense as much of a personal matter as religion was rightly deemed to be. Democracy was a method of living and not merely a form of government. Its continuance or its extinction depended entirely upon the individual. It was just as well for us to remember that every vote cast at an election carried within itself the power to destroy the very system that made the casting of that vote possible. If people preferred to be moved by emotion rather than by reason, if they put individual "or class interest before true national well-being, if they kept on selling out bit by bit to the highest political bidder, democracy would inevitably destroy itself. Its splendid edifice - would bo buried under a colossal burden of debt. Emotion and reason were all 100 frequently in conllict. The survival of democracy would depend upon the triumph of reason. The keys were held by the church and by the schools. The race lay between education on the one hand and the extinction of our free institutions on the other.