DEMOCRACY’S FIGHT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 229, 26 August 1940, Page 2

DEMOCRACY’S FIGHT

AGAINST EVIL FORCES. MR HAMILTON’S VIEW. WELLINGTON, Aug. 26. "Wo must never compromise with evil, and never show any cowardice in meeting it,” said the Lender of the Opposition (Hon. A. Hamilton), in an address la6t night. Christian,. neighbourly thinking, he said, made for good government and happy, joyous living. Self-materialism brought certain ruin and despair. » The present struggle was in many ways a war of paganism versus Christianity. Democracy must not fail to realise that it was a faith, and not a jumble of private interests. Mr Hamilton believed that now Democracy had stripped itself of the fear of war it was more than half-way to victory. Totalitarianism had yet to show that it could fight. “With many people there is too much Availing, too much pessimism, with, the result that some say that those of us Avho talk of freedom, progress and enlightenment pursue vain dreams,” said Mr'Hamilton. “That is rubbish, of course. Progress has always been forged in fire, and tempered in struggle. There will always bo false prophets, Avho cry calamity—better an over-enthusiastic apostle any day, because he knows the road to progress is never smooth, but lie lauglis as he bumps along it. Nor is this spirit out of step with Christian truth. Indeed, it is the very embodi-

merit of it. “If, in the providence of God, Hitler be that mail by whom offence cometh, and if this war is the .purging .lire through which, we as a people, and as a nation, must pass to rise to higher service, shall we in that perceive any departure from those divine attributes which we have always I ascribed to a just and a loving God 'i Surely not. In our time we have made remarkable advance in the practical application of technical sciences to industry and commerce. The moral and j social life has fought upward and on-j ward alongside them. GREAT LEGACIES. “Perhaps the great feeling of disillusion and pessimism is because people see these things lead to trou- | Ule, while they had hoped tor a better world —that is defeatism. Better now to review the great legacies of the advance in our days, and see what can .be redeemed and well used in the tui ture. Above all, we must ever cherish gift of our age —personal freedom. II find that when people become lost 1 and hopeless in the maze of the world's problems shaken faith is a root cause. This hopelessness is particularly apparent in those sections of our modern civilisation which have lost, or forgotten. the sheet anchor provided by true Christian belief and faith. “To some it has become a fashion almost to ridicule faith—religious faith faith in the providence of God, or even faith in the "personal ideal in Democracy, faith in the family hie as a basis of"the natioral life. .Truth outj lives ridicule and outlives persecution. “These are days when we must live up to our faith,” said Mr Hamilton. “If we are opposing merely because our material well-being is threatened,

1 then hope is lost. If it is only our ! personal safety and comfort that are 'at stake, then hope is lost also. We | must also oppose Nazism and Cornmunism, because of their fundamental I flaws— they deny God and ridicule I Christian philosophy. Materialism lias | always failed in the full-dress/trial of strength with right. Alaterialism takes away the soul of men. PLAIN ALTERNATIVE. “There could not be a more appropriate time for us to overhaul human values than the present. Now is the time to deal with tlie spirits of envy, vanity and lust for power, all of which corrupt human endeavour. AVe cannot afford to make a mistake and muddle our faith. “I do not believe that we can unite with one form of totalitarianism to destroy another. The alternative is not Nazism or Fascism —it is always totalitarianism or Democracy. Free peo-' pie have proved themselves in a thousand desperate encounters, and against the greatest odds, and tliero are millions all over the world watching and waiting for a chance to shake off the yoke of tyranny. To-day one can almost glory in Democracy, free of fear of war, stripped of half-hearted-ness, and ready to resist attack with counter-attack. Nazism and Communism are doing the same job—they are destroying existing values, spiritual and moral. The human wreckage of Democracy they have strewn about the whole of Europe. . . “Those who scoff at the British Empire forget that it is the birth and the gradual development of the conception of diverse peoples, linked together in a singlo commonwealth, and dwelling in freedom and peace, that forms the glory of the British Empire, and the justification for its existence. Totalitarianism, as a'creed, is _ hurling itself to its own destruction. The Christian sheet-anchor of free men and women is at stake. It is the only faith 011 which true Democracy can bo based,” declared Air Hamilton.