Demand For Leadership

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 287, 4 December 1936, Page 6

Demand For Leadership

Centuries ahead, when historians are writing the history of our troubled era, of the post-war world, they will speak of Lenin in Russia, of Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany. They will speak of the way in which these people responded to what undoubtedly was and is a very deep and widespread demand for leadership and authority in a time of suffering and confusion, writes Dr. C-. P. Gooch, th,c historian, in the New Era.

They responded to a feeling that the old methods of Parliamentary discussion are too slow; that they produced on the basis of universal suffrage too many parties, too many coalitions and Governments which are too weak to get things done.

All these things should be perpetually kept in our mind when we are tempted to think and rightly think of the terrible evils, spiritual and otherwise, which have been introduced into the world by the coming of these ruthless dictatorships. Everything in history, good and bad, everything you like and everything equally which you dislike, has deep roots in the soil.